Imagens das páginas
PDF
ePub

HISTORY, PHILOSOPHY, FICTION, HUMOR, satire, POETRY.

LEISURE HOUR WAS FOUNDED IN THE BELIEF THAT THE PHYSICIAN IS BUT HUMAN; THAT HE LOVES THE BEAUTIFUL IN THOUGHT AND SENTIMENT AS EXPRESSED IN LITERATURE, AND THAT HE IS AT TIMES SURFEITED WITH TECHNICAL MATTER. SHORT, CRISP CONTRIBUTIONS ON ANY OF THE SUBJECTS NAMED

IN THE SUB-HEADING ARE INVITED TO THIS DEPARTMENT.

DIE and depart, Old Year, old sorrow!
Welcome, O morning air of health and
strength!

O glad New Year, bring us new hope to-
morrow,

With blossom, leaf, and fruitage bright at
length.

-CELIA THAXTER, Atlantic Monthly.

THE ORIGINAL AVIATOR.

To scale the empyrean is altogether in keeping with the passion of humankind for mastering its environment. The liking, not only to contemplate the ether, but also to be in and of it, is as old as our glorious race—at least as old as mythology, which is a true and graphic record (unburdened by such superfluities as exact dates and details) of human deeds and human proclivities.

No reasonable mind doubts that there was once upon a time a man and his son (called for convenience Daedalus and Icarus), who set about inventing a flying machine. They were imprisoned on an island: the father reasoned that his captor could control the land and the sea, but not the regions of the air. "I will try that way, declared this antediluvian Wright. So he fabricated wings for himself and for his son by fastening feathers together (avers the veracious Bullfinch), beginning with small ones and adding larger, so as to form an increasing surface. The larger ones he secured with thread, the smaller with wax (there was the mistake); and gave the whole a gentle curvature like the wings of a bird.

The work done, the superb artisan, waving his well-wrought pinions, found himself buoyed upward; and was able to poise himself on the thuswise beaten air. Next he likewise equipped his son; and taught him how to fly, as a bird tempts her young ones from the lofty nest in the air. Icarus was, warned to keep to a moderate height: "for if you fly too low the damp will clog your wings, and if too high, the heat wil

melt the wax. Keep near me and you will be safe." Thus together they flew off; and as they flew the plowman stopped his work to gaze and the shepherd leaned on his staff and watched, astonished at the sight, and thinking they were gods who could thus cleave the air.

But the boy, exulting in his flight, began to leave his parent's guidance and to soar aloft, as if to reach heaven. And this was his undoing. The nearness of the blazing sun softened the wax, as the father feared; and the "unfaithful wings" came off. He fluttered with his arms, but no feathers remained to suspend him in the air. Rushing headlong through "the affrighted air," his cries to his father were submerged in the Blue Aegean.

How futile, in considering human nature, were it to make any distinction of eras, as of ancient or modern. So long as our environment has been as we know it, the Promethean tendencies of our race and its splendid aspirations, have been all of a piece. For the ill-fated Icarus read any one of dozens of names that have in recent years been most pathetically recorded; for the ancient plowman read the modern farmer (who has been known, shameful to state, to point a hostile weapon); for the shepherd read the man of affairs gazing in amazement from his office window; for the melting wax read detached rudder, or broken propeller or gasoline given out; for the affrighted air, read that terribly treacherous medium through which, all unaware, the aerial adventurer (how perfect soever his precautions) drops nevertheless suddenly

hundreds of feet, like a shot fowl; for the headlong rush read the turning-turtle: and you have practically the description you will read almost any summer morning over your coffee and rolls.

No matter what the philosopher has to say to the contrary, man persists in the presumption of holding the cosmos to be anthropocentric; aviation is prompted by the same unquenchable spirit which determines to find the poles, to plant the magnificent human foot upon the loftiest peaks, to probe twenty thousand leagues beneath the seathat spirit which may, conceivably some generations hence, be doing things to Mars. The adult ambition of aviation is but the ideal of a child's fairy tale come to maturity and made real. The race has ever yearned to ride on the wings of the morning, the better to see the glories of the universe. Byron struck home unerringly, when he wrote of clouds in a moonlit sky:

"Bespangled with those isles of light,
So wildly, spiritually bright:
Whoever gazed upon them shining,
But turned to earth without repining;
Nor wished for wings to flee away
And mix with their eternal ray."

"The Ploughboy," by Madison Cawein, in "Minions of the Moon" (Stewart & Kidd):

A lilac mist makes warm the hills,
And silvery through it threads a stream:
The redbird's cadence throbs and thrills,
The jaybirds scream.

The bluets' stars begin to gleam,

[blocks in formation]

We imagine, however, the birdman, aloft, is not thinking such things as these, is not quoting poetry to himself. Of course sentiment aplenty is stowed away somewhere among the subliminal strata of his consciousness, else he wouldn't be a birdman; but for the time being he is vastly busy with things eminently practical-the right chugging of his motor, the tricks of the atmosphere, the tri-dimensional steering he has to do. And when he comes down from his eagle flight he does not express himself in beautiful figures (at least has not been so reported) but asks instead most urgently for a cigarette, a sandwich and a mug of something substantial. Nevertheless, his deeds are worthy commemoration in the most imaginative and the noblest expressions conceivable by those whose less notable business it is to make such records.

THE doctor is a good fellow. His living depends on our getting sick, yet he cheerfully tells us how to keep well. We call him up at 3 a. m., tell him the baby has the colic, and if he doesn't do a tango for our place immediately, we hold it against him all our lives. After he has worked with the little fellow the rest of the night and a part of the day and has gone home and pursued the even tenor of his way for a

And mid them, whispering with the rills, couple of months and then he happens to The morning-hours dream.

mention to us that we owe him a couple or three dollars, we go up in the air and ask

The ploughboy Spring drives out his plough him how in the dickens he expects us to pay

A robin's whistle on his lips;

And as he goes with lifted brow,

And snaps and whips

His lash of wind, a sunbeam tips,
The wild flowers laugh, and on the bough
The blossom skips.

The scent of winter-mellowed loam

And greenwood buds is blown from him,
As blithe he takes his young way home,
Large, strong of limb,

Along the hilltop's sunset brim,
Whistling; the first star, white as foam,
In his hat's blue rim.

him before fall. In the fall-some fallwe swap him a runty calf or make him "take it out in trade." He spends his whole life trying to find out what is the matter with us and how to cure us, and we know

more in a minute than he would in a thousand years, and we tell him so-at least we tell the neighbors so. If a patient gets well if he fails to recover we put a dent in the we attribute it to his vigorous constitution; doctor's reputation. All of which the doctor seems to consider only a part of his business, and serenely goes about trying to keep us out of the churchyard and himself out of the poorhouse.-Chandler (Okla.) Tribune.

REALISM IN WHITMAN'S POETRY.

BY LEWIS DAYTON BURDICK.

THE career of Walt Whitman was a singular one. Few poets have been talked about so much while living, or have been more scathingly condemned, and none have had more valiant defenders. To a considerable extent the literary world has been divided into two hostile camps in relation to him and his works. No other American poet has been so severely criticised as he was by one of them, and to the other, there has never been any really great poet but him.

"Leaves of Grass," Whitman's chief work, as first made up, was published in 1855, when the author was thirty-six. It consisted of a series of poems dealing with current interests and discussing social, moral and political conditions. This volume was extravagantly praised by many English admirers. Ralph Waldo Emerson commended it as containing "incomparable things incomparably said," but when later a more complete edition of it was published in Boston the Massachusetts authorities objected to its sale on the ground of its immorality.

"Who else," said Edmund Clarence Stedman in speaking of the loyalty and devotion of Whitman's friends, "has held even a few readers with so absolute a sway?" Mr. Stedman had himself received a first prize for his poem on "Westminster Abbey" several years before the publication of the first "Leaves of Grass," though he was but twenty-two at this time. Having received marked attention and appreciation as a poet of high rank later, he was also celebrated as a critical writer of ability who wrote interestingly and sympathetically of his fellow writers in verse and of their works, whose opinions, for their candor, learning and graceful expression, received always the highest respect, if not entire approval.

on a little reading and comparison of their respective works that one would not look for the former to give the seal of his approval to the more conspicuous realism of the latter; and it was to Whitman's "too anatomical and malodorous" "Children of Adam" that Stedman attributed the public distrustfulness of the poet, which threatened banishment for him from select collections. That virility may be bred from, and a weakling race made strong by, rankness and coarseness, this poetic-critic declined to concede.

As upon all other questions raised over the peculiar characteristics of Whitman's writings, there is a wide difference of conclusions as to whether his cataloguing realism was the outcome of natural eccentricity or the result of studied affectation. The former may be endured, the latter is not without protest tolerated.

The body of Whitman's poetical production is extensive, and the greater part of it may be classed as realistic, yet the few occasional poems that have most reached the hearts of the masses, for which he may, perhaps, eventually be best remembered and most loved, are those less conspicuous for their realism. It is, however, in those in which realism is most accentuated that the merits, or demerits, as the case may be, have been found, that have given him his widest publicity, on account of which, he has been both ostracized and honored. Will this distinct characteristic, repelling and offensive as it sometimes seems, give the author permanent fame and literary immortality?

The following lines are from the wellknown "Children of Adam": "O my body!

I believe the likes of you are to stand or fall with the likes of the soul, (and that they are the soul),

The contrast in the individuality, taste, I believe the likes of you shall stand or fall poetic forms and literary ideals between Mr. Stedman and Walt Whitman is so apparent

with my poems, and that they are my

poems,

Man's, woman's, child's, youth's, wife's, husband's, mother's, father's, young man's, young woman's poems, Head, neck, hair, ears, drop and tympan of the ears,

Eyes, eye-fringes, iris of the eye, eyebrows, and the waking or sleeping of the lids, Mouth, tongue, lips, teeth, roof of mouth, jaws, and the jaw-hinges,

Nose, nostrils of the nose, and the partition, Cheeks, temples, forehead, chin, throat, back of the neck, neck-slue, Strong shoulders, manly beard, scapula, hind-shoulders, and the ample sideround of the chest,

Upper-arm, arm-pit, elbow-socket, lower

arm, arm-sinews, arm-bones, Wrist and wrist-joints, hand, palm, knuckles, thumb, forefinger, finger-joints, Finger-nails,————

OI say these are not the parts and poems of the body only, but of the soul, OI say now these are the soul."

If it be said that this passage is an exceptional one and is not to be taken as a symbol of the whole, it may be granted, but it is also true that none of the most censurable and objectionable features of this poem are included in these lines.

But from Whitman the incomprehensible and eccentric, one turns with delight and admiration to other lines of the good gray

poet, in which, as in "Old Age's Lambent Peaks,"

"The touch of flame the illuminating fire the loftiest look at last,

O'er city, passion, sea-o'er prairie, mountain, wood-the earth itself; The calmer sight-the golden setting, clear and broad,"

the divine spark pressages immortality, for through them we perceive, as he says,

"The delicate miracles of earth, Dandelions, clover, the emerald grass, the The arbutus under foot, the willow's yelearly scents and flowers,

low-green, the blossoming plum and cherry;

With these the robin, lark and thrush, singing their songs-the flitting bluebird; For such the scenes the annual play brings on."

Happy the man who with him can sing : "But as life wanes, and all the turbulent passions calm,

As gorgeous, vapory, silent hues cover the evening sky,

As softness, fulness, rest suffuse the frame, like freshier, balmier air,

As the days take on a mellower light, and

the apple at last hangs really finish'd

and indolent-ripe on the tree,

Then for the teeming quietest, happiest days. of all!

The brooding and blissful halcyon days!"

THE BEGINNING.

WHERE have I come from, where did you pick me up?" the baby asked its mother.

She answered, half crying, half laughing, and clasping the baby to her breast:

"You were hidden in my heart as its desire, my darling.

"You were in the dolls of my childhood's games; and when with clay I made the image of my god every morning, I made and unmade you then.

"You were enshrined with our household deity, in his worship I worshipped you.

"In all my hopes and my loves, in my life, in the life of my mother, you have lived.

"In the lap of the deathless spirit who rules our home you have been nursed for ages.

"When in girlhood my heart was opening

its petals, you hovered as a fragrance about it.

"Your tender softness bloomed in my youthful limbs, like a glow in the sky before the sunrise.

"Heaven's first darling, twin-born with the morning light, you have floated down the stream of the world's life, and at last you have stranded on my heart.

"As I gaze on your face, mystery overwhelms me; you who belong to all have become mine.

"For fear of losing you I hold you tight to my breast. What magic has snared the world's treasure in these slender arms of mine?"-From "The Crescent Moon, ChildPoems" (Macmillan), by Rabindranath Tagore, translated from the original Bengali by the author.

DIAGNOSTIC VALUE OF DREAMS.

FREUD'S psychanalysis is to psychism what the microscope is to the tangible, pathological lesion; it is a revelation of the mind; a turning of it inside out. The method is especially applicable to the border line cases of mental aberration, to cases of patients not obviously insane nor fit to enter asylums or hospitals, but such as are seen in ordinary practice and are found in clinics and dispensaries-neurasthenics, psychasthenics, hysterics, sufferers from mild forms of the functional psychoses (not conditioned on structural nervous lesions), at worst the half-mad (les demi-fous of Grancher). Freud's method is not for the management of neuropathic degeneration; but it is on the contrary limited by it. "If one wishes," he has declared, "to take a safe course he should limit his selection to persons of a normal state. Psychoses, confusional states and marked (I might say, toxic) depressions are unsuitable for analysis, at least as it is practiced to-day." One must consider also the patient's age: the youthful are excellent subjects; but the patient after fifty lacks on the one hand the plasticity of the psychic processes upon which the therapy depends (for the elderly are no longer educatable), and on the other hand the material which has to be elaborated. In the elderly the duration of the treatment is inversely increased. Nor can one expect to become a proficient psychanalyst after the Freud method who has not mastered at least his theories of the neuroses, his interpretation of dreams, his sexual theories and his psychopathology of every-day life. Another essential is that physician and patient shall be absolutely en rapport: one may get excellent results in surgery without seeing the patient's face;

1 Brill, A. A., Psychanalysis, Its Theory and Practical Application. (Saunders, Phila.)

but psychanalysis presupposes and requires intimate relationship.

Psychanalysis may begin with an investigation of the patient's dream life, because dreams afford reliable information concerning the individual, and invariably show some relation to the symptoms. Dreams play a very important part in the individual's psyche. ual's psyche. Brill's procedure is to have the patient write down his dreams on awakening. Then the dream is analyzed. Thus is the physician helped not only in the interpretation of symptoms, but also in diagnosis and treatment, to the end that fears, delusions and obsessions may be relieved and removed, by a demonstration of their inception and their absurdity.

Brill considers that psychanalysis is the only system of psychotherapy dealing with the neuroses as entities; herein it differs from the management of symptoms merely, as by hypnotism, suggestion and persuasion. Psychanalysis always concerns itself with the patient's personality, probing into the deepest recesses of the mind; and only by this procedure (believes Brill) "that we can hope to gain a real insight into the neuroses and psychoses, a thing of prime importance in the study of mental prophylaxis."

Brill concludes then, concerning the analysis of dreams, that: Dreams are perfect psychological mechanisms, having a definite meaning and containing a wish fulfillment. Every psychotic symptom is the expression of a former mental occurrence and symbolically represents a wish fulfill

ment.

The repression of the unconscious is at the basis of both the dream and the psychotic process. Dreams are the product of the unconscious and hence afford the easiest access to the exploration of the

neuroses.

THE THE THREE GIFTS OF LIFE. A Girl's Responsibility for Race Progress, by Nellie M. Smith, M.A., Lecturer for the Society of Sanitary and Moral Prophylaxis, New York, with an introduction by Thomas D. Wood, A. M., M.D., Professor of Physical Education, Columbia University, New York. Dodd, Mead & Company, 1913. Three things women can do to help the

race progress: seek the best in themselves; demand the best in men; and teach little children how to use their gift of choice. The author, in this excellent book, considers sanely and sympathetically how womankind may attain these gifts sanely—which cannot be said of a great many present day publications on the rather overworked subject of sexual hygiene.

« AnteriorContinuar »