Part 9 (1/2)
”The bees worked steadily until, in their judgment, it was time for winter to come. Then they ceased to work, remained in their hives until they ate up their h.o.a.rded wealth, and then, as Wand expresses it, 'took to the woods.'
”He borrowed the money necessary to pay his pa.s.sage to San Francisco, and ever since has sworn that bees are like men, 'natural loafers,' that will not work unless they are forced to. He believes that the much lauded ant would be the same way if it were not urged on to work perpetually by the miser's fear of starvation.”
Carlin suggested that the question be tested nearer home, and called out, ”Yap Sing!”
The Mongolian came in from the kitchen and Carlin interrogated him.
”Yap, do you like to work?”
”Yes, me heap likee workee.”
”How many hours a day do you like to work, Yap?”
”Maybe eight hour, maybe ten hour, maybe slixteen hour.”
”We give you forty dollars a month. Would you work harder if we paid you fifty dollars?”
”No. Me thinkee not,” answered Yap, adroitly. ”You sabbie, you hire me, me sellee you my time. Me workee all the slame, forty doll's, fifty doll's, one hundred doll's. No diffelence.”
”Yap, suppose you were to get $3,000, would you work then?”
”Oh, yes. Me workee all the slame, now.”
”Suppose, Yap, you had $5,000--what then?”
”Me workee all the slame.”
”Do you ever buy stocks?”
”Slum time buy lettle; not muchee.”
”Suppose, Yap, that some time stocks would go up and make you $20,000, would you work then?”
The Chinaman, with eyes blazing, replied vehemently: ”Not one d----d bittee.”
The Club agreed that Carlin had pretty well settled a vexed question, that conditions which would make both the bee and the Chinaman idlers, would be apt to very soon cause the Caucasian to lie in the shade.
”And yet,” mused Brewster, ”there are mighty works going on everywhere.
This Nation to-day makes a showing such as this world never saw before.
From sea to sea, for three thousand miles, the chariot wheels of toil are rolling and roaring as they never did in any other land. The energy that is exhausted daily amounts to more than all the world's working forces did a hundred years ago. The thing to grieve about is not that there is not enough work being performed, but that in this intensely practical, and material age, the gentler graces in the hearts of men are being neglected. In the race for wealth the higher aspirations are being smothered. If from the 'tongue-less past' there could be awakened the silent voices, the cry which would be heard over all others would be: 'I had some golden thoughts; I meant to have given them expression, but the swiftly moving years with their cares were too much for me, and I died and made no sign.'
”If there is such a thing as a ghost of memory, all the aisles of the past are full of wailing voices, wailing over facts unspoken, over eloquence that died in pa.s.sionate hearts unuttered, over divine poems that never were set to earthly music. Aside from native indolence, most men are struggling for bread, and when the day's work is completed, brain and hand are too weary for further effort. So the years drift by until the zeal of young ambition loses its electric thrill; until cares multiply; until infirmities of body keep the chords of the soul out of tune, and the night follows, and the long sleep. There were great soldiers before Achilles or Hector, but there were no Homers, or if there were, they were dissipated fellows, or they were absorbed in business, or, under the clear Grecian sky, it was their wont to dream the beautiful days away, and so, no sounds were uttered, of the kind which, booming through s.p.a.ce, strike at last on the immortal heights, and there make echoes which thrill the earth with celestial music ever after. If fortune had not made an actor of Shakespeare, and if his matchless spirit, working in the line of his daily duties, had not felt that all the plays offered were mean and poor, as wanting in dramatic power as they were false to human nature, and so was roused to fill a business need, the chances are a thousand to one that he 'would have died with all his music in him,' and would, to-day, have been as entirely lost in oblivion as are the boors who were his neighbors. Just now there is not much hope for our own country, and probably will not be for another century. Present efforts are all for wealth and power and are almost all earthly. Everything is calculated from a basis of coin.
Before that, brains are cowed, and for it Beauty reserves her sweetest smiles. The men who are pursuing grand ideas with no motive more selfish than to make the ma.s.ses of the world n.o.bler, braver and better, or to give new symphonies to life, are wondrously few. There are splendid triumphs wrought, but they are almost every one material and practical.
”The men who created the science of chemistry dreamed of finding the elixir of life; the modern chemist pursues the study until he invents a patent medicine or a baking powder, and then all his energies are devoted to selling his discovery.
”In its youthful vitality the Nation has performed wonders, and from the ma.s.ses individuals have solved many of nature's mysteries and bridled many elemental forces.