THE EDITOR'S EVENING.

Tantalus and His Opportunities.

ANTALUS is regarded as the supreme type of misery

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by deprivation. His punishment seems to have been cruelly invented so as to add diabolical refinement to the usual pangs of immitigable hunger and thirst. To stand chin-deep in an everlasting lake and yet suffer for drink is sufficiently horrible. To be hungry unto death with the fruit-laden bough dangling before the face is the acme of physical anguish. Ordinarily it suffices to cast a criminal into a desert and let him perish without the mockery of succor at hand. The distant mirage of shining lake and datepalm may be borne in the vision of a dying wretch; but Tantalus could splash his very hands in the water; he could smell the fruit, and yet must die (or not die) of exhaustion.

The tale of Tantalus betrays the cold and glittering ingenuity of the Greek mind. Homer did not make the story; he found it. What I remark is the injustice of the punishment to which Tantalus was subjected; and what I suggest is that, after all, he may have had a good time while engaged in the otherwise unpleasant work of starving to death without dying.

The old myths do not agree as to what Tantalus had done. Some say one thing, some another. The most probable story of his misdeeds is that he gave away certain secrets of the State Department on Olympus. Zeus and his cabinet had been devising plans to better the civil service of heaven, and like all such matters of diplomacy the plans were secret. is the peculiarity of statecraft that its profundity is guaranteed with lock and key.

It

If there be any one thing which the gods have never been able to bear it is the revelation of their secrets. Earth-government is generally of this kind also. But the deities are peculiarly jealous. The old myth furnishes some conspicuous examples. There, for instance, was Prometheus, whose only fault was that he went boguing around Olympus fool

ing with fire and lightning-like Thomas A. Edison. His laboratory experiments cost him dearly; and by all accounts his torn liver has not healed to this day. Sisyphus, son of Eolus and founder of Corinth, though he was a man of enterprise and genius, suffered in like manner. He, too, found out some of the plans of the deities and gave away his knowledge. He thus incurred the hostility of the scientific syndicate on Olympus, and as soon as the gods had him he must roll the eternal stone.

Tantalus, after the betrayal of the Olympian secrets, was thrown down, just as Benjamin Franklin would have been thrown down under like conditions; for Franklin also snatched the fire from heaven. The French Academy produced a fine hexameter in which this truth is declared:

Fulmen nubibus eripuit sceptrumque tyrannis.

That is, "He wrested the lightning from the skies and the sceptre from tyrants"-a very true thing to say of Poor Richard.

But I was going to aver that Tantalus, notwithstanding the hopelessness of his situation, may very well have had a good time ad interim. In the first place we may suppose that the water was neither too hot nor too cold. The Tartarean lake was no doubt in a temperate zone. Therefore Tantalus might enjoy his long bath. Whoever has stood tiptoe in the sea knows how pleasing it is to be borne along with the upward pressure of the grateful water. Neither had Tantalus any need of insurance against drowning. That were impossible without his first getting one long draught. The freedom from dust in such a situation is not to be overlooked by anyone living on Huntington Avenue. Tantalus might well reflect all day long that whatever his hunger and thirst he could neither absolutely starve nor finally famish.

It is an excellent thing to be assured against starvation absolute. To possess such a guaranty would produce a pleasing confidence in the mind, with entire absence of care and anxiety. A man in such a position would have little concern about the prices of products and the rate of wages. Perhaps, after a season of starvation, the sense of it would

become so mild that, like the forty-day Tanner, Tantalus would have little anguish from his condition. He might even contemplate pineapple with equanimity.

It must be remembered that starvation comes down to the horizontal life-line like the descending coördinate curve of a hyperbola; it approaches the life-line forever, but never reaches it. That is, the starvation line does not reach the life-line until it becomes parallel with it; and it cannot reach it when it does become parallel with it! Therefore actual starvation is infinitely gradual. Tantalus may have found it so. He would get half-way to starvation on the first day; one-half of the remaining distance the next day; one-half of the remaining distance the third day, and so on ad infinitum. The pain would diminish in like ratio. By and by Tantalus would come to the parallel of indifference, and would hardly go out of the water to eat if he could, or stoop to drink if he might.

Meanwhile he would have abundant time for reflection. Reflection is the basis of philosophy, and philosophy is the only proper mode of life. I cannot see, therefore, how any one can live philosophically except in such a situation as Tantalus occupied! The Owl, in his conversation with the Cat one day, insisted that to be a philosopher one must have time, and be otherwise unoccupied. This truism seems to have been fully verified in the case of Tantalus. Observe that all the other wasting and harrowing conditions of life must, in his situation, be unknown. He had nothing to do except to think; and to think is to enjoy one's self. There was no noise; there were no callers. Tantalus had no rent to pay and no interest; his account was never overdrawn ; he was never in arrears with his correspondence. He never had to explain anything to anybody.

It was a clean, cool place where Tantalus lived. He had more solitude than Thoreau. What use he would make of his solitude would, of course, depend on himself. But he was clearly a man of genius and of philanthropic disposition. For our part, we do not see that he did not have quite liberal opportunities of pleasure and improvement. Tantalus could study the habits of waterfowl for days together. He

could rehearse an intended oration without danger that some intruder would overhear him and break his period. He could have his humor all to himself. He could enjoy his own jokes. He could avoid absolutely the criticism of his friends. Tantalus was never assessed in his life. No street Arab ever shook a nasty newspaper under his nose with an outcry of the latest scandal.

On the whole it would appear that the scheme of the jealous gods to wreak vengeance on Tantalus was wofully abortive. He may have been the most serene and happy philosopher of his age.

The Man in Bronze.

I went over last night into Commonwealth Avenue to commune with the man in bronze. There, in the broad central path, midway between Dartmouth and Exeter, he sits in the dusk on his block of gray granite, looking to the east. The sun will rise there to-morrow.

To the man in bronze the seasons of earth are now all as one; the years steal on and over; time beats with rhythmic touch of invisible fingers on the historic shingle of the seas. But William Lloyd Garrison heeds not the flow of the ages or the tapping of Saturn's fingers on the window-sill. He belongs to the spheres where there is a great light by day, and where there is music preceding the silence in the night. Our puny goings in this poor round of sense do not disturb him.

There, in the Avenue of the Commonwealth, in his old, square chair with the big book beneath, and with bare forehead under the azure, sits the Liberator of men. The electrical lights, not far away, flash through the green leaves of the maples; the great silent houses on either hand stand in rows, the abodes of luxury, the dumb walls of civilization. Many a star glances down in admiration at the uncovered head of the man in bronze.

What did he do? He went to prison; and for what? For saying that the slave trade was "domestic piracy!" He was fined a thousand dollars, and lay in jail for forty-nine days because he threatened to cover the abettors of slavery "with

thick infamy." He was a poor journeyman printer in this city of the Puritans. He slept in a dirty little printingoffice, because he had no other place to sleep. He was threatened with assassination, and was "ferreted out in his obscure hole" by the posse of the mayor of Boston, bearing the honored name of Otis. A reward of five thousand dollars was offered by Georgia for the seizure of his person. By the leaders of the great political parties of the United States he was held in such odium as Eugene V. Debs has never known. At a public meeting in Boston where he was to speak in the interest of humanity he was seized by a furious mob, let down from a window with the death-rope around him, denuded of his clothing, and dragged through the streets. From the hall of Justice he escaped into jail. Only with the help of a few friends did the "disturber of the peace" get away with his life into the country.

Nevertheless with his pen and voice this man in bronze strove to do what old John Brown attempted in his blind way to do with the sword. For weary years the Liberator made his way through contumely and reproach until the storm broke, and the elements were purified, and the shackles fell, and light began to dawn after the darkness.

The

majestic against the

But the protagonist of liberty was never honored. honors of Massachusetts and of the Union went to the timeservers and manikins who rose in legions on the crest of the revolutionary breakers and shouted to the shore, "Here we are!" The old giant did not shout. He did not rise on the crest. He simply stood in his place; but he began to be seen of the whole world as a Titan. Gradually his heroic stature was discovered standing tall and background of nations. Philanthropy and patriotism, unable to weave for him a crown of laurel, wove instead a garland of ivy and oak leaves, and crowned him as the first American of his age. Now he reposes in bronze in the centre of the most beautiful avenue in the New World; and his look is that of one who has seen the satisfaction of his soul. The bronze will last; the granite will endure; but neither the bronze nor the granite will abide to that day when the fame of William Lloyd Garrison shall lose its lustre on the high