THE HORSELEECH HATH TWO

DAUGHTERS

BY ELLEN BURNS SHERMAN

In every age there are certain words and phrases that break away from the staid, rhetorical phalanx of their fellows, and get into the "plane of perpetual apparition", astronomically speaking. They peer out at us from every page of magazines and newspapers and fall from every lip and pen, until they die, like a ragtime air, of their own popularity. "Pragmatist", "pacifist", "proposition", "camouflage", "propaganda", "scrap", gesture",-figuratively used,-"sphere of influence", "open door", and "drive" are only a few of many possible illustrations in point.

Probably most of us give a sigh of relief when these overworked words are finally whistled down the wind, though we may have a wondering fear lest we shall eventually kill off half our vocabulary by an intemperate use of words once in good and regular standing. But before such words are cast into the discard, they should be carefully interviewed by historians and philosophers; for they are highly significant key-words of the era that wooed them to their decline. With his finger on any of these key-words, a good diagnostician can take the pulse and temperature of the age that used them. But any extended research into this fascinating study of verbal pathology I shall leave to the historian and philosopher, while I confine my attention to the study of sundry activities which have culminated in what is known as a "drive".

66

In the spacious days of our ancestors, the word 'drive" might have pleasant associations. Even were it a drive of a hammer, and not in a sleigh, or surrey, the word carried no terrorizing suggestions. But the pastoral drive of our forebears is the scorch of "the automobility", and the hammer's drive has fitly given its figurative significance to the more or less philanthropic form of suction from which none of us escapes.

So much for the recent literal derivation of the word. Its spirit, however, has a much older ancestry; for a drive is one of the lineal descendants of one of the horseleech's daughters, mentioned in that incomparable Book that seems to hold the roots of all modern experience. In the hard-won wisdom of Proverbs, we read that the horseleech hath two daughters, crying, “give, give". Many centuries have passed since Solomon gave a bad eminence to these two daughters, by embedding in the amber of his metaphor their dominant characteristic, and the world has been too busy to bring the genealogical record of the horseleech family up to date. We have, nevertheless, overwhelming evidence that those daughters belonged to a most prolific race, and one whose individual representatives have remained painfully true to type, as Solomon writ it down. One would hardly dare conjecture how many millions of the progeny of those daughters are now extant in every country of the world. Nor could one measure, save with an elastic trope of fancy, the accretions of strength and persistence which the centuries have added to the salient habit of the Leech family.

Suffice it to say, that there is hardly a city or hamlet in the world where the Leech tribe has not many representatives, easily identified by the ethical birthmark limned by Solomon. Their ancient cry is still the vis a tergo of church drives, college and alumnæ drives, club and "community chest" drives. Each succeeding year they seek out many inventions, to bait with novelty and curiosity the hooks with which they catch their gudgeons. Nor shall you escape the centipedic tentacles of the drive by retiring to any remote fastness of the earth; for even there the long postal arm of Uncle Samuel will reach out and grasp your buttonhole. You will be asked to order (from samples enclosed) a sweater, a raincoat, or a particular brand of soap, to the end that a certain percentage from the sale shall help some church or college drive or some of the many scores of relief societies that deserve the promptest attention that can be given to them.

In addition to the legitimate and non-legitimate public drives that are always with us, there are thousands of private drives, initiated by students, who entreat you to help them over the

corduroy road of an excelsior life, by subscribing to some periodical, or by investing in a new brand of face-cream, guaranteed to erase from your face all the thumb-marks of Time. The distinguishing feature of this form of drive is its unabashed assumption that, though the springs of pure generosity may have been drained dry by worthy or unworthy competitors of the driver, one may yet extract a few drops of very much alloyed benevolence, which bears the same resemblance to pure altruism that the second and third grades of jelly (made by forcibly squeezing the fruit-pulp) bear to the first clear self-distillings, made without any external pressure.

All these amiable distractions are interesting, because every human being who offers them, and his hopes and dreams, are interesting. But people with an excelsior programme of their own are finally forced to choose between carrying out that programme or a little of the ninety and nine other programmes outlined by colleges, clubs, churches and private drivers. A very little elementary arithmetic makes it clear that if twenty-four hours, or their nominal cash equivalent, be divided by ninety-nine, the quotient will hardly be sufficient to live on.

Naturally, the multifarious demands of the Leech family are no great tax upon those who have nothing to do and plenty of time and money with which to do it. But it is far otherwise with those who "scorn delights and live laborious days" for larger ends than they may care to unfold to any of the Leech clan. Even in Emerson's day, we find the trail of the Leech family in many an entry in his Journals and the Essays: "There are natural ways of arriving at the same ends at which these (the Leeches) aim, but do not arrive. Why should all virtue work in one and the same way? Why should all give dollars? It is very inconvenient for us country folk, and we do not think any good will come of it. We have not dollars. Merchants have. Let them give them. will sing. Women will sew. children will bring flowers.

Farmers will give corn. Poets Laborers will lend a hand. The

It sometimes happens that one who is physically or financially handicapped may have to make a choice between carrying out one's own programme, which may have ends that justify

it, or letting one's self be paternalized by organizations which have a dozen programmes that would defeat one's own. The "hustling" church of today, that advertises its wares, and has a great many different kinds of wares, comes near being an entangling alliance and may well give one pause, if one allows it too large a "sphere of influence". If one attends church, Sunday School, prayer meeting, church lectures, church movies, church receptions, church bazars, church dramatics, church suppers, church missionary meetings, Ladies' Aid, and a more or less similar programme of one or more clubs, one can hardly keep that single eye, commended by Scripture, in carrying out any altruistic plans of one's own.

If one has no plans of one's own, and the problem of earning one's living does not enter into the case, one may be willing to be cogged into the machinery of the various functions already mentioned, just as millions of young men were made cogs in the machinery of military Germany. But if it becomes necessary to choose between running by one's own schedule and being run by the schedules of others, one must cheerfully accept the probable criticism of those who forget that the natural uses of human beings are as different as the uses of the trees of the forest; there are some that are good for building ships, some for barrels and hoops, and others for capable butter-tubs. Emerson and Franklin found that they could use their own particular kind of mental and moral timber to better advantage outside the church than in it; and the fact that these two men gave more to America, and the world, than perhaps any other two Americans, amply justified their decision. Yet there were undoubtedly many three dimensions minds who passed their three dimensions censure on the men of four dimensions, quite blind to the fact that while a lamp may properly be placed upon a table, the place for a star is in the sky, where its light may shine for all.

Because Emerson and Franklin were fearless, they dared to obey the voice of God rather than that of men, and time and their works have justified their course. We need a renaissance of this brand of courage, not to incite withdrawals from the church, but as a check on the sometimes too presumptuous demands of the class described by Emerson: "those who know

your business better than you do." Churches and clubs have a somewhat corporate conscience. When they wish a thing done they seldom consider any differences in the physical or financial condition of those whose time and talent they tax. Many a club paper has been requisitioned from those physically and financially depleted to furnish entertainment for robust leisureful people, whose days are chiefly spent in the quest for self-amusement. The club paper may be a legitimate and profitable method of dispensing entertaining wisdom. But it may also be one of the most iniquitous of the minor taxes levied by the Leech contingent, and a promoter of selfish sloth in those who will not plant, weed and hoe their own intellectual gardens, but prefer to eat the literary "garden sass" of their neighbours. This mental sponging is especially epidemic in dear old Boston, where lecturers, good, bad and indifferent, are thick as buttercups in a June meadow. As a consequence, there are many among the idle rich and mentally indigent (though the two conditions have no necessary alliance) who never allow themselves the labour of a self-originated idea, but indulge in one orgy of lectures after another, until their thoughts are little more than a saturated solution of other people's ideas.

Akin to the over-indulgence of the lecture-going habit, is the mania for belonging to half a dozen or more clubs, which "spread one out so thin" that there is danger of a futile mental and moral evaporation. Yet is this no brief against a good church or a good club, whose programmes are not so elaborate that they usurp the time when one might win wisdom from birds and brooks, or the still tuition of the stars. One may have engagements with the woods, clouds or mountain peaks that should supersede all others. "The sky is the daily bread of the eyes,' wrote Emerson, who did not overlook the fact that the outer eyes are only transmitters to the inward eyes, which are "in a wise man's head", according to Ecclesiastes. We may never know how much of that iridescent shining, which transfigures Emerson's best work, was the indirect lighting of the skies; or how much the stellar illumination of essays like The Over-Soul and Spiritual Laws was due to his habit of going out and looking at the stars before retiring.