The Doctor [64]
ladies of Canada. And so enthusiastically did he dwell upon this theme in his next letter, that Miss Jessie McLean set herself devoutly to pray, either that Finlayson might soon be placed, or that the professors might cease giving parties.
The brand of heresy almost invariably works ill to him who bears it. For if he be young and shallow enough to enjoy the distinction, it will only increase his vanity and render his return to sure and safe paths more difficult. But if his doubts are to him a grief and a horror of darkness, the brand will burn in and drive him far from his fellows, and change the kindly spirit in him to bitterness unless, perchance, he light upon a friend who gives him love and trust unstinted and links him to wholesome living. After all, in matters of faith every man must blaze his own path through the woods and make his own clearing in which to dwell. And he may well thank God if his path lead him some whither where there is space enough to work his day's work and light enough to live by.
With Dick it was mostly dark, for it was not given him to have a friend who could understand. But he was not allowed to feel himself to be quite abandoned, for in the darkest of his hours there stood at his side Margaret Robertson, whose strong, cheery good sense and whose loyalty to right-doing helped him and strengthened him and so made it possible to wait till the better day dawned.
XIV
WHOSOEVER LOOKETH UPON A WOMAN
The Journalistic World has its own diversity of mountain and plain, and its own variety of inhabitants. There are its mountain ranges and upland regions of clear skies and pure airs, where are wide outlooks and horizons whose dim lines fade beyond the reach of clear vision. Amid these mountain ranges and upon these uplands dwell men among the immortals to whom has come the "vision splendid" and whose are the voices that in the crisis of a man or of a nation give forth the call that turns the face upward to life eternal and divine. To these men such words as Duty, Honour, Patriotism, Purity, stand for things of intrinsic value worth a man's while to seek and, having found, to die for.
Level plains there are, too, where harvests are sown and reaped. But there these same words often become mere implements of cultivation, tools for mechanical industries or currency for the conduct of business. Here dwell the practical men of affairs, as they love to call themselves, for whom has faded the vision in the glare of opportunism.
And far down by the water-fronts are the slum wastes where the sewers of politics and business and social life pour forth their fetid filth. Here the journals of yellow shade grub and fatten. In this ooze and slime puddle the hordes of sewer rats, scavengers of the world's garbage, from whose collected stores the editor selects his daily mess for the delectation of the great unwashed, whether of the classes or of the masses, and from which he grabs in large handfuls that viscous mud that sticks and stings where it sticks.
The Daily Telegraph was born yellow, a frank yellow of the barbaric type that despises neutral tints. By the Daily Telegraph things were called by their uneuphemistic names. A spade was a spade, and mud was mud, and nothing was sacred from its sewer rats. The highest paid official on its staff was a criminal lawyer celebrated in the libel courts. Everybody cursed it and everybody read it. After a season, having thus firmly established itself in the enmities of the community, and having become, in consequence, financially secure, it began to aspire toward the uplands, where the harvests were as rich and at the same time less perilous as well as less offensive in the reaping. It began to study euphemism. A spade became an agricultural implement and mud alluvial deposit. Having become by long experience a specialist in the business of moral scavenging, it proceeded to devote itself with most vehement energy to the business of moral reform. All indecencies that could not successfully cover themselves with such gilding as good
The brand of heresy almost invariably works ill to him who bears it. For if he be young and shallow enough to enjoy the distinction, it will only increase his vanity and render his return to sure and safe paths more difficult. But if his doubts are to him a grief and a horror of darkness, the brand will burn in and drive him far from his fellows, and change the kindly spirit in him to bitterness unless, perchance, he light upon a friend who gives him love and trust unstinted and links him to wholesome living. After all, in matters of faith every man must blaze his own path through the woods and make his own clearing in which to dwell. And he may well thank God if his path lead him some whither where there is space enough to work his day's work and light enough to live by.
With Dick it was mostly dark, for it was not given him to have a friend who could understand. But he was not allowed to feel himself to be quite abandoned, for in the darkest of his hours there stood at his side Margaret Robertson, whose strong, cheery good sense and whose loyalty to right-doing helped him and strengthened him and so made it possible to wait till the better day dawned.
XIV
WHOSOEVER LOOKETH UPON A WOMAN
The Journalistic World has its own diversity of mountain and plain, and its own variety of inhabitants. There are its mountain ranges and upland regions of clear skies and pure airs, where are wide outlooks and horizons whose dim lines fade beyond the reach of clear vision. Amid these mountain ranges and upon these uplands dwell men among the immortals to whom has come the "vision splendid" and whose are the voices that in the crisis of a man or of a nation give forth the call that turns the face upward to life eternal and divine. To these men such words as Duty, Honour, Patriotism, Purity, stand for things of intrinsic value worth a man's while to seek and, having found, to die for.
Level plains there are, too, where harvests are sown and reaped. But there these same words often become mere implements of cultivation, tools for mechanical industries or currency for the conduct of business. Here dwell the practical men of affairs, as they love to call themselves, for whom has faded the vision in the glare of opportunism.
And far down by the water-fronts are the slum wastes where the sewers of politics and business and social life pour forth their fetid filth. Here the journals of yellow shade grub and fatten. In this ooze and slime puddle the hordes of sewer rats, scavengers of the world's garbage, from whose collected stores the editor selects his daily mess for the delectation of the great unwashed, whether of the classes or of the masses, and from which he grabs in large handfuls that viscous mud that sticks and stings where it sticks.
The Daily Telegraph was born yellow, a frank yellow of the barbaric type that despises neutral tints. By the Daily Telegraph things were called by their uneuphemistic names. A spade was a spade, and mud was mud, and nothing was sacred from its sewer rats. The highest paid official on its staff was a criminal lawyer celebrated in the libel courts. Everybody cursed it and everybody read it. After a season, having thus firmly established itself in the enmities of the community, and having become, in consequence, financially secure, it began to aspire toward the uplands, where the harvests were as rich and at the same time less perilous as well as less offensive in the reaping. It began to study euphemism. A spade became an agricultural implement and mud alluvial deposit. Having become by long experience a specialist in the business of moral scavenging, it proceeded to devote itself with most vehement energy to the business of moral reform. All indecencies that could not successfully cover themselves with such gilding as good