I CAMP-FIRES AND GUIDE'POSTS u»). HENRY VAN DYKE <, CAMP-FIRES AND GUIDE-POSTS A BOOK OF ESSAYS AND EXCURSIONS BY HENRY VAN DYKE When Paradise was lost I thought everything was ended. But it was only begun." —Solomon Singlewitz: The Life of Adam. TORONTO THE COPP CLARK CO., Limited 1921 Copyright, 19iS0. 1991, by Charles Seribner's Sorn Pubtished Ayril. 19^1 BUT 112 GR4841 13. 9.S7 THE SCRIBNER PRESS PRINTKO IN U. •. A. T^vesevieh to of % Miss M.S.Cassels. TO MY DAUGHTER AND CHUM PAULA VAN DYKE CHAPIN OTHERWISE CALLED LITTLE FUJI-SAN 1^ I CAMP-FIRES AND GUIDE-POSTS Frimt a photograph by Malhilde Weil. The bird-bath in the garden. — — PREFACE Some of the chapters in this book were written as a series of monthly papers in Scribner's Maga- zine in the years 1920-21. I have ventured to add a few things,—interludes, you may call them, which may be taken as talks by the camp-fire. At the end I have included four little chapters of re- membrance, memoricB posita,—tributes to four be- loved fellow-travellers. Henry van Dyke. AvALON, February 22, 1921. CONTENTS PAOB I. Camp-Fires and Guide-Posts 3 II. A Certain Insularity of Islanders 19 III. A Basket of Chips 37 IV. Self, Neighbor, and Company 41 V. Sympathetic Antipathies 59 VI. Publicomania 77 VII. Moving Day 83 VIII. Firelight Views 100 IX. Fishing in Strange Waters 120 X. The Pathless Profession 142 XI. A Mid-Pacific Pageant 152 XII. Japonica 174 XIII. Interludes on the Koto 198 XIV. Suicidal Tendencies in Democracy 203 XV. A Bundle of Letters 228 XVI. Christmas Greens 233 XVII. On Saying Good-Bye 251 IX : CONTENTS FELLOW- TRA VELLERS PAGE XVni. An Old-Style American 271 XIX. Interpreter's House 290 XX. The Healing Gift 300 XXI. A Traveller from Altruria 310 ILLUSTRATIONS The bird-bath in the garden Frontispiece Facing page The round stone tower 20 Is not moving day marked in all our calen- dars? 96 In andirons I would admit a little fancy 106 The ancient, apostolic, consolatory art of angling 140 A house with broad lanai and long pergola 160 The temple-garden where the iris blooms around the pond 188 Camp-fires beneath the trees 262 CAMP-FIRES AND GUIDE- POSTS CAMP-FIRES AND GUIDE-POSTS IHE title of these rambling essays is taken from two things that are pleasant and useful on the common ways of life. Let me confess at the outset that by camp-fires and guide-posts I intend more than the literal mean- ing of the words. I use them for their significance. The camp-fire is the conservative symbol. It invites to rest and fellowship and friendly council, not unmixed with that good cheer which is suggested when we call a conference of wits a "symposium." There is no denying the fact that man's best dis- course has always been at a common meal, whether spread on the green grass or on a mahogany table. Of the elders of Israel in the Exodus, it is recorded that "they saw God and did eat and drink." This is a gentle hint that however soulful a man's soul may be, in his present mixed estate the body had its claims, which it is both lawful and necessary to satisfy, in order that the spiritual part may not be hampered and disordered. Hunger, thirst, and 3 — CAMP-FIRES 1 indigestion are unfavorable alike to clear thought and calm devotion. The guide-post is the progressive sign. It calls us to continue our journey, and gives information in regard to direction and distance, which (if cor- rect) has considerable value to the traveller. Every social theory, every moral maxim, every appeal of preacher or pohtical orator, every bit of propaganda printed or spoken, yes, even every advertisement in the newspapers or on the bill- boards, whether false or true, is of the nature of a guide-post. Every place where men rest and repose with warmth to cheer them—^the hollow in the woods where pilgrims or tramps gather about the blazing sticks, the snug cottage where the kettle simmers on the hearth, the royal castle where an ancient coat-of-arms is carved on the mantelpiece, the vast palatial hotel where sovereign democracy flaunts its new-found wealth and commercial travellers bask in the heat of concealed steam-radiators every one of these is nothing more nor less than a camp-fire. No human progress is unbroken and continuous. No human resting-place is permanent. Where are 4 AND GUIDE-POSTS Pharaoh's Palace, and Solomon's Temple, and the House of Caesar, and Cicero's Tusculum, and Horace's Sabine farm? I remember what General WilUam Tecumseh Sherman—fine old campaigner—said to me when he first came to New York to live in his own house. "I've made a new camp. Plenty of wood and water. Come over." We might get more comfort out of this sane and wholesome philosophy of life, if it were not for the violent extremists of the Right and the Left, who revile and buffet us alternately when we try to push ahead and when we stop to think. I have good friends on both sides, but at times they treat me vilely as an enemy. The trouble with the Radicals is that they are always urging us to travel somewhither, anywhither, ignoring the past, condemning the present, and hurling ourselves blindfold into the future. The trouble with the Conservatives is that they are always lulhng us to stay where we are, to be content with our present comforts, and to look with optimistic eyes on the bright side of our neigh- bors' discomforts. Neither pessimism nor optimism pleases me. I 5 CAMP-FIRES am a meliorist,—to use the word which Doctor John Brown of Eidinburgh coined in 1858. Therefore I refuse to engage in the metaphysical triangular conflict between the past, the present, and the future. It means nothing to me. Yester- day is a memory. To-morrow is a hope. To-day is the fact. But tell me, would the fact be what it is without the memory and the hope? Are not all three equally real.'* I grant you there is a distincticm between the actual and the imaginary. But it is not a difference in essence. It is only a difference in origin and form. What we call the actual has its origin in a fact outside of us. What we call the imaginary has its origin in a fact within us. A burned finger and a burning indignation are equally real. Memory is simply imagination looking back: hope, looking forward. The imaginary is not non-existent. It exists in the mind—the very same place where every per- ception through the senses has its present and only being. When I was a boy I cut my hand with my first pocket-knife. But the physical scar of that actual AND GUIDE-POSTS accident, now almost invisible, is less vivid than the memory of the failure of my ambition to be- come a great orator. In that collegiate contest, fifty years ago, the well-prepared phrase fled from my paralyzed brain, " vox faiicibus kaeait," and I sat down feeling that life was ended. But it was not. You remember, as of yesterday, those pleasant afternoon walks on Fifth Avenue from Madison Square to Central Park, in the last quarter of the Nineteenth Century, when the air was clean and bright, the sky-line low, and on every block you had greetings from good friends. To-day, if duty compels, you plunge through that same mile-and- a-half , shut in by man-made cliffs of varying degrees of ugliness, stifled by fumes of gasolene from the conglomerate motor-cars, and worming your way through malodorous or highly perfumed throngs of "Parthians, Medes, and Elamites, dwellers in Meso- potamia and Judaea, Cappadocia, Pontus, and Asia, Phrygia, Pamphylia, Egypt, and strangers of Rome, Jews and proselytes, Cretes and Ara- bians." Few indeed are the native Americans you 7 — CAMP-FIRES meet, struggling like yourself among the conflicting tides, "ran nantes in gurgiie vasto" Yet, even on such a walk, if you think serenely, you have a hope of something better in the long to-morrow: a modern city in which the curse of crowding shall be mitigated by wiser dispositions of traflSc, transportation, and housing: a city in which there shall be room for homes and play- grounds, as well as for temples and court-houses: a city in which the rights of property shall be safe- guarded chiefly as essential to the supreme right of life. The memory, the fact, the hope, are equally real. But tell me, brother, can we really make sure of our guide-posts unless we take counsel together beside our camp-fires? The secret of perpetual motion has not yet been discovered. Human nature demands intervals of rest and relaxation as the unexempt condition of our mortal frailty. Here is where I find my stance for a drive. Go forward we must, unless we are willing to slip back- ward. But we cannot know that we are going for- 8 AND GUIDE-POSTS ward, without stopping to talk over our common concerns beside the camp-fire. Good humor is one of the prerequisites of sound judgment. I have seen needful work done by men in excite- ment and an ill temper, but never truth discovered nor creative things accomplished. My old gar- dener used to swear horribly when he was rooting out poison-ivy.