Wednesday, September 19, 2007

Popular science, like that of Mr



Popular science, like that of Mr. Blatchford, is in this matter as mild
as old wives" tales. Mr. Blatchford, with colossal simplicity,
explained to millions of clerks and workingmen that the mother is like
a bottle of blue beads and the father is like a bottle of yellow beads;
and so the child is like a bottle of mixed blue beads and yellow.
He might just as well have said that if the father has two legs
and the mother has two legs, the child will have four legs.
Obviously it is not a question of simple addition or simple
division of a number of hard detached 'qualities,' like beads.
It is an organic crisis and transformation of the most mysterious sort;
so that even if the result is unavoidable, it will still be unexpected.
It is not like blue beads mixed with yellow beads; it is like blue
mixed with yellow; the result of which is green, a totally novel
and unique experience, a new emotion. A man might live in a complete
cosmos of blue and yellow, like the 'Edinburgh Review'; a man might
never have seen anything but a golden cornfield and a sapphire sky;
and still he might never have had so wild a fancy as green.
If you paid a sovereign for a bluebell; if you spilled the mustard
on the blue-books; if you married a canary to a blue baboon;
there is nothing in any of these wild weddings that contains even
a hint of green. Green is not a mental combination, like addition;
it is a physical result like birth. So, apart from the fact that
nobody ever really understands parents or children either, yet even
if we could understand the parents, we could not make any conjecture
about the children. Each time the force works in a different way;
each time the constituent colors combine into a different spectacle.
A girl may actually inherit her ugliness from her mother"s good looks.
A boy may actually get his weakness from his father"s strength.
Even if we admit it is really a fate, for us it must remain a fairy tale.
Considered in regard to its causes, the Calvinists and materialists
may be right or wrong; we leave them their dreary debate.
But considered in regard to its results there is no doubt about it.
The thing is always a new color; a strange star. Every birth is as
lonely as a miracle. Every child is as uninvited as a monstrosity.




On the other hand, one is filled with admiration for the many immigrant



girls who in the midst of insuperable difficulties resist all
temptations
On the other hand, one is filled with admiration for the many immigrant
girls who in the midst of insuperable difficulties resist all
temptations. Such admiration was certainly due Olga, a tall, handsome
girl, a little passive and slow, yet with that touch of dignity which a
continued mood of introspection so often lends to the young. Olga had
been in Chicago for a year living with an aunt who, when she returned to
Sweden, placed her niece in a boarding-house which she knew to be
thoroughly respectable. But a friendless girl of such striking beauty
could not escape the machinations of those who profit by the sale of
girls. Almost immediately Olga found herself beset by two young men who
continually forced themselves upon her attention, although she refused
all their invitations to shows and dances. In six months the frightened
girl had changed her boarding-place four times, hoping that the men
would not be able to follow her. She was also obliged constantly to look
for a cheaper place, because the dull season in the cloak-making trade
came early that year. In the fifth boarding-house she finally found
herself so hopelessly in arrears that the landlady, tired of waiting for
the 'new cloak making to begin,' at length fulfilled a long-promised
threat, and one summer evening at nine o"clock literally put Olga into
the street, retaining her trunk in payment of the debt. The girl walked
the street for hours, until she fancied that she saw one of her
persecutors in the distance, when she hastily took refuge in a sheltered
doorway, crouching in terror. Although no one approached her, she sat
there late into the night, apparently too apathetic to move. With the
curious inconsequence of moody youth, she was not aroused to action by
the situation in which she found herself. The incident epitomized to her
the everlasting riddle of the universe to which she could see no
solution and she drearily decided to throw herself into the lake. As she
left the doorway at daybreak for this pitiful purpose, she attracted the
attention of a passing policeman. In response to his questions, kindly
at first but becoming exasperated as he was convinced that she was
either 'touched in her wits' or 'guying' him, he obtained a confused
story of the persecutions of the two young men, and in sheer
bewilderment he finally took her to the station on the very charge
against the thought of which she had so long contended.




We may err in our ideas of the true relations of the prison to the



prisoner
We may err in our ideas of the true relations of the prison to the
prisoner. We call a prison good or bad when we see its walls, cells,
workshops, its means of security, and points of observation. These are
very well. They are something; but they are not all. We might so judge a
hospital for the sick; and we did once so judge an asylum for the
insane.