One Way of Putting It electronic edition Cather, Willa, 1873-1947 Jewell, Andrew, 1975- Ronning, Kari, 1949- Editorial Assistant Jennifer Moore Revised edition, 2010 Transformed TEI P4 encoding to TEI P5 encoding Andrew Jewell cat.j00017 The Willa Cather Archive
http://cather.unl.edu
University of Nebraska–Lincoln Center for Digital Research in the Humanities
319 Love Library University of Nebraska–Lincoln Lincoln, NE 68588-4100 http://cdrh.unl.edu
2010

The Willa Cather Archive is freely distributed by the Center for Digital Research in the Humanities at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License

 One Way of Putting It Nebraska State Journal Willa Cather 13 December 17, 1893

Text created for online distribution on the Willa Cather Archive (http://cather.unl.edu).

End-of-line hyphenation silently removed where appropriate.

Typographical or spelling irregularities in the orginal have been noted using markup.

 Library of Congress Subject Headings column Cynicism in Literature Courtship in Literature Remorse Forgiveness Nobility of character Faith and reason Conversion of markup from TEI P4 to TEI P5 Third revision after Jennifer Moore's proofreading Second revision after Kari Ronning's proofreading Second revision after Kari Ronning's proofing Checked; revised Encoding Conversion of Word files to HTML then XML Initial Creation One Way of Putting It.

THE young man was standing before the glass putting the finishing touches on his toilet. When he cast the last earnest look at the glass, he opened the door and called in the family to admire him. They gazed at him as gravely and seriously as they would examine a painting. All their remarks and suggestions were made with the utmost gravity. When they had finished their adoration he pinned in his button-hole the red carnation he habitually wore and went forth. He was a little legal gentleman who read a great deal of Balzac and took himself as seriously as most of Balzac's characters do. His life had been a series of novellettes, he had adored and spoken his adoration to almost every young lady in his particular set, and after each disappointment he had spent some months in living the life proper for a heart-broken man. He had a small trunk full of old letters and locks of hair. Occasionally, when he thought it was about time for him to be blue, he looked them all over, and he never seemed to see that there was anything laughable in there being so many kinds of hand writing and so many shades of hair. His family took it all just as seriously as he did, and they spent most of their leisure in soothing his heartaches. The only persons who did not take it seriously were the young ladies of his set, who found it quite impossible to do so.

A GREAT deal of useless sympathy, sympathy and useless abuse, has been wasted upon newspaper cynics. In the first place it is useless to waste that on them, for a man who will be a cynic just so many times a week and for so much a column is as tough as a rhinoceros to start with. Sympathy is entirely wasted, for as a rule newspaper cynic sare cynics are the happiest, healthiest men alive. They are generally fat, and look about as much like the regulation cynic as Walt Mason does like Byron or Colonel Bixby like Keats . The old time conscious cynic gets pale and thin over it, but the practical newspaper cynic is generally of a very substantial build. Outside of business hours he is one of the jolliest men alive. He keeps his poison carefully corked in his ink bottle and his sting in his pen point. He has reduced cynicism to a fine art, he can make other people feel miserable without feeling at all uncomfortable himself. All the great cynics have been very happy men and have been very fond of Martin Luther's trio. On the other hand, most of the world's sweetest and truest humorists have led exceedingly miserable lives. If a man is a cynic he is so from a business standpoint. He is generally a good liver and thoroughly enjoys the company of the men he laughs at in his work, and when he dies it is generally from too much pastry rather than from a hatred of humanity.

HE WAS a Virginian and a gentleman and for that reason he was on every side and taken in on every hand. He kept a little store down town where he sold very little and was paid for less. Indeed, he had been swindled out of all that he had brought with him from the south, until he had very little left to himself, but his generosity and the wound he had carried in the army of Virginia. His clothes grew very weak and he tried to break himself of the habit of eating. One day a brazen faced woman entered the store and bought a considerable bill of perfumery and cosmetics. While he was wrapping them up she asked him to charge them. He knew perfectly well that she would never pay him a cent and that she had come there to beat him, but to a Virginian a woman is always a woman, and with the grace of a southerner he bowed his gray head and murmured "Certainly, madam," though he had breakfasted but poorly and dinner was one of the uncertainties of the future. The woman went out, thinking what a fool he was. That man had better go back to the south; it does not pay to be a southern gentleman in the hustling northwest.

A FUNERAL train was going toward Wyuka. The hearse was very plain and the driver was not in livery. In the carriage behind the hearse sat a man wearing a tall silk hat. He sat twirling his moustache and looking steadily out of the window. He was her son, that was why he was there. His wife had a nervous headache and could not accompany him. After they had entered the cemetery he hastily drew out a note book and jotted down a few figures, the result of his solemn cogitation. When the hack stopped he got out and stood by the open grave. He thought that it was very cold and that funerals were horrible things and wondered if civilization would never find a way of doing away with them. He thought of the time she had been all in all to him of what she had endured and suffered for him, and then how the greater love had come and gradually the need for her had passed out of his life, and he hated himself that he did not feel more deeply. After it was all over he got back into the carriage telling the driver to drive him to his office.

It is well that the dead sleep soundly, often the pain of living would be nothing to the anguish and disappointment of death. Living we can always make idols for ourselves and worship them, always blind and deceive ourselves, always call neglect thoughtlessness, coldness reserve, but dead we should know even as we are known. Thank God we sleep then.

OVER the drop curtain in the Funke there is a very fair copy of one of the best pictures of Shakespeare that any artist ever painted. It is rather doubtful whether any theatre in the world is quite worthy to hold the picture of the man who consummated literature, but that picture has been almost an inspiration in its way, and as the years passed it came to be beloved by many of us. It has been a comfort, sometimes, to look away for awhile from the things on the stage, which were better left unseen, and to look up at that great face and know that once upon this planet such a man had lived and worked. The picture has been there for years and years, looking down on tragedy, comedy and melodrama alike with that mournful, tender, "father-forgive-them" smile. It was well enough three years ago when the best companies played on the Funke stage, they are all unworthy to come before him, heaven knows! but at least we gave him the best we had. But now, in these days of the Spooners and the Lindseys , it seems as though some one ought to have common decency enough to paint that great face out, and profane his name no more.

UP in the negro church one Christmas the congregation were singing the "Peace on Earth." When the plaintive music stopped an old gray-haired negro in a frock coat and wearing two pairs of glasses arose and began reading the old, old story of the men who were watching their flocks by night and of the babe who was born in the city of David. He became very much excited as he read, and his voice trembled and he unconsciously put the words to measure and chanted them slowly. When he finished he looked up at the ceiling with eager misty eyes as though he could see the light of the heavenly messenger shining in upon him. It is a beautiful story, this of the holiest and purest childhood on earth, beautiful even to those who cannot understand it, as dreams are sweet to men without hope. After all, if we cannot hear the carol and see the heavenly messenger, it is because our ears are deaf and our eyes are blind, not that we turn wilfully away from love or beauty. No one is antagonistic by preference. Almost any of us who doubt would give the little we know or hope to know to go down upon our knees among the lowly and experience a great faith or a great conviction.

A LITTLE girl stood looking at the big dolls in a store window. She was a petite dark child, a little shawl was pinned over her head and she carried a basket on her arm.

"Law me, Riah," she said turning to a wooley headed little chap behind her, "if I jist had one o' dem big dolls wouldn't I be fixed? I hain't like some, always wantin' to be runnin' around, if I jist had a big doll an' some place fer to keep its clo'es, I wouldn't never want to go outside'n de do'."

With a long sigh she turned away and trotted down the street, and something in that wishful glance of hers made one feel like Christmas.

IT IS very fitting that the world should hold its greatest festival because a little child was born, more fitting than most things the world does. In spite of all the things that are that should not be, children continue to be born into the world and to celebrate the birthday of the child who made all childhood sacred. One cannot be wholly a pessimist while this is so. The world has something to be proud of yet. It has perverted all other truth than that of childhood; it has killed all other faith, but the faith of childhood defies it; it has tainted all other love, but the one of the children is still pure enough to give to God. We have begun to realize this in these days. We write great books for children and paint great pictures for them, and great men have given their greatest work to make those first few years of life realize all the happiness of which poets dream. In this age when time means money, civilization unbends business, puts on its best clothes and eats plum pudding and reads story books to the children and pats itself on the back, for after all it can say that all its men are good and all its women noble — till they are ten years old.

IT IS not a very great while till Christmas now. One begins to feel the restlessness and secrecy in the air, and to smell the cedar and see the holly gleaming in the windows. Almost every one I meet has a bundle and is hurrying home to hide it. The toy shops are filled with people buying things for the children they love. It seems to me that I too must be buying and hiding away something for a child I used to love and I wonder what it shall be. It has been a long time since I have seen her, and I do not even know if they keep Christmas in her country, but I must send her something because I am lonely and think of her, and I wish in some way to get near again to the only love I have ever known which was never darkened by pain or misunderstanding. I must get something and hide it away where no one can see. No matter what it is, she will like it, for she is not like other children. They will grow old and forget and cease to love, but her childhood is eternal. Perhaps it will be only a few flowers, and on Christmas eve, when other people are filling the stockings while the children sleep, I will slip out to you, who are asleep too, and I will put the flowers in the snow over your grave, little one, and perhaps their fragrance will creep down to you somehow, and you will dream of other flowers that I gave you in other days down in our own country where we were both happy. Perhaps, too, since they say the stars shine brighter on Christmas night, perhaps through the frozen earth that shuts you from me, the light of those we used to know and name will reach you, and you will remember, and know that I do not forget.