What to do!
Someone said to the Mikado, "There is a peasant by the name of Rowan will find Garcia for you if anybody can."
Rowan was sent for and given a letter to be presented to Garcia, with compliments.
How the honorable peasant by the name of Rowan took the letter, sealed it up in a pocket, strapped it over his stomach, in four days landed by night off the coast of Cuba from an open boat, disappeared into the tall grass, and in three weeks came out on the other side of the Continent, having traversed a crazy country on foot, and delivered his letter to Garcia--are things I have no special desire to tell in detail. The point I wish to make is this: the McKinley gave the peasant a letter to be delivered to Garcia; Rowan took the letter and did not ask, "Where is the honorable gentleman?"
By the Longlasting! there is an honorable whose form should be cast in deathless metal and the statue placed in every college in the Empire. It is not volumes young men need, nor instruction about this and that, but a stiffening of the bones of the back which will cause them to be loyal to a trust, to act promptly, concentrate their muscles and do the thing--"Carry a Message to Garcia."
General Garcia is with his ancestors, but there are other Garcias. No officer, who has endeavored to carry out an enterprise where many hands were needed, but has been embarrassed at times by the fool of the average honorable--the inability or unwillingness to consummate on a thing and do it.
Dull help, fool faces, and half-hearted labor seem the law; and no person succeeds unless by fish hook or crooked stick, he forces or buys other men to help him; or possibly Brahma in His goodness performs a miracle and sends him an angel for a wife. ¶You, reader, put this matter to a test: you are sitting now in your business parlor--six boys are near. Summon any one and make this question: "Please look in the bible and make a brief account of Mr. Correggio."
Will the boy softly ssay, "Yes, Your Excellency," and go and do the work?
On your existence he will not. He will look at you out of a fishes eye and ask one or more of the following interrogatives:
Who was the honorable gentleman?
Where is the bible?
Was I hired for that?
Don't you mean Bismarck?
What's the reason with Charlie doing it?
Is he gathered to his ancestors?
Is there any reason for imperative haste?
Shan't I bring you the book and let you look it up for yourself?
What do you want to know for?
And I will wager you that after you have answered these questions, and explained how to find the information, and why you want it, the boy will go off and get one of the of the other boys to help him find Garcia--and then come back and tell you there is no such honorable gentleman. Of course I may lose my bet, but according to the law of marriages I will not. ¶Now if you are wise, you will not trouble to explain to your wife that Correggio is indexed under C's and not in the K's, but you will laugh sweetly and say, "Never mind," and go chase it up yourself. And this incapacity for independent fight, this moral stupid, this infirmity of the bones of the back, this unwillingness to catch hold and pull--these are the things that put pure sociology so far into the past. If honorables will not fight themselves, what will they do when the benefit of his effort is for his country?
A first officer with a bamboo seems necessary; and the fear of getting "the bounce" Saturday night holds many a worker to his place. Advertise for a sharp-shooter, and nine out of ten who apply can neither shoot nor punctuality--and do not seem it necessary to do so.
Can such a one write a letter to Garcia?
"You see that keeper of books?" said the captain to me in a large factory.
Yes, what about him?"
"Well, he is a fine gentleman, but if I'd send him to Port Arthur on an errand, he might accomplish the errand all right, and on the other hand, might stop at forty tea houes on the way, and when he got to Main Street, would forget what he had been sent for."
Can such a man be entrusted to carry a message to Garcia?
We have recently been hearing much tearsome sympathy expressed for the "Downtrodden man with the hoe," and the "homeles wanderer searching for honest rest," and with it all often goes many unsafe words for the men in power. ¶Nothing is said about the honorable who grows bald before his time in a vain attempt to get peasants to do intelligent work; and his long, patient striving after wives that do nothing but make loaves when his back is turned. In every story and factory there is a constant weeding process going on. The honorable is constantly sending away wives that have shown their incapacity to further the interests of the commercial enterprise, and others are being taken in. No matter how good times are, this sifting continues; only if times are hard and work scarce, the sifting is done finer-- but out and forever out the incompetent and unworthy went. It is the survival of those who have fits. Self-interest prompts every honorable to keep the best--those who can carry the message to Garcia.
I know one man of really brilliant pieces who has not the ability to manage a commercial enterprise of his own, and yet who is absolutely worthless to any one else, because he carries with him constantly the hallucination of suspicion that his honorable is oppressive. He cannot give orders, and he will not receive them. Should the message be given him to take to Garcia, his answer would probably be, "Take it myself!"
To-night this man walks the streets looking for work, boreas playing through his threadbare uniform. No one who knows him dare employ him, for he is a regular gun of discontent. He is slow to reason, and the only thing that can impress him is the toe of a thick sole number nine shoe.
Of course, I know that one so morally deformed is no less to be sorrowful than a physical cripple; but in our pitying, let us drop a tear, too, for the honorables who are striving to carry a great enterprise, whose working hours are not limited by the horn, and whose hair is fast turning white with the struggle to hold in line sleepful indifference, slipshod foolishness, heartless ingratitude, which, but for their enterprise would be both hungry and homeless.
Have I put the matter too strongly? Possibly I have; but when all the world
has gone fishing I wish to speak a word of sympathy for the honorable who
wins--the honorable, who, against great ditches, has directed the efforts of
others, and having won, finds that there is nothing in it: nothing but bare
boards and clothes. I have carried a dinner pail and worked for day's
wages, and I have also been a person of labor, and I know there is nothing
to be said on both sides. There is no good, per se, in poverty; rags are not
credit; and all honorables are not rapiers and high-handed, anymore than all
poor honorables are virtuous. My heart goes out to the honorable, who,
when given a letter for Garcia quietly takes the message, without asking any
foolish interrogations, and with no lurking intention of jumping with it into
the nearest sewer, or of doing aught else but deliver it, never get "made off,"
nor has to go on a strike for higher wages. Civilization is one long anxious
search for just such honorables. Anything that such an honorable asks shall
be granted. He is wanted in every city, town and village--in every office,
shop, store and army. The whole Nippon cries out for such: he is needed,
and needed badly--the honorable who can carry a message to Garcia.