I.—STARKIE AND THE STATES

I REMEMBER WITH WHAT ADROITNESS several years ago a distinguished dramatist explained to a pressing interviewer what was his intention in writing a certain play of his which was being widely discussed in many directions. It was merely to show how dangerous it was for any man to wander off the beaten track, he said: “A man must keep in line with his fellow-men if he hopes to avoid disaster”—and so forth. The explanation was no doubt accounted quite satisfactory by such persons as had been perturbed on the matter to which it referred.

It certainly would have been accepted with every token of assent by the majority of the inhabitants of the lesser English country towns. They regard as highly dangerous to the community the least departure from the primrose path of the commonplace. They have a hymn which goes—

“We are travelling home to God

In the way our fathers trod,

They are happy now, and we

Soon their happiness shall see.”

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The stanza embodies their highest aspirations; and really, when one comes to consider the whole matter, one could hardly formulate a more satisfactory walk of life; only it is a walk, not a race, and some people (outside a country town) look to go through life at a faster pace. “In the way our fathers trod”—that is the sound motto of the country town, and the man who tries to get out of the old ruts is looked upon with suspicion by the sensible people to whom he may allude as old rutters or even old rotters.

A middle-aged inhabitant of a town nearly twice as large as our Mallingham was greatly impressed with this truth by an incident which had just come under his notice when I had occasion to call upon him some time ago. He told me that he had been visited by a former townsman of his, but one whom he had not seen for more than fifteen years.

“No, you wouldn't remember Joseph Starkie, old Sol Starkie's son,” he said to me in the course of his narrative. “It was before you came to county. Queer restless chap was Joe always.”

“Is he any relation to the Starkie who invented the magnetic lathe that is used everywhere in the States?” I inquired.

“I shouldn't wonder,” he replied, as if making a sad admission. “Yes, I believe he said something about it when he was with me. He was just that sort of chap—so restless and dissatisfied always—wanting to do things differently from how they had always been done. His father was a most respectable man, however, in the hardware line, and Joe was too much for him: he packed him off to an uncle in the States, and there he has been ever since, he told me. “Sad—very sad! His father had quite a nice little business here, and if Joe had only settled down reasonably he might have succeeded to it and done well.”

“It strikes me that he has done pretty well elsewhere,” said I. “His name is well known in every machine shop in the States.”

“Is that so? Well, maybe so; but that's not like having a comfortable place at home. Why, he might even have had a seat at the Town Council or the Water Board in time. When he came in here to-day I knew him at once; but I wasn't too eager with him until I saw from his way that he hadn't come to borrow money, as I feared at first. He wanted to inquire about some of his old associates, and he knew that I could tell him. 'Where's Johnnie Vance?' he asked. 'I looked in at his old office just now and no one seemed disposed to tell me.' I shook my head and pointed up the road. He saw what I meant. 'Jail?' he whispered. 'Jail? What was the trouble?' 'Embezzlement,' I told him. 'Well, well, who would have thought it?' he said. 'And maybe you can tell me if Willie Rossiter is still in his old crib,' he asked. I shook my head. 'Don't tell me that he's in jail too,' he cried. 'No, no—at least, not exactly. I want to be fair to every one. It's not jail, only the asylum.' 'What!' he said. 'Willie Rossiter—the asylum? How did it come about—an accident?' It went against my grain to tell him that it was drink, but he pressed me and I had to do it; and then he went on to talk about the old town for some time, but I could see that he had another friend to ask about. He pretended to be at the point of going and then suddenly to remember that there was somebody else. Jimmy Gray—it was Jimmy Gray. 'By the bye,' he said, 'I wonder if old Jimmy Gray is still knocking about.' I smiled. 'No, he's not doing much knocking about just now,' I told him. 'Not dead?' he asked. 'Oh no,' said I; 'only he has just taken rooms in the Bridgend Hotel.' 'What! the workhouse?' he cried. 'The workhouse indeed,' said I. 'And nobody would have known anything about it if he hadn't made a fool of himself writing to the Board of Guardians complaining that he had been kept waiting for a quarter of an hour when he had applied for admission.' That was the last of his inquiries after his old friends. But they had all been restless chaps like himself—not settling down to anything properly. Still, he didn't ask me to lend him any money, and that was something.”

I could scarcely fail to see that this exemplary citizen felt keenly the value of the dramatist's suggestion, that it is very dangerous for a man to fall out of line with the rest of the community. Social laws exist for the community, not for the individual. At the same time, I was not so firmly convinced as my friend seemed to be that Mr. Starkie's career could be pointed to as a notable instance of the peril of marching out of the way our fathers trod. He had declined to yield to the influences of the magnet that “hung in the hardware shop” of his father, and had so forsaken the two hundred a year and the obscurity of his native town for the million dollars which he had earned by his inventions in Pennsylvania, to say nothing of the fame which accrues to an inventor who knows how to put his inventions on the market; so that there might really be some people ready to assert that Joe Starkie's restlessness suggested that a divergence from the scheme of the Red-man on the warpath, who is careful to step into the footprints of the man who goes before him, may now and again be advisable. I did not say so to my exemplary citizen, however; for the fame of Joe Starkie had not yet reached the place of his nativity, and the exemplary citizen might have asked me what about Joe Starkie's old friends who were now sojourning in various public institutions, and he would not have been satisfied with my replying to the effect that they had stayed at home, and were suffering for it.