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Title: An Unmailed Letter
Author: John Kendrick Bangs [ More Titles by Bangs]
BEING A CHRISTMAS TALE OF SOME SIGNIFICANCE
I called the other night at the home of my friend Jack Chetwood, and found him, as usual, engaged in writing. Chetwood's name is sufficiently well known to all who read books and periodicals these days to spare me the necessity of adverting to his work, or of attempting to describe his personality. It is said that Chetwood writes too much. Indeed, I am one of those who have said so, and I have told him so. His response has always been that I--and others who have ventured to remonstrate--did not understand. He had to keep at it, he said. Couldn't help himself. Didn't write for fun, but because he had to. Always did his best, anyhow, and what more can be asked of any man? Surely a defence of this nature takes the wind out of a critic's sails.
"Busy, Jack?" said I, as I entered his sanctum.
"Yes," said he. "Very."
"Very well," said I. "Don't let me disturb you. I only happened in, anyhow. Nothing in particular to say; but, Jacky, why don't you quit for a little? You're worn and pale and thin. What's the use of breaking down? Don't pose with me. You don't have to write all the time."
He smiled wanly at me.
"I--I'm only writing a letter this time," he said.
"Oh, in that case--" I began.
"You can't guess whom to?" he interrupted.
"Me," said I.
"No," he retorted. "Me."
"I don't understand," said I, somewhat perplexed.
"Myself," laughed Chetwood.
"You are writing a letter to--to--"
"Myself," said he. "Truly so. Odd, isn't it? Wait a few minutes, old man, and I'll read it to you. Light a cigar and sit down just a minute and I'll be through."
I lit one of Chetwood's cigars. They are excellent. I have heard one expert pronounce them "bully." They are, and of course while I smoked I was happy.
At the end of a half-hour's waiting, the silence broken only by the scratching of Chetwood's pen and by my own puffings upon the weed, he wheeled about in his chair.
"Well, that's finished," he said, and he glanced affectionately and, I thought, wistfully about his charming workshop.
"Good," said I. "You promised to read it to me."
"All right," said he. "Here goes."
And he kept his word. I reproduce the letter from memory. Like all copy-mongers, he began it with a title double underscored, and I reproduce it as I heard it:
"LETTER TO MYSELF
"ON CHRISTMAS GIVING: A HINT
"MY DEAR JOHN,--As the Christmas holidays approach it has seemed to me to be somewhat in the line of my duty to write to you not only to wish you all the good things of the season, but to give you a little fatherly advice which may stand you in good stead when the first of January comes about. I have observed you and your ways with some particularity for some time; in fact, since that very happy day, nearly twenty years ago, when you entered upon the duties of citizenship, with twenty-one years and a birthday gift of $500 from your father to your credit. The twenty-one years had come easily and had gone easily. All you had had to do to acquire and to retain them was to breathe and to keep your feet dry. The $500, which represented so much toil on your father's part, came to you quite as easily. You saw the check, and you realized the possibilities of the sum for which it called, but I do not think you ever realized the effort that produced that $500. I judge from the way you let it filter through your fingers that you thought your generous father picked the money up from a pile of gold lying somewhere in the back yard of his home. I do not know if you recall what it went for, but I do. Some of it went for a half-dozen sporting pictures of some rarity that you had long wished to hang on the walls of your den. More of it went for rare first editions of books whose possession you had envied others for no little time. A portion of it was spent on sundry trinkets which should adorn your person, such as studs, scarf-pins, a snake ring, with ruby eyes--a disgusting-looking thing, by the way--to encircle your little finger. There were also certain small things in the line of bronzes, silver writing implements, a jug or two of some value that you had cast your eyes upon, and which you were quick to acquire. Do you remember, my dear Jack, how delighted you were with all that you were able to buy with that $500, until the bills came in and you found that the consciousness of a $500 backing had led you into an expenditure of a trifle over $900? You were painfully surprised that day, Jacky, my boy, but, as I have watched you since you let it go at that, you never learned anything from those bills. Indeed, what you call your cheerful philosophy, which led you to console yourself then with the thought that the stuff you had bought on credit if sold at auction would bring in enough to pay the deficit, has clung to you ever since, and has served you ill--very ill--unless I am wholly mistaken. You would strike any other man than myself were he to venture to call you a second Mr. Micawber, but Johnnie, dear, that is what you are--and you are even worse than that, John. Let me assure you of the fact. You are something worse. You are a modern Dick Turpin! Don't be angry at my saying so. Merely understand that I am telling you the truth, and for your own good, and I'll explain the analogy. I cannot call a man a modern Dick Turpin without explaining why I do so.
"Turpin was a highwayman, as you know. He mounted his horse and went out upon the highway, and whatever he wanted he took. He had no greater powers of resistance in the face of temptation than others had in the face of him. You, John, are much the same, even if you do not realize the fact. You mount the steed called Credit, and you go out upon the highways, and whatever you see that you happen to want you take--don't you, Jack? It is true that, sooner or later, you pay, but so did Turpin. Turpin paid with his life. You will pay with yours, and that is why I write you, for the constant anxiety to meet the obligations of your thefts--for that is what they are, John; we cannot blink the fact--this constant anxiety, I say, is sapping your strength, undermining your constitution, destroying slowly but surely your nerves, and sooner or later you will succumb to the strain. Is it worth the price, my boy?
"I can imagine you asking what all this has to do with Christmas and the season of Peace on Earth and Good Will to Man. You think I am merely cavilling, but I am not. It has this to do with it: It involves my Christmas present to you, which is important to me and I trust will be so to you. I am not going to give you a gold watch, or a complete edition of Thackeray, or a set of golf clubs this year, and, being a man, I cannot knit you a worsted vest as your sister might--or as some other fellow's sister might. All I can afford to give you this year is a hint, and I shall not wait until Christmas morn to hand it over to you, because it would then lack value. I send it to you now, when you need it most, and, if you accept it, when the Christmas chimes begin to sound their music on the frosty air you will thank me for it perhaps more than you do now.
"Don't be a highwayman this year, John. Never mind what Solomon said; think of what I say. Solomon was a wise man, but he lived in a bygone age. Take thought of the morrow, my boy. Don't consider the lilies of the field, but come down to real business. Don't mount your prancing horse Credit and hold up some poor jeweller for a silver water-pitcher for your brother George when you know that on January 1st the jeweller will probably ask you for a quid pro quo, and for which quid you will be compelled to compel him to wait until April or May. And remember that, if your dear wife could have her choice, she would infinitely prefer your peace of mind to the sables which you propose to give her at Christmas, bought on a credit which, however pleasing to-day, is sure to become a very pressing annoyance to-morrow.
"Then, my dear man, there are your children. What a joy they are! What a source of affectionate pride; what a source of satisfaction, and how they trust you, Jack. You remember the trust you placed in your father. You have never slept since you had to do for yourself as you slept when he did for you. You didn't know a care then; you had no worries in those old days; you knew your home was yours and that every reasonable thing you could wish for he would give you to the full extent of his means. That confidence was not misplaced, and all that you have to-day you'd willingly give up for that sweet peace of mind that was yours while he was with you. God bless him and his memory. Do you realize, Jack, that you occupy that same relation to your children? They believe in you as you believed in him. And are you meeting your responsibilities as he met his? Think it over. Of course, for instance, Tommie wants a complete railway system, with tracks and signals and switches and nickel-plated rolling stock, and all that--but can you afford to give it to him? And Pollie--dear little Pollie--what right-minded little Pollie does not want a doll; a great yellow-haired, blue-eyed, pink-cheeked doll, with automatic insides and an expensive trousseau? But can you really afford to give it to her? Do you remember when you were a baby how you wanted the moon, and yelled for it lustily? And do you remember how you didn't get it, and how you sobbed yourself to sleep, and how, in spite of it all, you waked up the next morning all smiles and sunshine, with no recollection of ever having wanted the moon? And do you realize that if your daddy could have given it to you he would have done so? Do you recollect how, ever since that happy time, you have wanted the earth, and how you haven't got it, and how fortunate you are, and how happy you are without it? So it is, and so it will be with your children. These things do not change. My beloved boy, a serene, unworried father, next to a serene and happy mother, is God's most gracious gift to childhood, at Christmas or at any other time. If January finds you petulant and nervous over a bill you cannot pay for Tommie's Christmas railway and for Pollie's Yuletide doll, then has the 25th of December brought woe instead of joy into your home; strife instead of peace, and good will to man is not to be found there. In January the pure, sweet, simple little minds will wonder at you, Jack. The little hearts will love you just the same, but the little minds will wonder at your irritability, and they will still hold to that beautiful trust. And you? Well, you'll toss about at night, sleepless and worried, and if you are of the right sort, as I hope and believe you are, you will ask yourself if you are worthy of the confidence the little ones place in you. Your mistaken notions of generosity may have imperilled your household. Given health and strength and ideas, you may be able to keep on and make all right, but who knows at what moment you will have to give up the fight? Why should you invite care and worry? Why not come down to the serious facts and insure the happiness of all who depend upon you by following out a sane and sensible plan of living and of giving? My dear boy, don't you know you are doing wrong in being unjustifiably ostentatious in your giving? I have likened you to Turpin. You will laugh this off. You aren't a thief--at least you cannot believe that you are one; but there is something worse even than being a thief, and I fear you are verging upon it.
"Frankly, Jack, I am afraid you are a snob. Yes, sir, a plain snob; and if snobbery is not worse than thievery, I know nothing of life. I'd rather be a straight-out, sincere, honest, unpretending thief than a snob, my dear boy. Wouldn't you? Let us look into this. The thief is the creature of circumstances. He is what he is because his environment and his moral sense, plus his necessities, require that he shall do what he does. But the snob--what compelling circumstances make a snob of a man? Why should he make a pretence of being what he is not? Why should he give things he cannot afford to give unless it be that he desires to make an impression that he has no right to? The thief banks on nothing. The snob takes advantage of his supposed respectability. Bless us, Jacky, aren't we worse than they are?
"Read your Thackeray, old chap. See what he said about snobs. He never inveighed against the submerged soul that never had a chance. He never, with all his imputed cynicism, made a slimy thing of those who fell, as Dickens did. He struck high. He exploited the vices of those who might do him real harm. He took the high man, not the low man, for his target, and he struck home when he struck at snobbery. And he struck a blow for purer, sweeter living, and men may call him cynic for all time, but I shall never cease to call him brave and true for what he did for you and for me, as well as for all other men.
"Put yourself in the crucible, Jack. Find out what you are and what you may be, and don't try to make yourself appear to be generous when you are simply financially reckless. Don't rob your creditors in the vain hope that you are living up to the spirit of the hour, and don't rob yourself. You are not living up to that spirit. You are degrading it. God knows I love you more than I love any living thing except my wife and children, but let me tell you this: the man who gives more than he has a right to give is a thief in the eyes of conscience, and, worse than that, he is a snob, and a mean one at that. Adapt your giving to your circumstances. Do what you can to make others happy, but at this season do not, I beg of you, try to do what you can't in an effort to appear for what you are not.
"The happiness of your children, of your wife, of yourself, is involved, and when that happiness is attacked or weakened, then is the whole spirit of Christmas season set aside, and the selfishness of the posing impostor put in its place. Always your affectionate self,
"JOHN HENRY CHETWOOD."
When Chetwood had finished I puffed away fiercely upon my cigar.
"Good letter, Jack," said I.
"Yes," said he, tearing it up.
"Don't do that," I cried, trying to restrain him.
He smiled again and sighed. "It's--gone," said he. "Gone. Forever. I shall never write it again."
"You should have sent it to--to yourself," said I. "I have thought sometimes that such a letter should be written to you."
"Possibly," said he. "But--it's gone." And he tossed it into the waste-basket.
"It's a pity," said I. "You--you might have sold that."
"I know I might," said he. "But if it had ever appeared in print I should have been immortally mad. It's a libel on myself. Truth--is libellous, you know."
"It might have been rejected," I said, sarcastically.
"That would have made me madder yet," said Chetwood.
"Still--you realize the--ah--situation, Jack," I put in.
"Well," said he, with a laugh, "Christmas is coming, and when the fever is on--I--well, I catch it. I want to give, give, give, and give I shall."
"But you are imperilling--" I cried.
"I know, I know," he interrupted, gently. "God knows I know, but it is the fever of the hour. You can't stave off an epidemic. It's not my fault; it's the fault of the times."
"Nonsense," I retorted. "Can't you stand up against the times?"
"I can," said he, complacently lighting a cigar. "But I sha'n't. We'll all go to ruin together. The man who tries to stand up against the spirit of the times is an ass. I lack the requisite number of legs for that."
"Well," I put in, "I wish you a merry Christmas--"
"I shall have it," said he, cheerily. "The children--"
"And the New Year?" I interrupted.
"It isn't here yet," said Chetwood. "And I never cross a bridge until I come to it. Take another cigar."
Nevertheless, I went from Chetwood that night rather happier than I ought to have been, perhaps. His letter, even though he did not choose to mail it to himself, showed that he was thinking--thinking about it; and I was glad.
What if all men were to consider the questions that Chetwood raised?
Might not the meaning of Christmas, with all its joy and all its beauty, and all its inspiration-giving qualities, once more be made clear to man? I for one believe it would, and I venture to hope that the old-time simplicity of the observance of the day may again be restored unto us.
"God bless us all!" said Tiny Tim.
When the simpler, happier Christmas time, which is a joy, and not a burden, comes back to us, then will Tiny Tim's prayer have been answered. [The end]
John Kendrick Bangs's short story: Unmailed Letter ________________________________________________
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