i
one john rawn is to be the hero of this pleasing tale; no ordinary hero, as you might learn did you make inquiry of himself. his history must be set down in full, from beginning to culmination, from delicate flowering to opulent fruitage, from early obscurity to later fame. such would be his wish; and the wishes of john rawn long have been commands.
for the most part the early history of any hero is of small consequence. we are chiefly concerned that he shall be tall and shapely, mighty in war and love, and continuously engaged therein from the first moment of his entrance on our scene. granted these essentials, we customarily pass carelessly over any hero's youth, even as lightly, perchance, over his ancestry. not so in the case of john rawn. he himself would say, if asked, that no hero of so exceptional a merit as his own could be thus lightly produced; that indeed not even the three generations accorded to the making of a gentleman could be called sufficient for the evolution of a personage of mold such as his. let us yield to a will so imperious, a wish so germane to our own amiable intent. mr. rawn shall have all the generations that he likes.
ii
john rawn might, in the caretaking plans of the immortal gods, have been born at any time in the world's history, at any place upon the world's surface. he himself, had he been consulted, might have suggested rome, greece, or medi?val england, as offering better field for one of his kidney. he might have indicated certain resemblances between himself and persons who, through virtue given of the immortal gods, have attained the purple, who have held permanent and admitted ascendancy over their fellow-men. as a matter of fact, however, john rawn was born in texas—and of texas at the very spot where, had it been left to his own candid opinion, no john rawn, no especial hero, ought ever to have been born. the village he honored by his birth—one of seven which now contend over that claim to fame—was the very home of democratic equality; and how could the home of democratic equality be called typical environment for the production of a man believing in the divine right of a very few?
neither, had john rawn been consulted in the matter, would he have indorsed the plans of fate in respect to his ancestry any more than he did the workings of the misguided stars in regard to his environment. by right he should have been the offspring of parents for long generations accustomed to rule, to command, to sway the destinies of others. yet far from this was the truth in our hero's case.
which of us can tell what is in an infant's mind? at what day or hour of a child's life does the consciousness of human values in affairs first impinge upon the embryonic mentality? at what date, first feeling itself human and not plant, not oyster nor amoeba, can it logically begin that reproach of its own parentage which to so many of us is held as a personal right, convenient and pleasant because it explains away so many things by way of human failures? at what time, at what moment of john rawn's life did he, lying in his cradle, and looking up for the first conscious time into the faces solicitously bending above him, realize that after all, in spite of all the plans of the watchful fates, here were no king and queen, no emperor and empress assigned to him as parents, but only an humble methodist preacher and his still more humble wife?
truly here was hard handicap even at the start, that of both birth and environment, as he himself would have been first to admit. not that it could daunt him, not that it could cause a soul like his to feel the pangs of despair. no; it meant only that much further to travel, that much higher to climb. this american republic was expressly framed for such as mr. rawn. the issue never was to be called in doubt. from that first hour of consciousness of his ego which marks the real birth of a human soul, john rawn must have said to himself that success was meant for him; that not all the hostile array of circumstances, birth, heredity and environment, could do more than temporarily balk his aim. from the cradle, indeed for generations uncounted—as many as he likes—before the cradle, john rawn believed in himself. how can we fail to join him in that belief?
iii
it was rarely that ever a smile enlivened the somewhat heavy features of young john rawn, even in the earliest stages of his babyhood. rarely did the mirth of any situation bring up in his face an answering dawn of appreciation. he was a serious child, as all admitted even from the first. he grew to be a grave boy, a solemn youth. he made no jests, nor smiled at those of others. there was a corrugation between his brows before he was twenty years of age. in his declamations at the exercises of the village school, his hand went instinctively into a bosom not yet ten years of age; his forelock fell across his brow before he was twelve; already his gestures were large and wide, his voice prematurely deep before he had reached fourteen. he was of that temperament which, in accordance with the term, takes itself seriously. it is astonishing what virtue lies in that habit. the world, sometimes for many years, indeed sometimes permanently, accepts seriously those who seriously accept themselves. many of the most colossal asses ever born have not "ass" written on their tombstones, where righteously it so very frequently belongs in the history of the great.
iv
curious persons might have found certain explanations for these traits in the calling, the temper and training of the father of john rawn. in that time and place, a minister of the gospel was a man of whom all stood in awe. he was not much gainsaid, not much withstood, not much disapproved. his conclusions were announced for acceptance, not for argument. at best he was only to be avoided, if one dreaded the look of the clerical eye, the denunciation of the clerical tongue. other men might be met, might be antagonized, might be overcome by fist or thumb or firearms, per example; not so the parson of the village church.
it is an excellent profession; that of minister of the gospel. the ranks of none offer better men than the best types of that profession, large men, strong men, just men, not doing preaching for a business, but really wishing to counsel and aid frail humanity as it marches among the perpetual pitfalls, the perpetual hardships of human life. it is an exceedingly good religion of itself, that merely of helping your fellow-man, of saying something to soften and better him, of giving to him something of hope and courage when he is in need of them. let us not argue whether or not a divine spirit can become mortal, whether or not christ was divine. we know by virtue of abundant human testimony that he was a great and kindly man, a great and adorable human being, the greatest of whom we know in all our human history. and that man who makes the creed of the greatest of us all his own, who lives kindly and helpfully and modestly, with no blare of trumpet, doing simply and silently that which his human hands find to do; that man nearest to the greatest man of whom we know, the one who went closest to making human life endurable, who took humanity farthest away from the cruel creed of the jungle—that minister of the gospel, let us say then, who lives as is possible for one of his calling to live, and attains in that calling what may be attained, may be, and not infrequently is, a splendid human being.
but he is worth our admiration when he is worth it; not necessarily otherwise. a minister of the gospel may not always be the central figure of that religious fervor which has come sporadically and spasmodically to men under many creeds, since man began to think aloud, to doubt and despair in public, and to pray in company. besides, there are ministers and ministers. some are men naturally large and are so accepted. others, alas! bulk larger than really they are, by virtue of the fact that always they apparently have prevailed; whereas, in truth, they only have met small opposition.
'tis a sweet fashion of life which allows us always to have our own way! nor is it to be denied that when the preacher stands before the flock, his disordered hair falling above his brow, his eyes flashing, his breath sobbing in his emotion; when he hurls out questions to which he knows there will be no answer; when he makes one assertion after another to which he knows there is to be no contradiction; when he rules, sways, expounds, glorifies, waxing greater in stature out of the very situation in which he stands—let us not deny that he is then in the way—the simple and forgivably human way—of coming more and more into the belief that he himself is as great as the doctrines which he expounds. there are martyrs in history because of human convictions which led them to contradict the church. there are other and far more numerous martyrs, made such because they dared not contradict it.
given, then, a man of rawboned frame, of virile physical health, and of pronouncedly good opinion of himself, this is perhaps the very profession of all others which would be most apt to build up that man in his own eyes into a personage of considerable stature. such a man might easily regard himself as set apart from his fellow human beings—a feeling which christ himself never had, nor any great man in or out of history before him or after him. it is understandable that such a man, of such a profession, might be the very one to find his philosophy feeding upon itself; with the net result of an inordinate, ingrown egotism. and this ingrown egotism in himself might, in the case of his son, become an egotism congenital. there are ministers of the gospel, and other ministers of the gospel. john rawn, senior, was of this particular and less desirable sort. we mention him, having promised our hero all the analysis and all the generations he may desire; and being, moreover, commendably anxious fully to account for him and his many noteworthy peculiarities.
v
had john rawn, our hero, been able in his childhood to figure out that, after all, god and the undying stars had no special grudge against him in assigning his birth to a humble inland village; had he been able to picture to himself his real value as a human unit; had he been able to understand his own explanation,—that is to say this explanation of him which we so patiently have given—had he been able to qualify his own mind as that of a congenital egotist, and hence to see himself naturally come by certain phases of his character—he might have smiled and have been different. he might one day have extended his hand to his fellow-man understandingly, might have gone through life much as other men indeed, dying simply and without much outcry about it, as most of us do, and living with small disturbance of the world's equilibrium, as most of us also do. but in that deplorable case there would have been no john rawn as we know him, and no story about him worth the telling. let us, therefore, beg to disagree even with him, and not hold it as entire misfortune that he was born in an unstoried spot, and of parents one of whom, by reason of his natural character and of his calling, was wont to consider himself the partner, and not necessarily the junior partner, of a divine providence.
