These People!

Millions upon millions of them pass through every corner of the world — the black and the white, man and woman, old and young — going their accustomed way: they work and eat and drink and sleep. Then one creature among them falls behind the caravan and stops to think, and behold, the idea springs from his heart, not from his head, and he brings it forth as a deed that people admire and support, as though he had touched the hidden, sensitive chord in their souls and played upon it — and they played too, stirred to joy and harmony.

Hundreds of statesmen in dozens of nations witnessed the woes and horrors of the wars and saw the flower of youth cut down on the battlefields; but one of these statesmen went on thinking: do not these young men, who ransomed their countries with their lives, deserve a memorial to honor them, toward which the eyes of their kin might turn, and which would let every bereaved mother, or wife, or unhappy sweetheart look upon that monument as though it were the hero who is her own hero? And thus France brought forth the idea of the tomb of the 'Unknown Soldier'; and thus every sorrowing woman felt that her lost one rests here, and the tribute consoled her heart; and thus the nations took the noble idea from her, and it spread through every corner of the world.

Millions of women and girls the world over love their mothers — worship them, rather; but one woman out of all these, in her little village, in the thick of her need and her running after bread, stopped to think: why should the people of the village not hold a special service in their local church for the sake of their mothers, to express by it some of their love for their mothers? Anna Jarvis set to work and fixed upon the second Sunday of May, and said: let everyone who comes especially to join me in prayer for my mother's sake wear a white carnation on his breast. And the church thronged with worshippers, white carnations on their breasts. Anna Jarvis had played upon the tender chord in their hearts, and they played with her... America embraced the idea, and today the holiday is a national one, on which flags are raised over government buildings and homes, and special postage stamps are issued for Mothers' Day.

Hundreds of artists in the world; but one artist, in the year 1872, painted the portrait of his aged mother... What profit could a creative artist like Whistler hope for from painting the portrait of a mother — an old woman at that... and what beauty could he hope to bring out in a somber picture of an old woman whose every color is gray and black... But the tenderness welling from the breast of dutiful sonship moved the brush, and it brought forth a masterpiece that won the third prize in Paris; and the French government bought it for six hundred pounds, with one condition laid down by the artist: that it hang in the Louvre museum for ten consecutive years. Eighty years passed, and behold, the idea of the French artist met the idea of the American girl — for humanity knows no homeland; its homeland is the whole world. Idea met idea, and there was a holiday for a mother, and the portrait of a mother given as a gift to a mother.

The millions of the world pass by; they work and eat and drink and sleep. Then one of them falls behind the caravan to think, and to experiment, and to show mercy, and to say, as it were — to build the Pasteur Institute; and behold, the institute's motto runs thus: here no one asks a man who he is, nor what religion he professes; all that is said to him is: my son, you are in pain, and we shall try to ease your pains.

The millions pass by while the palaces glitter, thronging with their princes and princesses in their sumptuous clothes, their amusement and their extravagance; and from among these Nightingale stops to think. The humane idea sprang from the palaces — and how little of this merchandise the palaces produce! But she, the slight, tender girl: why should the wounded of war not be given special care? And behold, the girl rushes from the palace to the field; behold the lady of the lamp carrying it in the stillness of the night, passing with it to look in on the wounded heaped in the wards, casting upon each of them a glance full of tenderness and compassion, so that one of them writes: 'It was enough for us to feel that she was with us, and to see her shadow, and we slept in peace...' Then why should there not be, for these wounded, a women's organization that learns the art according to its principles, joining knowledge to gentleness? Why should tender women's hands not touch the pains and ease them? And so there came the first organized work of women's nursing, which the whole world adopted.

These people: in Hollywood, city of luxury, teeming with amusement and dissipation, where people's only care is to build sumptuous palaces and splendid swimming pools and to devise the most delightful kinds of parties and the finest fashions of dress — there, where people have gone mad racing after pleasure with no care for its consequences, a woman falls behind the caravan of amusements to think of the little outcast mothers: what will become of them and of their children? The homes of the Young Mothers' Society are for none but all those mothers whose ages range between 13 and 14 years only. And so Loretta Young imposes a tax on every curse or foul word that anyone utters in the studio.

If a word escapes one of them, he goes of his own accord to Loretta and holds out his hand with the tax: she takes a dollar per word from the director and the senior employee, and half a dollar from the small workman; and at the day's end Loretta opens the box and sends what is in it to the society, thanking them all for their gifts. She is a brilliant star there, but she thinks of the wretched women and suffers for them; so she thinks and invents and hits two birds with one stone: no cursing in the studio — and whoever does it pays it as a tax spent in the cause of goodness and charity.

Mathilda Wrede was the first girl to think of visiting the imprisoned and refining their morals — a young, beautiful girl, daughter of the governor of Finland. They feared for her the coarseness of the prisoners, but she insists, and will accept nothing less than to be an angel who guides and directs, reads and instructs, for 44 years. She was the idol of the prisoners. One of them gave her a pen, which she used for 25 years, and with it he wrote to her: 'I made you this pen from an old broom that had gone on cleaning the prison rooms for eighteen years; write to us with it — to us criminals — the many letters that clean our brains and purify our hearts of the filth of crime.'

And now — I have asked myself a thousand times: how does there come to be in these people such a noble element? They see those around them amusing themselves and living for themselves, and yet they suffer and live for others? I wondered, and then the answer came to me from a young friend in America, who says: do not thank me for anything I do; I merely deny my body some of its needs so as to secure for my soul its greatest pleasure, which is helping my brothers among the wretched. For there are bodies, and there are souls: some people live by their bodies and for them, thinking of nothing but what these bodies shall eat, what they shall wear, and what pleasure they crave... and some people live by their souls, thinking: what shall I do for those around me, and how shall I lighten misery, and what ideas shall I devise to help toward that — and so on...

These people who live by their souls — or whose souls have grown so transparent that through people's closed houses they saw the misery and the tears — how did these souls grow transparent?.. Is it heredity? It may be so, for the grandchildren of Rockefeller, greatest of philanthropists, walk in their grandfathers' footsteps. And it may not be, for from the onion sprouts the narcissus, as the poet said. Is it, then, upbringing — that every child who grows in the lap of a gentle mother, who turns his eyes toward the regions of misery and directs his thinking toward high ideals, is bound to become a true human being? Or is it from the reckoning of one's own soul, and a person's endeavor to be something useful in life? I believe this.

People today do not live — they run, and this running leaves them not a minute to think of those around them, or to let their souls live and think. I was taken with the saying of a great scholar who was talking with a colleague of his. The colleague said: I work eight hours a day, then I study German an hour, and English an hour, and philosophy an hour. And the scholar colleague said: and when do you find yourself?

When do we find ourselves? I believe we need to find our own souls, so as to become like these people I have mentioned. In the depths of every creature among us there is a measure of radium that is bound to shine, if only we clear away the coal and the dust from it and from around it; and in the depths of each of us there is a sensitive chord — if we tried to seek it out and play upon it, the world would play with us the melodies of mercy and humanity.