Читать книгу The Story of my Life - Clarence Darrow - Страница 3

Table of Contents

It may seem absurd that I should be sitting here trying to write about myself in an age when only a mystery story has any chance as a best-seller. I can think of nothing about myself to distort into any such popular fiction. If I tell anything it will be but a plain unvarnished account of how things really have happened, as nearly as I can possibly hold to the truth.

First of all, I have noticed that most autobiographers begin with ancestors. As a rule they start out with the purpose of linking themselves by blood and birth to some well-known family or personage. No doubt this is due to egotism, and the hazy, unscientific notions that people have about heredity. For my part, I seldom think about my ancestors; but I had them; plenty of them, of course. In fact, I could fill this book with their names if I knew them all, and deemed it of the least worth.

I have been told that I came of a very old family. A considerable number of people say that it runs back to Adam and Eve, although this, of course, is only hearsay, and I should not like to guarantee the title. Anyhow, very few pedigrees really go back any farther than mine. With reasonable certainty I could run it back to a little town in England that has the same name as mine, though the spelling is slightly altered. But this does not matter. I am sure that my forbears run a long, long way back of that, even--but what of it, anyhow?

The earliest ancestor of the Darrow family that I feel sure belonged to our branch was one of sixteen men who came to New England the century before the Revolutionary War. This Darrow, with fifteen other men, brought a grant from the King of England for the town of New London, Conn. He was an undertaker, so we are told, which shows that he had some appreciation of a good business, and so chose a profession where the demand for his services would be fairly steady. One could imagine a more pleasant means of livelihood, but, almost any trade is bearable if the customers are sure. This Darrow, or rather his descendants, seemed to forget the lavish gift of the King, and took up arms against England under George Washington. So far as having an ancestor in the Revolutionary War counts for anything, I would be eligible to a membership of the D. A. R., although I would not exactly fit this organization, for, amongst other handicaps, I am proud of my rebel ancestors, and would be glad to greet them on the street, should they chance my way.

But it is not for love of looking up my ancestry, or a desire to brag, that I am setting all this down, but for a much more personal reason. All of it had an important bearing upon me, and shows the many, many close calls I had when I was casting about for an ancestral line and yearning to be born. The farther back I go, the more unlikely it seems that I am really here, and I sometimes pinch myself to make sure that it is not a dream; but I assume that I am I, and that I really came all the way from Adam, with all the vicissitudes of time and tide that are so entwined with mortal life.

Did you, who read this, ever figure what a scant chance you had of getting here? If you did come from Adam, you must have had millions on millions of direct forbears, and, if one ancestor had failed to come into the combination, you would not be you, but would be some one else entirely, if any one at all. So I do not allow myself to worry about the long-lost trail, but am content with thinking over the slight chance my father and mother had to meet, and hence my own still lesser chance for life after I had jumped all the hurdles between Adam and my parents.

If a man really has charge of his destiny at all, he should have something to say about getting born; and I only came through by a hair's-breadth. What had I to do with this momentous first step? In the language of the lawyer, I was not even a party of the second part. Two generations back is not so very far away; the reader will not need to try to consider all the near-accidents since Adam, but I will illustrate the whole venture by one narrow escape I had seventy-five years before I was born.

It seems that my grandfathers from both sides came from Connecticut. They had never met in the East, and did not come at the same time. Both of them drove from New England, for there were no railroads in that day, much less automobiles. The journey was long, and more or less disagreeable. My father's parents came first, but, for some reason, stopped at the little town of Henrietta, near Rochester, N. Y. Why they stopped there, I cannot imagine. I was there once myself, but I did not stop. When I visualize the paternal grandfather Darrow driving off on a thousand-mile trip into a near-wilderness I can hardly refrain from shouting to tell him that he has left Grandfather Eddy behind. But later on my grandfather on my mother's side drove away into the unknown West as if in search of a mate for one of his unborn daughters, so that I could have a couple of parents after many years. He drove and drove for weeks and months into the West until he pitched his tent in the wilds that later were named Windsor, Ohio. No doubt they drove through Henrietta, for that was along the main road into the West, but they did not stop, even long enough to meet my future mother's parent. Some years later my father's father drove from Henrietta to western Ohio and stopped at the little hamlet of Kinsman, twenty-five miles from Windsor, the town where my mother was waiting to be born. Thus far, my chance for getting into the scheme was about zero. It was necessary for the boy and girl to meet before they could become my father and mother, and this chance seemed less than one in a million when the families lived in Connecticut.

Both grandfathers were poor and obscure, else they would have stayed where they were. But their children, as they grew up, were sent to school. About thirty-five miles from Windsor and sixty from Kinsman, was a little town called Amboy, in northern Ohio, near Oberlin. In Amboy was a well-known school. Emily Eddy and Amirus Darrow were destined to go to that school, and so they went. I can leave the rest to the reader's imagination. When I think of the chances that I was up against, even when so near the goal, it scares me to realize how easily I might have missed out. Of all the infinite accidents of fate farther back of that, I do not care or dare to think.

It is obvious that I had nothing to do with getting born. Had I known about life in advance and been given any choice in the matter, I most likely would have declined the adventure. At least, that is the way I think about it now. There are times when I feel otherwise, but on the whole I believe that life is not worth while. This does not mean that I am gloomy, or that this book will sadden the Tired Business Man, for I shall write only when I have the inclination to do so, and at such times I am generally almost unmindful of existence.

But as I write these words the sun is shining, the birds are making merry in the bright summer day, and I am asking why I sit and plague my brain to recall the dead and misty past while light and warmth and color are urging me to go outdoors and play.

Doubtless a certain vanity has its part in moving me to write about myself. I am quite sure that this is true, even though I am aware that neither I nor any one else has the slightest importance in time and space. I know that the earth where I have spent my life is only a speck of mud floating in the endless sky. I am quite sure that there are millions of other worlds in the universe whose size and importance are most likely greater than the tiny graveyard on which I ride. I know that at this time there are nearly two billion other human entities madly holding fast to this ball of dirt to which I cling. I know that since I began this page hundreds of these have loosened their grip and sunk to eternal sleep. I know that for half a million years men and women have lived and died and been mingled with the elements that combine to make our earth, and are known no more. I know that only the smallest fraction of my fellow castaways have even so much as heard my name, and that those who have will soon be a part of trees and plants and animal and clay. Still, here am I sitting down, with the mists already gathering about my head, to write about the people, desires, disappointments and despairs that have moved me in my brief stay on what we are pleased to call this earth.

Doubtless, too, the emotion to live makes most of us seek to project our personality a short distance beyond the waiting grave. But whatever the reason may be, I am doing what many, many men have done before, and will do again--talking and gossiping about the past. I am doing this as a boy plays baseball by the hour or dances through the night. I am doing it because all living things crave activity, and I am still alive. Whether the movement is a journey around the globe or an unsteady walk from the bedroom to the dining room and back, it is but a response to what is left of the emotions, appetites and energies that we call being.

The young man's reflections of unfolding life concern the future--the great, broad, tempestuous sea on whose hither shore he stands eagerly waiting to learn of other lands and climes. The reactions and recollections of the old concern the stormy journey drawing to a close; he no longer builds castles or plans conquests of the unknown; he recalls the tempests and tumults encountered on the way, and babbles of the passengers and crew that one by one dropped silently into the icy depths. No longer does the aging transient yearn for new adventures or unexplored highways. His greatest ambition is to find some snug harbor where he can doze and dream the fleeting days away. So, elderly men who speak or write turn to autobiography. This is all they have to tell, and they cannot sit idly in silence and wait for the night to come.

Autobiography is never entirely true. No one can get the right perspective on himself. Every fact is colored by imagination and dream. The young look forth across the sea to a mirage of fairylands filled with hidden treasures; the aged turn to the fading past, and through the mist and haze that veils once familiar scenes, bygone events assume weird and fanciful proportions. Almost forgotten men, women and children reappear along the far-off shore, and their shadows are reflected back in dimmed or magnified outlines in the softly setting sun. Then, too, all human egos, and perhaps other egos, place prime importance upon themselves; each is the centre of the great circle around which all else revolves; no one can see and feel in any other way. Although all intelligent people realize that they are as nothing in the procession that is ever moving on, yet we cannot but feel that when we are dead the parade will no longer move. So while we can still vibrate with tongue and pen and with every manifestation of our beings, we instinctively shout to the crowd to pause and for a little time turn their eyes and ears toward us. That is what I am doing now, and am doing it because I have nothing else to do. I am doing it because it helps topass away the time that still remains. I know that life consists of the impressions made upon the puppet as it moves across the stage. I shall endeavor not to magnify the manikin. I am interested not in the way that I have fashioned the world, but in the way that the world has moulded me.

I hope that no one will turn from this book for fear it is sad and will make him unhappy. I am not an optimist in the ordinary sense of the word. I can tell of my life only as I see it, but I fancy that the story will not be unduly serious or tragic. I have never taken any one very seriously, and least of all myself. I am not trying to teach any moral or point any way. The billions on billions of humans that have come upon the stage, made their bow, and then retired beyond the scenes, have one and all played the same part. One and all they, for a time, have taken a distinctive form and name, and then disappeared forever. One and all, they have known joys and sorrows, and most of them are now lost in sleep and oblivion. My life has not been sad, and as the end approaches it brings no sorrow. When the evening hours have crept on I have always looked forward with satisfaction, if not pleasure, to the night of rest; a space of time with no consciousness to mar the peace and serenity of the void between the evening and the coming dawn. So, to-day, after a long life of work and play and joy and sorrow, I am fully aware of the friendly night that is stealing on apace. The inevitable destiny brings no fear or pain, so why should others be saddened by what I have to tell?

One cannot live through a long stretch of years without forming some philosophy of life. As one journeys along he gains experiences and even some ideas. Accumulated opinions and philosophy may be more important to others than the bare facts about how he lived, so my ambition is not so much to relate the occurrences as to record the ideas that life has forced me to accept; and, after all, thoughts, impressions and feelings are really life itself. I should like to think that these reflections might make existence a trifle easier for some of those who may chance to read this story.

As I have already said, my father's ancestors were rebels and traitors who took up arms against Great Britain in the War of the Revolution. It is easy for me to believe that my father came of rebel stock; at least he was always in rebellion against religious and political creeds of the narrow and smug community in which he dwelt. But ancestors do not mean so much. The rebel who succeeds generally makes it easier for the posterity that follows him; so these descendants are usually contented and smug and soft. Rebels are made from life, not ancestors.

My father, in his early life, was a religious man. He was born into the Methodist Church. This indicates that he came of plebeian stock, for there were also an Episcopalian and a Presbyterian Church in the little town. Either his parents were too humble for one of these aristocratic temples, or, perhaps my grandfather was converted at a Methodist revival, which was one of the affairs to go to, even after I was born. My father had a serious but kindly face. In his leisure hours he was always poring over books. I wish I knew more about his youth; it might furnish some interesting data as to the development of the family and the pranks of heredity and environment. He was one of seven children who came with their father to eastern Ohio, which was then almost a frontier land. The family must have been very poor, and their means of existence precarious in those early days, at the beginning of the nineteenth century. When a boy, I knew most of my uncles and aunts; they seemed fairly intelligent, but I cannot remember ever seeing a book in the house of any member of my father's family excepting in my father's home.

Not only were there no books in my grandfather's house, but there were practically none anywhere in the community. One of my earliest recollections is the books in our home. They were in bookcases, on tables, on chairs, and even on the floor. The house was small, the family large, the furnishings meagre, but there were books whichever way one turned. How my father managed to buy the books I cannot tell. Neither by nature nor by training had he any business ability or any faculty for getting money.

My mother's father was a fairly prosperous farmer. Neither he nor any of his family were church attendants. Out of the five or six children, my mother alone cared especially for books. Her family were substantial people of fair intelligence, but were inclined to believe that a love of books was a distinct weakness, and likely to develop into a very bad habit. One who spent his time reading or studying when he might be at work was "shiftless" and improvident. Benjamin Franklin's Almanac, with its foolish lessons about industry and thrift, was the gospel of the family.

Aside from one uncle who seemed fairly well-informed, I do not remember that a single one of my mother's brothers and sisters cared at all for books. Of my father's children, seven of us grew to mature years, and all but one had a liking for reading and learning; most of us would leave almost any sort of work or amusement to spend our time with books. How did it come about that of my father's family he alone, out of seven or eight, had any thirst for learning? And why was it that of my mother's family she was the only one that cared for books? And why did it happen that of the children of my father and mother all but one always had an abiding love for reading?

Of the group interwoven with my father's early life, why had he alone that overwhelming desire for books?--a love so strong that it remained with him and solaced him to his dying day, at the age of eighty-six. Was it imparted to him through the seed from which he grew? Was heredity the cause? Apparently his father did not care for books, and certainly conveyed no fondness for learning to his other sons and daughters. My grandparents on both sides each reared one child who in the yearning for education seemed as strangers to the rest.

I know nothing of my great-grandparents, but they must have been still more obscure. Is there any reason for speculating upon some possible spark of life from some unknown and improbable outside source? In my parents' offspring, the case was reversed; but the problem is the same; one child cared nothing for the intellectual life, and all the others prized books. If I knew my father's and mother's childhood associates I might find that some companion or school teacher at the right time kindled the quenchless flame in their young minds; but of this I have no knowledge. It is clear that both my parents, who met at school, away from home, had already shown a bent for study; and this was doubtless nurtured by the school. They married, and their zest for books was a part of the new home life, and we children were brought up in an atmosphere of books, and were trained to love them. It is easier for me to believe that our taste for them came from our early environment than that it was carried down in the germ-plasm of which so little is really known. Why did one brother not care at all for books? Who can tell? He was older than I, and of course I did not know his closest friends or when some alien influence might have entered and moulded his life. It seems reasonable to believe that by some intervention at a critical period he was led into another direction that perhaps changed the whole tenor of his nature and his life.

Soon after the marriage of my father and mother they went to Meadville, Penna., for a time. My father chose Meadville on account of Allegheny College, a Methodist institution, located in the town. I know nothing of how they lived. I should have known, but, long before I ever thought of beguiling my last years with a story of my life, the lips which could have spoken were closed forever. It would be hopeless to search for the happenings and doings of an obscure man. My father must have undergone great privations. He graduated from the college, where my two sisters received diplomas later on. He was still religious. His religion was born from a sensitive nature that made him pity the sad and suffering, and which, first and last, tied him to every hopeless cause that came his way.

On one hill in Meadville stood Allegheny College, sponsored by the Methodist Church. On another elevation was a Unitarian seminary, and in the town was a Unitarian Church. Both my parents must have strayed to this church, for when my father's time had come to take a theological course he went to the Unitarian school in Meadville, on the other hill from the Methodist college, where he took his first degree. In due time he completed his theological course, but when he had finished his studies he found that he had lost his faith. Even the mild tenets of Unitarianism he could not accept. Unitarianism, then, was closer to Orthodoxy than it is to-day, or he might have been a clergyman and lived an easier life. In the Unitarian school he read Newman and Channing, but later went on to Emerson and Theodore Parker. His trend of mind was shown by the fact that his first son was Edward Everett. When it came my turn to be born and named, my parents had left the Unitarian faith behind and were sailing out on the open sea without a rudder or compass, and with no port in sight, and so I could not be named after any prominent Unitarian. Where they found the name to which I have answered so many years I never knew. Perhaps my mother read a story where a minor character was called Clarence, but I fancy I have not turned out to be anything like him. The one satisfaction I have had in connection with this cross was that the boys never could think up any nickname half so inane as the real one my parents adorned me with.