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 1

OXFORD MYTHS AND LEGEND

KOREAN
Folk-tales

Retold by James Riordan

lit]
f
KOREAN FOLK-TALES

-SI* *

J*i
 Oxford Myths and Legends in paperback
*
African Myths and Legends Arnott

Armenian Folk- tales and Fables Downing

Chinese Myths and Fantasies Birch

English Fables and Fairy Stories Reeves

French Legends, Tales and Fairy Stories Picard

German Hero-sagas and Folk-tales Picard

Hungarian Folk-tales Biro

Indian Tales and Legends Gray

Japanese Tales and Legends McAlpine
Korean Folk-tales Riordan

Tales of the Norse Gods Picard

Tales of Ancient Persia Picard

Russian Tales and Legends Downing

Scandinavian Legends and Folk-tales Jones

Scottish Folk-tales and Legends Wilson

Turkish Folk-tales Walker

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West African Trickster Tales Bennett

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The Iliad Picard

The Odyssey Picard

Gods and Men Bailey, McLeish, Spearman

 Korean
Folk-tales
Retold
by
JAMES RIORDAN

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

OXFORD NEW YORK TORONTO
 Note

The front cover picture on this edition is of Hwang Won

Jong, a pavilion in the royal palace the compound, while
back picture shows Shim Chung on the lotus blossom. Inside
the book, the chapter opening script is the original name for
the Korean alphabet, and the motif at the end of the chapters
is the Yin Yang symbol.

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Oxford is a trade marks of Oxford University Press

O James RJordan 1994

First published 1
(
>'M
Reprinted 2000

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be

reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in
any form or by any means, without the prior
permission in writing of Oxford University Press.
Within the U.K., exceptions are allowed in respect of
any fair dealing for the purpose of research or private
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Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, or in the
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Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms
and in other countries should be sent to
the Rights Department, Oxford University Press,
at the address above.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available

from the British Library

ISBN 0-19-521673-3

Printed in Hong Kong

UC BR
J
GR342
.R56
1994x
To Kang Shin-Pyo and John MacAloon
who first introduced me to the
Land of the Morning Calm
 CONTENTS
Dan-Gun, First Emperor of Korea 1

Blindman's Daughter Shim Chung 4

Weaver and Herdsman Chik-Nyo and

Kyun-Woo 14

Son-Nyo Nymph
the and the Woodcutter 21

The Snail Woman 31

The Distant Journey 37

Blindman and the Demons 49
The Fox Girl 54
The Tiger's Grave 61

The Hare's Liver 66

How Cat Saved the Magic Amber 76

Choi Chum-Ji 82
The Sun, the Moon, and the Stars 85

Bride Island 90
The Long-Nosed Princess 97
The Magic Club 104

Three Dead Wives 110

The Four Mighty Brothers 116

Adventures of the Three Sons 121

The Centipede Girl 127

 Dan-Gun, First Emperor
of Korea

H wan-in, the

day the lad asked

land to rule.
'You may choose the land
Celestial
bold, wise son called
Emperor, had a
Hwan-Ung; one
his father for an earthly

yourself, my
son,' the Emperor said. 'But judge well, for you
will create the first human life in your new
kingdom/
As he looked down upon the earth, the
young prince's gaze fell upon the green hills of a
beautiful peninsula between two great seas.
'There, that is the land I want,' he told his
father.
The Emperor granted his son's wish and
sent him down to earth to found the Korean
nation. He was accompanied by three thousand
servants to help him rule and three
the land,
powerful ministers: Pung-Beg, U-Sa and Un-Sa
— Lord Wind, Lord Rain, and Lord Cloud.
 Korean Folk- Tales

They were govern health and

to sickness, harvest
and season, good and evil.
The noble Hwan-Ung setup his home in
a sandalwood tree on Tebeg Mountains,
now Myohyang-San, in the north, and there
established the Sacred City.
Shortly after, the Heavenly Prince sum-
moned a tiger and a bear who lived in a nearby
cave.
have chosen you to become the first
'I

humans/ he told them. 'Here, take these twenty

garlic bulbs and this mugwort
them plant; eat
and remain deep in your cave for a hundred
days. When you emerge into the daylight you
will be man and woman.'
So the and the bear ate the garlic and
tiger
mugwort plant and went to their cave. The bear
was patient, enduring the dark, damp cave
without food for a hundred days; but the tiger
could not sit alone for long with no food. It ran
away into the hills.

As the bear emerged from its long vigil into

the sunlight, it suddenly changed into a beautiful
young woman. The bear-woman was overjoyed
with her new form. She went straight to the
sacred sandalwood tree to thank the Heavenly
Prince.
'But where is the tiger?' asked the Prince.
'Oh, he ran away before the hundred days/
she said.
 Dan-Gun, First Emperor of Korea

'That's a pity/ he replied with a frown, Tor

he was to be your husband and father of your
children. Never mind, you will be empress of this
land and bear a son with no father; he shall be
known as Dan-Gun, the Sandalwood Emperor.'
And so it was that Prince Dan-Gun was born
some four thousand three hundred years ago.
When he was grown to manhood he became the
first human emperor of the land. He built his

capital at Pyongyang and gave his kingdom the

name Chosun — Land of the Morning Calm. Later
in lifemoved his capital to Mount Asadal, now
he
Mount Guwol in Hwang-He Province. Today it is
the site of a holy shrine called Sam-Song or the
Three Saints: Hwan-In the Celestial Emperor,
Hwan-Ung the Heavenly Prince, and Dan-Gun
the human emperor of Korea.
first

Folk say that when Dan-Gun died he became

a San-Sin or Mountain God. He is never forgotten
by the grateful people of Korea.
 Blindman's Daughter
Shim Chung

the Land of the Morning Calm, there once

In lived a poor blindman Shim-Pongsa and his
beloved daughter Shim Chung. When
Chung's mother died in childbirth, Shim-Pongsa
had to take Chung from house to house in search

of mothers' milk to keep her alive. And as she

grew older, her father took her with him through

the village, begging for food. So Chung became
well known and loved by all the neighbourhood.
She was a kind and hard-working giil, devoted to
her father.
When she was twelve a nobleman's wife
offered her work as a maid; this pleased Chung, for
she could work all day in the big house and take a
little food home to her father at twilight.
One day, however, she was late returning
home; was anxious for her safety, Shim-
since he
Pongsa went out to meet his daughter. Feeling his
way along the path with a stick, Shim-Pongsa
 Blindman's Daughter Shim Chung

came to a narrow bridge across the stream; but in

his haste, he slipped and fell into the water.
'Help, help, save me/ he cried, splashing in

the water.
He was lucky. A passing monk heard his
shouts and ran to pull him out. The monk took
Shim-Pongsa home and, on learning that he was
blind, told him how he could regain his sight.
*
You should take three hundred sacks of rice
to Buddha's temple and you will see what you will
see/
In his excitement old Shim-Pongsa promised
he would do just that. At last he would see his
daughter!
But when the monk had departed, the
blindman began to regret his foolish promise.
Where would he obtain one sackful of rice, let
alone three hundred?
Finally Chung came home. She was late
because of a party at the nobleman's house. But she
had brought her father some rice cakes. When he
only picked at the food and hung his head in
silence, she realized something was wrong.

'What is the matter, Father? Are you unwell?'

she asked.
'No, no,' the old man sighed.
Yet he was eager to shed the burden lying
heavily upon his heart, and he soon told her all
about his misadventure, the monk, and the foolish
promise.
Discovering Diverse Content Through
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Tennessee. Stately pines crowded close about the clearing and
beyond the lake the hill dropped away, leaving a sweeping view out
across the valley. Man seemed a very small creature beneath those
giant trees, in the face of the great distances to the range of
mountains beyond the valley. There was nothing about the camp to
recall one's daily life. The thousand and one things which insistently
distract one's attention from religion had been excluded.
Every care had been taken to make the camp contrast with, and
win people from, "The Springs,"—a fashionable and worldly resort
nearby. There was no card playing nor dancing, as such things were
supposed to offend the Deity. The stage to the railroad station did
not run on Sunday.
After breakfast every day the great family—a hundred people or
more—gathered by the lake-side and the Father led in prayer. During
the morning there were study courses, most of which were Bible
classes. I only remember two which were secular. One was on
Literature and the King James Version was taken as a model of
English prose. No mention was made of the fact that much of the
original had been poetry. There was also a course on "Science." A
professor of Exigesis from a neighboring Theological Seminary
delivered a venomous polemic against Darwin. The "Nebular
Hypothesis" was demolished with many convincing gestures.
My little love affair with Margot had put me in a state of
exaltation. Other things conspired to make me especially susceptible
to religious suggestion. Oliver was back from his second year in the
seminary. My dislike for him was forgotten. He seemed very eloquent
to me in the young people's meetings, which he conducted.
 Mary was there with her three children and had taken for the
summer the cottage at one end of the semi-circle overlooking the
lake. Her husband, Prof. Everett, had been away for several months
on the geological expedition to Alaska, which was, I believe, the
foundation of the eminence he now holds in that science. Mary also
had been caught up in the religious fervor of the place. To me she
seemed wonderfully spiritualized and beautiful beyond words. Oliver
and I used often to walk home with her after the evening meetings
and, sitting out on her porch over the water, talk of religion.
Sundays were continuous revival meetings. Famous fishers-of-
souls came every week. All methods from the most spiritual to the
coarsest were used to wean us from our sins. It was "Salvation"
Milton, who landed me.
He was the star attraction of the summer's program. He stayed
in the camp two weeks, fourteen days of tense emotion, bordering
on hysteria. To many people "Salvation" Milton has seemed a very
Apostle. His message has come to them as holy words from the
oracle of the Most High. To such it may, I fear, seem blasphemous
for me—a criminologist—to write of him as a specimen of pathology.
But I have met many who were very like him in our criminal courts.
I have no doubt of his sincerity—up to the limit of his poor
distorted brain. He had moments of exaltation when he thought that
he talked face to face with God. He believed intensely in his mission.
He had lesser moments, which he regretted as bitterly as did his
friends who, like the sons of Noah, covered him with a sheet that his
drunken nakedness might not be seen by men. He was pitifully
unbalanced. But I think that if he had been given the strength of will
to choose, he would have always been the ardent servant of God we
saw in him at the camp meeting.
He was a master of his craft. By meditation and fasting and
prayer he could whip himself into an emotional state when
passionate eloquence flowed from his lips with almost irresistible
conviction. He was also adept at the less venerable tricks of his
trade.
It was his custom in the afternoon about four to walk apart in
the woods and spend an hour or more on his knees. Once he took
me with him. I remember the awe of sitting there on the pine
needles, in the silence of the forest and watching him "wrestle with
the Spirit." I tried to pray also, but I could not keep my mind on it so
long. Suddenly he began to speak, asking Christ's intercession on my
behalf. And walking home, he talked to me about my soul. For the
first time I was "overtaken by a conviction of sin." That night he
preached on the Wages of Sin.
I will never forget the horror of fear which held me through that
service. Milton was in the habit of dealing with and overcoming men
of mature mind. Such a lad as I was putty in his hands. When, out
of the shivering terror of it, came the loud-shouted promise of
salvation, immunity from all he had made me feel my just deserts, I
stumbled abjectly up the aisle and took my place among the
"Seekers." I must say he had comfort ready for us. I remember he
put his arm over my shoulder and told me not to tremble, not to be
afraid. God was mighty to save. Long before the world was made He
had builded a mansion for me in the skies. He would wash away all
my sins in the blood of the Lamb. Milton had scared me into a
willingness to wade through an ocean filled with blood if safety lay
beyond.
The next morning brought me peace. I suppose my overstrained
nerves had come to the limit of endurance. I thought it was the
promised "peace which passeth all understanding." I was sure of my
salvation. Several weeks of spiritual exaltation followed. I read the
Bible passionately, sometimes alone, more often with Oliver or Mary,
for it was the fashion to worship in common. Whenever the
opportunity offered in the meetings, I made "public testimony."
But I would have found it hard to define my faith. I had been
badly frightened and had recovered. This, I thought, came from
God. I had only a crude idea of the Deity. In general, I thought of
Him as very like the Father, with white hair and a great beard. I
thought of Him as intimately interested in all I did and thought,
jotting it all down in the tablets of judgment—a bookkeeper who
never slumbered. I was not at all clear on the Trinity. These
mountain Presbyterians were Old Testament Christians. The Christ
had a minor role in their Passion Play. They talked a good deal of the
Holy Ghost, but God, the Father, the King of Kings, the jealous
Jehovah of Israel was their principal deity. We were supposed to love
Him, but in reality we all feared Him. However, I was very proud in
the conviction that I was one of His elect.
Advancing years bring me a desire for a more subtle judgment
on things than the crude verdict of "right" or "wrong." I look back on
my religious training, try to restrain the tears and sneers and think
of it calmly. I doubt if any children are irreligious. Some adults claim
to be, but I think it means that they are thoughtless—or woefully
discouraged. We live in the midst of mystery. We are born from it
and when we die we enter it again. Anyone who thinks must have
some attitude towards the Un-understandable—must have a religion.
And loving parents inevitably will try to help their children to a clean
and sweet emotional relation towards the unknown. Evidently it is
not an easy undertaking. For the adults who surrounded me in my
childhood, in spite of their earnest efforts, in spite of their prayers
for guidance, instead of developing my religious life, distorted it
horribly. They were sincerely anxious to lead me towards Heaven. I
do not think it is putting it too strongly to say they were hounding
me down the road which is paved with good intentions.
I can think of no more important task, than the development of
a sane and healthy "course of religious education for children." The
one supplied in our Sunday schools seems to me very far below the
mark. It is a work which will require not only piety, but a deep
knowledge of pedagogics.
Certainly the new and better regime will discourage precocious
"professions of faith." I do not think it will insist that we are born in
sin and born sinful. Above all it will take care not to make religion
appear ugly or fearsome to childish imagination. Even the most
orthodox Calvinists will learn—let us hope—to reserve "the fountain
filled with blood" and the fires of Hell for adults. The Sunday school
of the future will be held out in the fields, among the flowers, and
the wonder of the child before this marvelous universe of ours will
be cherished and led into devotion—into natural gratitude for the gift
of the earth and the fulness thereof. Surely this is wiser than keeping
the children indoors to learn the catechism. I can think of nothing
which seems to me less of a religious ceremony than those
occasions, when Bibles are given to all the Sunday school scholars
who can recite the entire catechism. What have youngsters to do
with such finespun metaphysics? Oh! the barren hours I wasted
trying to get straight the differences between "Justification,"
"Sanctification," and "Adoption"—or was it "Redemption." One would
suppose that Jesus had said "Suffer the little children, who know the
catechism, to come unto me."
But, of course, at sixteen, I had no such ideas as these. I knew
of no religious life except such as I saw about me. I had been
carefully taught to believe that a retentive memory and a glib tongue
were pleasing to the Most High. I was very contemptuous towards
the children of my age who were less proficient.

VI

In the midst of this peace a bolt fell which ended my religious life.
Its lurid flame momentarily illumined the great world beyond my
knowing. And the visioning of things for which I was unprepared was
too much for me. I may not be scientifically correct, but it has
always seemed to me that what I saw that July night stunned the
section of my brain which has to do with "Acts of faith." Never since
have I been able to believe, religiously, in anything.
It was a Sunday. At the vesper service, all of us seated on the
grass at the edge of the lake, the Father had preached about our
bodies being the temples of God. As usual, Oliver led the young
people's meeting after supper. These more intimate gatherings
meant more to me than the larger assemblies. Our text was "Blessed
are the pure in heart." I remember clearly how Oliver looked, tall
and stalwart and wonderful in his young manhood. He has a great
metropolitan church now and he has won his way by oratory. The
eloquence on which he was to build his career had already begun to
show itself.
Mary sang. I have also a sharp picture of her. She wore a light
lawn dress, which the brilliant moon-light turned almost white. Her
years seemed to have fallen from her and she looked as she had
done on her wedding night. In her rich, mellow contralto she sang
the saddest of all church music: "He was despised."
Something delayed me after the service and when I looked
about for Oliver and Mary they were gone. I went to her house but
the maid said they had not come. The mystery of religious fervor
and the glory of the night kept me from waiting on the verandah,
called me out to wander down by the water's edge. But I wearied
quickly of walking and, coming back towards the house, lay down on
the grass under a great tree. The full moon splashed the country
round with sketches of ghostly white and dense black shadows.
Two ideas were struggling in my mind. There was an insistent
longing that Margot might be with me to share this wonder of
religious experience. Conflicting with this desire, compelled, I
suppose, by the evening's texts, was a strong push towards extreme
asceticism. I was impatient for Oliver's return. I wanted to ask him
why our church had abandoned monasticism.
How long I pondered over this I do not know. Perhaps I fell
asleep, but at last I heard them coming back through the woods.
There was something in Oliver's voice, which checked my impulse to
jump up and greet them. It was something hot and hurried,
something fierce and ominous. But as they came out into a patch of
moonlight, although they fell suddenly silent, I knew they were not
quarreling. Mary cautioned him with a gesture and went into the
house. Through the open windows I heard her tell the negro maid
that she might go home. I heard her say "Good night" and lock the
back door. The girl hummed a lullaby as she walked away. All the
while Oliver sat on the steps.
I do not know what held me silent, crouching there in the
shadow. I had no idea of what was to come. But the paralyzing hand
of premonition was laid upon me. I knew some evil was
approaching, and I could not have spoken or moved.
"Oliver," she said, in a voice I did not know, as she came out on
the porch, "you must go away. It is wrong. Dreadfully wrong."
But he jumped up and threw his arms about her.
"It's sin, Oliver," she said, "you're a minister."
"I'm a man," he said, fiercely.
Then they went into the house. It was not till years afterwards,
when I read Ebber's book—"Homo Sum" that I realized, in the story
of that priest struggling with his manhood, what the moment must
have meant to Oliver.
I tiptoed across the grass to the shade of the house. A blind had
been hurriedly pulled down—too hurriedly. A thin ribbon of light
streamed out below it.
I could not now write down what I saw through that window, if
I tried. But in the frame of mind of those days, with my ignorance of
life, it meant the utter desecration of all holiness. Oliver and Mary
had stood on my highest pedestal, a god and goddess. I saw them
in the dust. No. It seemed the veriest mire.
 I turned away at last to drown myself. It was near the water's
edge that they picked me up unconscious some hours later. The
doctors called it brain fever. Almost a month passed before I became
rational again. I was amazed to find that in my delirium I had not
babbled of what I had seen. Neither Oliver nor Mary suspected their
part in my sickness. More revolting to me than what they had done
was the hypocrisy with which they hid it.
Above all things I dreaded any kind of an explanation and I
developed an hypocrisy as gross as theirs. I smothered my
repugnance to Mary's kisses and pretended to like to have Oliver
read the Bible to me. And when I was able to get about again, I
attended meetings as before. There was black hatred in my heart
and the communion bread nauseated me. What was left of the
summer was only a longing for the day when I should leave for
school. Nothing mattered except to escape from these associations.
I am not sure what caused it—the weeks of religious hysteria
which accompanied my conversion, what I saw through the crack
below the window curtain, or the fever—but some time between the
coming of "Salvation" Milton and my recovery, that little speck of
gray matter, that minute ganglia of nerve-cells, with which we
believe, ceased to function.

BOOK II

I
Early in September Oliver took me East to school. It was not one of
our widely advertised educational institutions. The Father had
chosen it, I think, because it was called a Presbyterial Academy and
the name assured its orthodoxy.
I remember standing on the railroad platform, after Oliver had
made all the arrangements with the principal, waiting for the train to
come which was to carry him out of my sight. How long the minutes
lasted! It is a distressing thing for a boy of sixteen to hate anyone
the way I hated my cousin. I was glad that he was not really my
brother.
It is strange how life changes our standards. Now, when I think
back over those days, I am profoundly sorry for him. It was, I think,
his one love. It could have brought him very little joy for it must
have seemed to him as heinous a sin as it did to me.
Five years later he married. I am sure he has been scrupulously
faithful to his wife. She is a woman to be respected and her ambition
has been a great stimulus to his upclimbing. But I doubt if he has
really loved her as he must have loved Mary to break, as he did, all
his morality for her. To him love must have seemed a thing of
tragedy. But boyhood is stern. I had no pity for him.
His going lifted a great weight from me. As I walked back alone
to the school, I wanted to shout. I was beginning a new life—my
own. I had no very clear idea of what I was going to do with this
new freedom of mine. I can only recall one plank in my platform—I
was going to fight.
The one time I can remember fighting at home, I had been
thrashed by the boy, caned by the school teacher and whipped by
the Father, when he noticed my black eye. Fighting was strictly
forbidden. After this triple beating I fell into the habit of being
bullied. As even the smallest boy in our village knew I was afraid to
defend myself, I was the victim of endless tyrannies. The first use I
wanted to make of my new freedom was to change this. I resolved
to resent the first encroachment.
It came that very day from one of the boys in the fourth class. I
remember that his name was Blake. Just before supper we had it
out on the tennis-court. It was hardly fair to him. He fought without
much enthusiasm. It was to him part of the routine of keeping the
new boys in order. To me it was the Great Emancipation. I threw into
it all the bitterness of all the humiliations and indignities of my
childhood. The ceremonial of "seconds" and "rounds" and "referee"
was new to me. At home the boys just jumped at each other and
punched and bit, and pulled hair and kicked until one said he had
enough. As soon as they gave the word to begin, I shut my eyes and
hammered away. We battered each other for several rounds and
then Blake was pronounced victor on account of some technicality.
They told me, pityingly, that I did not know how to fight. But all
I had wanted was to demonstrate that I was not afraid. I had won
that. It was the only fight I had in school. Even the bullies did not
care to try conclusions with me, and I had no desire to force trouble.
I had won a respect in the little community which I had never
enjoyed before.
In a way it was a small matter, but it was portentous for me. It
was the first time I had done the forbidden thing and found it good.
The Father had been wrong in prohibiting self-defense. It was an
entering wedge to realize that his wisdom had been at fault here. In
time his whole elaborate structure of morals fell to the ground.
 The school was a religious one, of course. But the teachers,
with eminent good sense, realized that other things were more
important for growing boys than professions of faith. It seemed that,
after my illness, my mind woke up in sections. The part which was
to ponder over Mary and Oliver, which was to think out my relation
to God, for a long time lay dormant. I puttered along at my Latin
and Greek and Algebra, played football and skated and, with the
warm weather, went in for baseball.
In the spring a shadow came over me—the idea of returning
home. The more I thought of another summer in the camp, the
more fearsome it seemed. At last I went to the doctor.
He was the first, as he was one of the most important, of the
many people whose kindness and influence have illumined my life.
He was physical director of the school and also had a small practice
in the village. There were rumors that he drank and he never came
to church. If there had been another doctor available, he would not
have been employed by the school.
I never knew a man of more variable moods. Some days on the
football field he would throw himself into the sport with amazing vim
for an adult, would laugh and joke and call us by our first names.
Again he would sit on the bench by the side-line scowling fiercely,
taking no interest in us, muttering incoherently to himself. One day
another boy and I were far "out of bounds" looking for chestnuts.
We saw him coming through the trees and hid under some brush-
wood. He had a gun under one arm, but was making too much noise
for a hunter. He gesticulated wildly with his free arm and swore
appallingly. We were paralyzed with fear. I do not think either of us
told anyone about it. For in spite of his queer ways, all the boys,
who were not sneaky nor boastful, liked him immensely.
One Saturday afternoon I found courage to go to his office.
There were several farmers ahead of me. I had a long wait, and
when at last my turn came I was mightily frightened.
"If I go home this summer," I blurted out, "I'll be sick again."
Oliver had told him about my illness. At first he laughed at me,
but I insisted so doggedly that he began to take me seriously. He
tried to make me tell him my troubles but I could not. Then he
examined me carefully, tapping my knee for reflexes and doing other
incomprehensible things which are now commonplace psychological
tests. But for a country doctor in those days they were very
progressive.
"Why are you so excited?" he asked suddenly, "Are you afraid I'll
hurt you?"
"No," I said, "I'm afraid I'll have to go home."
"You're a rum chap."
He sat down and wrote to the Father. I do not know what
argument he used, but it was successful. A letter came in due course
giving me permission to accept an invitation to pass the summer
with one of my schoolmates.
It was a wonderful vacation for me—my first taste of the sea.
The boy's family had a cottage on the south shore of Long Island.
The father who was a lawyer went often to the city. But the week
ends he spent with us were treats. He played with us! He really
enjoyed teaching me to swim and sail. I remember my pride when
he would trust me with the main-sheet or the tiller. The mother also
loved sailing. That she should enjoy playing with us was even a
greater surprise to me than that my friend's father should. Whatever
their winter religion was, they had none in the summer—unless
being happy is a religion. I gathered some new ideals from that
family for the home which Margot and I were to build.
In the spring-term of my second and last year in the school, we
were given a course on the "Evidences of Christianity." It was a
formal affair, administered by an old Congregationalist preacher from
the village, whom we called "Holy Sam." He owed the nickname to
his habit of pronouncing "psalm" to rhyme with "jam." He always
opened the Sunday Vesper service by saying: "We will begin our
worship with a holy sam." I think he took no more interest in the
course than most of the boys did. It was assumed that we were all
Christians and it was his rather thankless task to give us "reasonable
grounds" for what we already believed.
It had the opposite effect on me. The book we used for a text
was principally directed against atheists. I had never heard of an
atheist before, it was a great idea to me that there were people who
did not believe in God. I had not doubted His existence. I had hated
Him. The faith and love I had given Mary and Oliver had turned to
disgust and loathing. Their existence I could not doubt, and God was
only the least of this trinity.
It would be an immense relief if I could get rid of my belief in
God. The necessity of hate would be lifted from me. And so—with
my eighteen-year-old intellect—I began to reason about Deity.
The pendulum of philosophy has swung a long way since I was
a youth in school. To-day we are more interested in the subjective
processes of devotion—what Tolstoi called the kingdom of God
within us—than in definitions of an external, objective concept. The
fine spun scholastic distinctions of the old denominational theologies
are losing their interest. Almost all of us would with reverence agree
with Rossetti:

To God at best, to Chance at worst,

Give thanks for good things last as first.
But windstrown blossom is that good
Whose apple is not gratitude.
Even if no prayer uplift thy face
Let the sweet right to render grace
As thy soul's cherished child be nurs'd.

The Father's generation held that a belief in God, as defined by the

Westminster confession was more important than any amount of
rendering grace. I thought I was at war with God. Of course I was
only fighting against the Father's formal definition. Our text book, in
replying to them, quoted the arguments of Thomas Paine. The logic
employed against him was weak and unconvincing. It was wholly
based on the Bible. This was manifestly begging the question for if
God was a myth, the scriptures were fiction. Nowadays, the tirades
of Paine hold for me no more than historic interest. The final appeal
in matters of religion is not to pure reason. The sanction for "faith"
escapes the formalism of logic. But at eighteen the "Appeal to
Reason" seemed unanswerable to me.
I began to lose sleep. As the spring advanced, I found my room
too small for my thoughts and I fell into the habit of slipping down
the fire-escape and walking through the night. There was an old
mill-race near the school and I used to pace up and down the dyke
for hours. Just as with egg-stealing something pushed me into this
and I worried very little about what would happen if I were found
out.
After many nights of meditation I put my conclusions down on
paper. I have kept the soiled and wrinkled sheet, written over in a
scragly boyish hand, ever since. First of all there were the two
propositions "There is a God," "There is no God." If there is a God,
He might be either a personal Jehovah, such as the Father believed
in, or an impersonal Deity like that of the theists. These were all the
possibilities I could think of. And in regard to these propositions, I
wrote the following:
"I cannot find any proof of a personal God. It would take strong
evidence to make me believe in such a cruel being. How could an
all-powerful God, who cared, leave His children in ignorance? There
are many grown-up men who think they know what the Bible
means. They have burned each other at the stake—Catholics and
Protestants—they would kill each other still, if there were not laws
against it. A personal God would not let his followers fight about his
meaning. He would speak clearly. If he could and did not, he would
be a scoundrel. I would hate such a God. But there are no good
arguments for a personal God.
"An impersonal God would be no better than no God. He would
not care about men. Such a God could not give us any law. Every
person would have to find out for himself what was right.
"If there is no God, it is the same as if there was an impersonal
God.
"Therefore man has no divine rule about what is good and bad.
He must find out for himself. This experiment must be the aim of life
—to find out what is good. I think that the best way to live would be
so that the biggest number of people would be glad you did live."
Such was my credo at eighteen. It has changed very little. I do
not believe—in many things. My philosophy is still negative. And life
seems to me now, as it did then, an experiment in ethics.
My midnight walks by the mill-race were brought to an abrupt
end. My speculations were interrupted by the doctor's heavy hand
falling on my shoulder.
"What are you doing out of bed at this hour? Smoking?"
I was utterly confused, seeing no outlet but disgrace. My very
fright saved me. I could not collect my wits to lie.
"Thinking about God," I said.
The doctor let out a long whistle and sat down beside me.
"Was that what gave you brain fever?"
"Yes."
"Well—tell me about it."
No good thing which has come to me since can compare with
what the doctor did for me that night. For the first time in my life an
adult talked with me seriously, let me talk. Grown-ups had talked to
and at me without end. I had been told what I ought to believe. He
was the first to ask me what I believed. It was perhaps the great
love for him, which sprang up in my heart that night, which has
made me in later life especially interested in such as he.
I began at the beginning, and when I got to "Salvation" Milton,
he interrupted me.
"We're smashing rules so badly to-night, we might as well do
more. I'm going to smoke. Want a cigar?"
 I did not smoke in those days. But the offer of that cigar, his
treating me like an adult and equal, gave me a new pride in life,
gave me courage to go through with my story, to tell about Oliver
and Mary, to tell him of my credo. He sat there smoking silently and
heard me through.
"What do you think?" I asked at last, "Do you believe in God?"
"I don't know. I never happened to meet him in any laboratory.
It sounds to me like a fairy story."
"Then you're an atheist," I said eagerly.
"No. A skeptic." And he explained the difference.
"How do you know what's good and what's bad?"
"I don't know," he replied. "I only know that some things are
comfortable and some aren't. It is uncomfortable to have people
think you are a liar, especially so when you happen to be telling the
truth. It is uncomfortable to be caught stealing. But I know some
thieves who are uncaught and who seem quite comfortable. Above
all it's uncomfortable to know you are a failure."
His voice trailed off wearily. It was several minutes before he
began again.
"I couldn't tell you what's right and what's wrong—even if I
knew. You don't believe in God, why should you believe in me? If
you don't believe the Bible you mustn't believe any book. No—that's
not what I mean. A lot of the Bible is true. Some of it we don't
believe, you and I. So with the other books—part true, part false.
Don't trust all of any book or any man."
"How can I know which part to believe?"
"You'd be the wisest man in all the world, my boy, if you knew
that," he laughed.
 Then after a long silence, he spoke in a cold hard voice.
"Listen to me. I'm not a good man to trust. I'm a failure."
He told me the pitiful story of his life, told it in an even,
impersonal tone as though it were the history of someone else. He
had studied in Germany, had come back to New York, a brilliant
surgeon, the head of a large hospital.
"I was close to the top. There wasn't a man anywhere near my
age above me. Then the smash. It was a woman. You can't tell
what's right and wrong in these things. Don't blame that cousin of
yours or the girl. If anybody ought to know it's a doctor. I didn't. It's
the hardest problem there is in ethics. The theological seminaries
don't help. It's stupid just to tell men to keep away from it—sooner
or later they don't. And nobody can tell them what's right. You
wouldn't understand my case if I told you about it. It finished me. I
began to drink. Watch out for the drink. That's sure to be
uncomfortable. I was a drunkard—on the bottom. At last I heard
about her again. She was coming down fast—towards the bottom.
Well, I knew what the bottom was like—and I did not want her to
know."
He smoked his cigar furiously for a moment before he went on.
He had crawled out and sobered up. This school work and the village
practice gave him enough to keep her in a private hospital. She had
consumption.
"And sometime—before very long," he ended, "she will die and
—well—I can go back to Forgetting-Land."
Of course I did not understand half what it meant. How I racked
my heart for some word of comfort! I wanted to ask him to stay in
the school and help other boys as he was helping me. But I could
not find phrases. At last his cigar burned out and he snapped the
stub into the mill-race. There was a sharp hiss, which sounded like a
protest, before it sank under the water. He jumped up.
"You ought to be in bed. A youngster needs sleep. Don't worry
your head about God. It's more important for you to make the
baseball team. Run along."
I had only gone a few steps when he called me back.
"You know—if you should tell anyone, I might lose my position.
I don't care for myself—but be careful on her account. Goodnight."
He turned away before I could protest. His calling me back is
the one cloud on my memory of him. His secret was safe.
For the rest of the school year I gave my undivided attention to
baseball. The doctor was uniformly gruff to me. We did not have
another talk.
Two weeks before the school closed he disappeared. I knew
that she had died, he would not have deserted his post while her
need lasted. On Commencement Day, John, the apple-man, handed
me a letter from him. I tore it up carefully after reading it, as he
asked—threw the fragments out of the window of the train which
was carrying me homeward. There was much to help me to clear
thinking in that letter, but the most important part was advice about
how to act towards the Father. "Don't tell him your doubts now. It
would only distress him. Wait till you're grown up before you quarrel
with him."

II
Nothing of moment happened in the weeks I spent in camp meeting
that summer. Luckily Mary was not there and Oliver, having finished
the Seminary, was passing some months in Europe. I bore in mind
the Doctor's advice, avoided all arguments and mechanically
observed the forms of that religious community. No one suspected
my godlessness, but I suspected everyone of hypocrisy. It was a
barren time of deceit.
Even my correspondence with Margot gave me no pleasure. I
could not write to her about my doubts, but I wanted very much to
talk them over with her. While I could not put down on paper what
was uppermost in my heart, I found it very hard to fill letters with
less important things. Whenever I have been less than frank, I have
always found it dolefully unsatisfactory.
I imagine that most thoughtful boys of my generation were
horribly alone. It is getting more the custom nowadays for adults to
be friends with children. The Doctor at school was the only man in
whom I had ever confided. And in my loneliness I looked forward
eagerly to long talks with Margot. I supposed that love meant
understanding.
The serious sickness of the Mother took us home before the
summer was ended. I had not been especially unhappy there during
my childhood, but now that I had seen other pleasanter homes, my
own seemed cruelly cheerless. Its gloom was intensified because the
Mother was dying. I had had no special love for her but the thing
was made harder for me by my lack of sympathy with their religious
conventions. It was imperative that they should not question God's
will. The Mother did not want to die. The Father was, I am sure,
broken-hearted at the thought of losing her. They kept up a brave
attitude—to me it seemed a hollow pretense—that God was being
very good to them, that he was releasing her from the bondage of
life, calling her to joy unspeakable. However much she was attached
to things known—the Father, her absent son, the graves of her other
children, the homely things of the parsonage, the few pieces of
inherited silver, the familiar chairs—it was incumbent on her to
appear glad to go out into the unknown.
It was my first encounter with death. How strange it is that the
greatest of all commonplaces should always surprise us! What twist
in our brains is it, that makes us try so desperately to ignore death?
The doctors of philosophy juggle words over their Erkenntnis Theorie
—trying to discover the confines of human knowledge, trying to
decide for us what things are knowable and what we may not know
—but above all their prattle, the fact of death stands out as one
thing we all do know. Whether our temperaments incline us to
reverence pure reason or to accept empirical knowledge, we know,
beyond cavil, that we must surely die. Yet what an amazing amount
of mental energy we expend in trying to forget it. The result? We are
all surprised and unnerved when this commonplace occurs.
Christianity claims to have conquered death. For the elect, the
Father taught, it is a joyous awakening. The people of the church
scrupulously went through the forms which their creed imposed.
Who can tell the reality of their thoughts? There is some validity in
the theory of psychology which says that if you strike a man, you
become angry; that if you laugh, it makes you glad. I would not now
deny that they got some comfort from their attitude. But at the time,
tossing about in my stormy sea of doubts, it seemed to me that they
were all afraid. Just as well disciplined troops will wheel and mark
time and ground arms, go through all the familiar manoeuvres of the
parade ground, while the shells of the enemy sweep their ranks with
cold fear, so it seemed to me that these soldiers of Christ were
performing rites for which they had lost all heart in an effort to
convince themselves that they were not afraid.
A great tenderness and pity came to me for the Mother. As I
have said there had been little affection between us. All her love had
gone out to Oliver. Yet in those last days, when she was so helpless,
it seemed to comfort her if I sat by her bed-side and stroked her
hand. Some mystic sympathy sprang up between us and she felt no
need of pretense before me. I sat there and watched sorrow on her
face, hopeless grief, yes, and sometimes rebellion and fear. But with
brave loyalty she hid it all when the Father came into the room,
dried her tears and talked of the joy that was set before her.
There was also a sorrow of my own. Disillusionment had come
to me from Margot. Why I had expected that she would sympathize
with and understand my doubts, I do not know. It was a wild
enough dream.
The first night at home I went to see her. The family crowded
about with many questions. Al was attending a southern military
academy and there were endless comparisons to be made between
his school and mine. But at last Margot and I got free of them and
off by ourselves in an arbor. She seemed older than I, the maturity
which had come to her in these two years startled me. But I blurted
out my troubles without preface.
"Margot," I said, "Do you believe everything in the Bible?"
I suppose she was expecting some word of love. Two years
before, when I had left her, I had kissed her. And now——
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