occurred. A person remarked for his noble mien and graceful
aspect appeared close at hand, sitting and playing upon a pipe.
When not only the shepherds, but a number of soldiers also,
flocked to listen to him, and some trumpeters among them, he
snatched a trumpet from one of them, ran to the river with it,
and, sounding the advance with a piercing blast, crossed to the
other side. Upon this, Caesar exclaimed: “Let us go whither the
omens of the gods and the iniquity of our enemies call up.
THE DIE IS CAST.”
So he crossed–and changed the future of the whole human
race, for all time. But that stranger was a link in Caesar’s
life-chain, too; and a necessary one. We don’t know his name, we
never hear of him again; he was very casual; he acts like an
accident; but he was no accident, he was there by compulsion of
HIS life-chain, to blow the electrifying blast that was to make
up Caesar’s mind for him, and thence go piping down the aisles of
history forever.
If the stranger hadn’t been there! But he WAS. And Caesar
crossed. With such results! Such vast events–each a link in
the HUMAN RACE’S life-chain; each event producing the next one,
and that one the next one, and so on: the destruction of the
republic; the founding of the empire; the breaking up of the
empire; the rise of Christianity upon its ruins; the spread of
the religion to other lands–and so on; link by link took its
appointed place at its appointed time, the discovery of America
being one of them; our Revolution another; the inflow of English
and other immigrants another; their drift westward (my ancestors
among them) another; the settlement of certain of them in
Missouri, which resulted in ME. For I was one of the unavoidable
results of the crossing of the Rubicon. If the stranger, with
his trumpet blast, had stayed away (which he COULDN’T, for he was
the appointed link) Caesar would not have crossed. What would
have happened, in that case, we can never guess. We only know
that the things that did happen would not have happened. They
might have been replaced by equally prodigious things, of course,
but their nature and results are beyond our guessing. But the
matter that interests me personally is that I would not be HERE
now, but somewhere else; and probably black–there is no telling.
Very well, I am glad he crossed. And very really and thankfully
glad, too, though I never cared anything about it before.
II
To me, the most important feature of my life is its literary
feature. I have been professionally literary something more than
forty years. There have been many turning-points in my life, but
the one that was the link in the chain appointed to conduct me to
the literary guild is the most CONSPICUOUS link in that chain.
BECAUSE it was the last one. It was not any more important than
its predecessors. All the other links have an inconspicuous
look, except the crossing of the Rubicon; but as factors in
making me literary they are all of the one size, the crossing of
the Rubicon included.
I know how I came to be literary, and I will tell the steps
that lead up to it and brought it about.
The crossing of the Rubicon was not the first one, it was
hardly even a recent one; I should have to go back ages before
Caesar’s day to find the first one. To save space I will go back
only a couple of generations and start with an incident of my
boyhood. When I was twelve and a half years old, my father died.
It was in the spring. The summer came, and brought with it an
epidemic of measles. For a time a child died almost every day.
The village was paralyzed with fright, distress, despair.
Children that were not smitten with the disease were imprisoned
in their homes to save them from the infection. In the homes
there were no cheerful faces, there was no music, there was no
singing but of solemn hymns, no voice but of prayer, no romping