On Inanimate Objects

THE CONTRIBUTORS’ CLUB

To be an inanimate object must be, I fancy, a very uninteresting affair. Certainly, being one appears to have a disastrous effect upon the disposition. No one who has had any intercourse with inanimate objects can doubt that their one end and aim is to try the temper of animate objects. It is unfortunate, truly, to have all the energies concentrated upon such a very low ambition, and I am inclined to think that the dullness of their existence is really responsible for this; therefore I suppose one should deal with them more in sorrow than in anger.

But deal with them one must, and it is because I have discovered one rule to be most efficacious in one’s conduct toward them that I have seized this opportunity of setting it forth for the benefit of my fellow animate objects. The rule is: Keep your temper, observing as far as possible an attitude at least of outward calm. No matter how irritating they may be, and indeed they can be most irritating, never give them the satisfaction of seeing you show vexation. This may all sound very trite, and I suppose it is, but, like so many commonplace things, let one try really to practice it, and immediately one finds that it is anything but commonplace.

In common with the rest of humanity I have had, in my dealing with inanimate objects, many opportunities for the observance of serenity, and when I have succeeded in observing it I have reaped a joyous reward.

There was, for instance, the discipline that I received all one winter from a net frock, the desire of whose being was to get itself hooked into things. I congratulate myself on the calmness which I early learned to show, when the hooks of the skirt, having been foiled in their attempt to catch in my pompadour, succeeded in clutching themselves with an unholy glee into the bodice, just in the very middle, at the most inaccessible spot in my back. Of course at such moments the first impulse is to go perfectly wild, to squirm, to clutch, to swear, if one happens to be a man, —which perhaps under the circumstances is unlikely, — but I learned to resist all these impulses. I cultivated an absolute calm. I sang a snatch of song — I, who never sing. I polished my fingernails, I looked at the view, in fact, I did any and every thing to show my utter indifference to those infuriating hooks. And then, at last, after the song, the look at the view, or whatever I had resorted to, — and sometimes it even required a whole essay of Emerson’s to restore my peace of mind, — I would quietly and sweetly squirm my hand up and gently detach the hooks from my back. And glad enough I found them to let go, being quite convinced by that time that they were not exciting any attention whatever. After the first few weeks of ownership I learned to play the game successfully, to meet with an unruffled brow all that frock’s most subtle attempts to try my temper; and I rejoice to think what an uninteresting time it must have had. The only satisfaction it ever obtained was at parties, where it invariably managed to hook itself up to perfectly strange ladies. Even this I learned to meet with equanimity; the stranger, however, was not always so placid.

This rule of the kept temper, and outer indifference, may be applied to all sorts and conditions of inanimate objects. I have found it most effectual in the case of dictionaries and typewriter erasers. Their great desire is to get themselves lost when they are most needed. Now, of course, the only real pleasure in being lost, to an inanimate object, is the delight that it obtains from the frantic search for it to which it stirs some animate object. My dictionary has in times past, I doubt not, been afforded many an agreeable halfhour from the extreme exasperation to which it has provoked me, when, just in the middle of a most crucial sentence, I have been forced to pause in my writing and institute a wild search for it, just because, forsooth, I did not know how to spell a word. The same with the eraser; when I needed it most, it was not to be found. Now, however, I am enabled to maintain an attitude of indifference toward them both by the simple expedient of never settling to write without first having at hand three dictionaries, and at least half a dozen erasers. Even in the most impassioned morning’s work one is not likely to lose three whole dictionaries and six rubbers. When I reach eagerly now for either of these articles, and find that they have maliciously concealed themselves, I draw a calm breath, and simply take another, remarking, perhaps, ‘Oh, well, I don’t care! this dictionary or eraser ’ (as the case may be) ‘is really much better,’ this having the double effect of driving home to the offender my indifference to it, and of administering at the same time a little gentle flattery to the fresh one taken. After my work for the day is finished, I cast a careless eye about for the lost articles, and by that time glad enough they are to be found, having discovered that the game of being lost when no one looks for them is a very dull business.

Of course these are only examples. Every one will have his or her own particularly infuriating inanimate object to which to apply the rule of the kept temper.

I may add that for the keeping of one’s temper in this respect there is sometimes a pretty reward. My grandmother used to tell a story of a young lady whose plant-stand managed, one morning when she was tending her flowers, in some way — the devil of inanimate objects knows how (my grandmother did not say devil) — to upset itself, and to dash all its precious burden to the ground. Without so much as an exclamation of annoyance, the young lady immediately set about gathering up the broken plants as best she could, whereupon a young gentleman — in every way all that was desirable — who, unknown to the lady had witnessed the accident, stepped forth and at once proposed to her, rightly supposing that a woman of such sweetness of disposition was a jewel beyond price. In my youth I used to wonder if the lady was really quite oblivious of the young gentleman’s presence; but age has softened me and made me glad to believe that she was.