The Roving Critic by Carl Van Doren — Read

HONESTY IS A GIFT

A good many people think that honesty is a trait which a man chooses out of the various traits offered him by life. Perhaps it is nearer the truth to think that honesty is a gift, and innate, like a man's complexion or the shape of his skull. It can be hurt by abuse or encouraged by proper treatment, but its roots are deeper than experience. Clarence Day must have been born honest and he has, so far as I can see, never done anything to waste his birthright. The eyes with which he looks at things are as level as E. W. Howe's, but his language is lighter and his fancy nimbler. In _This Simian World_ it was his fancy which perhaps did most to get him a hearing. In _The Crow's Nest_, without giving up his fancy, he ranges over more varied fields than in his first book and seems even wiser. He has a perfect temper. He has known pain but it has not soured him -- or at least his book. He has known passion but it has left no visible ruts or hummocks in his mind. He has done all that a human being can do with his reason but he feels no resentment that reason at its best can do so little. Having a perfect temper he sits at ease in his crow's nest and surveys the deck, the sailors, rival ships, the waves, the horizon, and the sky, without heat, of course, but also without pride in his position or in his self-control. Having a perfect temper he is not harried into any violence of style by his instinct to express himself. As shrewd as a proverb, he never plays with epigrams. As much of a poet as he needs to be, he yet seems to have no need for eloquence. Such lucidity as his is both prudent and elevated.