Mary, Mary

nothing to do with that thing at all; it may only be gilded, it is very likely made of tin of a dull colour and a lamentable sound, unworthy even of being stolen; and unless our treasures may be stolen they are of no use to us. It is contrary to the laws of life to possess that which other people do not want; therefore, your beer shall foam, your wife shall be pretty, and your little truth shall have a plum in it⁠—for this is so, that your beer can only taste of your company, you can only know your wife when someone else does, and your little truth shall be savoured or perish. Do you demand a big truth? Then, O Ambitious! you must turn aside from all your companions and sit very quietly, and if you sit long enough and quiet enough it may come to you; but this thing alone of all things you cannot steal, nor can it be given to you by the County Council. It cannot be communicated, and yet you may get it. It is unspeakable but not unthinkable, and it is born as certainly and unaccountably as you were yourself, and is of just as little immediate consequence. Long, long ago, in the dim beginnings of the world, there was a careless and gay young man who said, “Let truth go to hell”—and it went there. It was his misfortune that he had to follow it; it is ours that we are his descendants. An evil will either kill you or be killed by you, and (the reflection is comforting) the odds are with us in every fight waged against humanity by the dark or elemental beings. But humanity is timid and lazy, a believer in golden means and subterfuges and compromises, loath to address itself to any combat until its frontiers are virtually overrun and its cities and granaries and places of refuge are in jeopardy from those gloomy marauders. In that wide struggle which we call Progress, evil is always the aggressor and the vanquished, and it is right that this should be so, for without its onslaughts and depredations humanity might fall to a fat slumber upon its corn-sacks and die snoring: or, alternatively, lacking these valorous alarms and excursions, it might become self-satisfied and formularised, and be crushed to death by the mere dull density of virtue. Next to good the most valuable factor in life is evil. By the interaction of these all things are possible, and therefore (or for any other reason that pleases you) let us wave a friendly hand in the direction of that bold, bad policeman whose thoughts were not governed by the Book of Regulations which is issued to all recruits, and who, in despite of the fact that he was enrolled among the very legions of order, had that chaos in his soul which may “give birth to a Dancing Star.”

As to Mary: Even ordinary, workaday politeness frowns on too abrupt a departure from a lady, particularly one whom we have companioned thus distantly from the careless simplicity of girlhood to the equally careless but complex businesses of adolescence. The world is all before her, and her chronicler may not be her guide. She will have adventures, for everybody has. She will win through with them, for everybody does. She may even meet bolder and badder men than the policeman⁠—shall we, then, detain her? I, for one, having urgent calls elsewhere, will salute her fingers and raise my hat and stand aside, and you will do likewise, because it is my pleasure that you should. She will go forward, then, to do that which is pleasing to the gods, for less than that she cannot do, and more is not to be expected of anyone.

Thus Far the Story of Mary Makebelieve

Colophon

Mary, Mary
was published in 1912 by
James Stephens.

This ebook was produced for
Standard Ebooks
by
Erin Endrei,
and is based on a transcription produced in 2007 by
An Anonymous Volunteer
for
Project Gutenberg Australia
and on digital scans from the
Internet Archive.

The cover page is adapted from
Irish Lass,
a painting completed in 1913 by
Robert Henri.
The cover and title pages feature the
League Spartan and Sorts Mill Goudy
typefaces created in 2014 and 2009 by
The League of Moveable Type.

The first edition of this ebook was released on
August 26, 2023, 2:42 p.m.
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May you do good and not evil.
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