One day John explained his theory of suppressed functions; and Louis, startled, saw in a flash that this meant the real clue to the mystery that lay behind the veil of appearances. Louis was peculiarly subject to shock from unexpected explosion of a single word; and when the word “function” was detonated by the word “suppressed,” a new, an immense idea came suddenly into being and lit up his inner and his outer world as one. Thus, with John’s aid, Louis saw the outer and the inner world more clearly, and the world of men began to assume a semblance of form, and of function. But, alas, what he had assumed to be a single vast veil of mystery that might perhaps lift of a sudden, like a cloud, proved in experience to be a series of gossamer hangings that must slowly rise up one by one, in a grand transformation scene, such as he had viewed when, as a small boy, he saw The Forty Thieves, where all was transformed into reality by a child’s imagination. Now would it be possible for him, through the reverse power of imagination, to cause the veils of the hidden world to rise and reveal? On this threshold, for a passing moment, he faltered. Then resurging courage came.
Louis soon noticed that while he himself had a clear program in life, John had none. That all this talk, while of deep import to him, was for John merely luxurious self-indulgence and a luscious hour with parade of vanity; that he, the elder, regarded the younger with patronage, much as a bright child, but a tyro in the active world; while Louis saw that John was merely drifting. In this regard each kept his thoughts to himself, while encouraging the other.
In Philadelphia, one hot summer’s evening, Louis had gone to the Academy of Music to hear a Thomas Concert. During the course of the program he had become listless, when of a sudden came the first bars of a piece so fiery, that, startled, all alert, he listened in amazement to the end. What was this? It was new—brand new. The program now consulted, said: Vorspiel, Third Act, Lohengrin—Richard Wagner. Who was Richard Wagner? Why had he never heard of him? He must look him up; for one could see at a glance that this piece was a work of genius.
He mentioned this episode to John Edelmann, shortly after they had become acquainted; and John said: “Why, at the North Side Turner Hall, Hans Balatka and his fine orchestra give a concert every Sunday afternoon, and Hans is introducing Wagner to Chicago; let’s go.” They went.
Louis heard the Pilgrims’ Chorus—and raved. They went every Sunday afternoon until Spring. There followed in course, the Vorspiel to Lohengrin, to Die Meistersinger, to the Flying Dutchman, the Ride of the Walkyrie, the amazing fabric of the overture to Tristan und Isolde, the immense solemnity of Siegfried’s Tod, the exquisite shimmering beauty of the Waldweben.
Louis needed no interpreter. It was all plain to him. He saw it all. It was all as though addressed to himself alone. And as piece after piece was deployed, before his open mind, he saw arise a Mighty Personality—a great Free Spirit, a Poet, a Master Craftsman, striding in power through a vast domain that was his own, that imagination and will had bodied forth out of himself. Suffice it—as useless to say—Louis became an ardent Wagnerite. Here, indeed, had been lifted a great veil, revealing anew, refreshing as dawn, the enormous power of man to build as a mirage, the fabric of his dreams, and with his wand of toil to make them real. Thus Louis’s heart was stirred, his courage was ten-folded in this raw city by the Great Lake in the West.
Yet John had the good sense to caution Louis to let the philosophers alone for a while; to let them lie in possession—paraphrasing Siegfried’s Dragon—as each had merely built an elaborate scaffolding, but no edifice within, and each was more concerned with the symmetry of his scaffold than with aught else, unless it be to scorn the flimsy scaffoldings of others. He said that Schopenhauer showed some intelligence, because he was a man of the world, while the others were more like spiders, weaving, in the gloom of obscurantism, festoons of cobwebs in their dens, far from the light of the world of men and things. That Louis had better let the ding an sich—the ultimate thing—alone, and keep his eyes on the world as it is; that he would find plenty to interest him there, and that if he had the eyesight he would find a great romance there, also a great tragedy. That—quoting Carlyle—he said: “The eye sees that which it brings the power to see”; which again shocked Louis; for the thought rose up: Maybe the veil is not without, but covers my own eyes; as John went on, preaching of the world of men and their significance, for worth or ill, in the social order, Louis again was shocked at
