Florida Pier : writings and about / jmcvey.net
Statistics and Genealogies
“The Gentler View,” Harper’s Weekly (February 26, 1910) : 29
U Michigan copy/scan (via hathitrust) : link
archive.org : link
A long time ago, when mysteries were really mysteries, kindly grown-ups used to amuse us with a game lengthily called, “Go away, Jack; come back, Jill.” A piece of paper which we ourselves had torn from the back leaf of a primer used to disappear and come again on the forefinger of a gracious aunt in a way that enraptured and baffled us. For some of us it took years, while others succeeded with the help of tears in discovering that the piece of paper was always there and always precisely the same, the fingers alone taking turns in appearing, sometimes the one with the paper, sometimes the one without. Even after we understood it to be a trick we continued to be more or less admiring, and it even in some measure retained its power of entangling our wits.
The same game is played to-day with statistics. They come and they go at the will of an expert theorist, and we watch the disappearing piece of paper with charmed absorption. Statistics now refute nothing, they prove everything. Each side of an argument is upheld by a bulwark of statistics. Each side of an argument is upheld by a bulwark of statistics. They used to be the alembic which separated fact from theory; they are now as susceptible to infiuence as a chameleon, and individual statistics are matched against individual statistics until one doubts whether two and two, if added with determination, would not result in the surprising sum of seven. Every one uses statistics; modernists live with them on terms of easy intimacy. No one seems to regard them as snakes in the grass who may at any moment poison the argument; they are tamed lions taught to fetch and carry. The statistics taken in a city prove one thing, those in the State another, those of the nation a third. No arrangement could be more perfect. One’s line of thought is decided upon, and a little careful looking about will uncover suitable statistics. You make them your own, begin vour statements with, “I think you will find the statistics prove —” and every one is conquered except those unconquerable souls who have statistics of their own. A pure-statistic law will have to be passed or genuine ones must be marked sterling. The listeners of the world should be saved, if possible, from the exhaustion of being too frequently convinced.
Nothing is more drolly unreasonable, among the generations who have tried to memorize the relationship of one historical character to another, than the grief expressed by themselves and their disappointed parents and teachers on their inability to manage it in the least. The poor kiddies who have wept at not being able to remember what Queen Elizabeth would have called Katherine of Aragon in the privacy of the home circle! Was it mother ? — but their boo-hoos at this are always merged in their vexation at the intrusion of William of Orange into the English ruling family, while as their years and studies increased their climax of passionate protest was reached at keeping the great Florentine families disentangled — a thing they were never able to do themselves.
With a complete disregarding: of facts, children have been expected to evince genealogical tendencies, when we all know perfectly well that this is a development strictly relegated to later life, it seldom flowering in its true perfection before fifty. It is only then we are able to grasp with complete clarity that John Marks’s third daughter married a Lester, who was of the Concord, not the Vermont branch of Lesters, and it was his daughter by his first wife who was afterward wooed by the son of the adopted daughter of old John Marks’s second cousin’s foreman brought from Ireland by the junior partner who took to drink. To remain sane and brisk in the presence of genealogical data is a power given us to offset loss of hearing and the other inconveniences of “getting on.” To remain sane and brisk in the presence of genealogical data is a power given us to offset loss of hearing and the other inconveniences of “getting on.” It is not even that a great young brain can hope to feel at home in this particular labyrinth. It is necessary to live half a century until one’s mind is well oiled, and then the gift comes as a means perhaps of putting young people in their places and showing them that even with their cockiness there are some things they need not attempt.
When one’s own relations have been mastered and the descendants of the neighbors of one’s youth put in their proper niches with their children correctly ranged around them, then and only then is one in a position to tackle the great people of the world and their maddeningly complieated connections. Grandmothers should shudder when they see their chiefest accomplishment set as a feasible task before young and tender minds.
To keep the Roman Emperors straight, only, be it understood, in line of succession, is the brave caper cut by a master who stands in a class beyond competition and whiles away his leisure by performing with felicitous ease the apparently impossible. To keep them clear and unblurred is a demonstration of what the genealogical talent can do in its highest and most scientific phase. For be it remembered that there are no homely landmarks, such as Annie Upton’s, living in the second white house from the Unitarian church on Main Street, to help one out with the kings of France, or Annie’s sister, having been, Queen of the May the year you had the mumps and could not go to the May party, to settle definitely the exact position of the ladies of the Bourbon family. To keep them clear and unblurred is a demonstration of what the genealogical talent can do in its highest and most scientific phase. It is tight-rope walking blindfolded and without the net. To remember what Pope excommunicated Henry the Eighth and which one threatened to throw Michelangelo off the scaffolding of the Sistine Chapel is nothing but the leap in the air, somersault, and balanced landing, with your toe gripping surely the rope, an achievement so unlikely as to prove, on vour accomplishing it, that the angels are on your side and that your own particular gift renders you infallible.
Cause and effect should be made a compound word; the “and” is misleading...in fact, [they are] so entirely one and the same thing that if the effect is killed it kills the cause.Cause and effect should be made a compound word; the “and” is misleading. One might suppose — in fact, one absent-mindedly does — that cause comes after effect as the flame comes after the striking of a match, so that by preventing the cause the effect would never take place. Whereas effect actually follows cause as a snake’s tail follows its head, with all lack of dividing-line; in fact, so entirely one and the same thing that if the effect is killed it kills the cause. If a man is irritated by his wife’s nervous, shrill laugh, she only laughs with nervous shrillness because she knows she irritates him. If a woman cannot give her confidence to her sister because she thinks her unsympathetic, the sister’s lack of sympathy is because she is pained into inarticulacy by her sister’s lack of confidence in her. Human relations are vicious circles. If they were anything else one person would be the cause to whom the blame could be traced, and the last word on any human tangle is that no one was to blame, the counter-reaction being so simultaneous that cure is out of the question because the seat of disease is also the fount of palliation.
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