It is a bright June morning. The fresh grass is loaded with

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LESSONS IN LIFE.

A SERIES OF FAMILIAR ESSAYS.

BY

TIMOTHY TITCOMB,

AUTHOR OF "LETTERS TO THE YOUNG," "GOLD-FOIL," ETC.

PREFACE.

The quick and cordial reception which greeted the author's

"Letters to the Young," and his more recent series of essays

entitled "Gold Foil," and the constant and substantial friendship

which has been maintained by the public toward those productions,

must stand as his apology for this third venture in a kindred

field of effort. It should be--and probably is--unnecessary for

the author to say that in this book, as in its predecessors, he

has aimed to be neither brilliant nor profound. He has endeavored,

simply, to treat in a familiar and attractive way a few of the

more prominent questions which concern the life of every

thoughtful man and woman. Indeed, he can hardly pretend to have

done more than to organize, and put into form, the average

thinking of those who read his books--to place before the people

the sum of their own choicer judgments--and he neither expects nor

wishes for these essays higher praise than that which accords to

them the quality of common sense.

SPRINGFIELD, MASS., _November_, 1861.

CONTENTS.

LESSON I. MOODS AND FRAMES OF MIND

LESSON II. BODILY IMPERFECTIONS AND IMPEDIMENTS

LESSON III. ANIMAL CONTENT

LESSON IV. REPRODUCTION IN KIND

LESSON V. TRUTH AND TRUTHFULNESS

LESSON VI. MISTAKES OF PENANCE

LESSON VII. THE RIGHTS OF WOMAN

LESSON VIII. AMERICAN PUBLIC EDUCATION

LESSON IX. PERVERSENESS

LESSON X. UNDEVELOPED RESOURCES

LESSON XI. GREATNESS IN LITTLENESS

LESSON XII. RURAL LIFE

LESSON XIII. REPOSE

LESSON XIV. THE WAYS OF CHARITY

LESSON XV. MEN OF ONE IDEA

LESSON XVI. SHYING PEOPLE

LESSON XVII. FAITH IN HUMANITY

LESSON XVIII. SORE SPOTS AND SENSITIVE SPOTS

LESSON XIX. THE INFLUENCE OF PRAISE

LESSON XX. UNNECESSARY BURDENS

LESSON XXI. PROPER PEOPLE AND PERFECT PEOPLE

LESSON XXII. THE POETIC TEST

LESSON XXIII. THE FOOD OF LIFE

LESSON XXIV. HALF-FINISHED WORK

LESSONS IN LIFE.

LESSON I.

MOODS AND FRAMES OF MIND.

"That blessed mood

In which the burden of the mystery,

In which the heavy and the weary weight

Of all this unintelligible world

Is lightened." WORDSWORTH.

"Oh, blessed temper, whose unclouded ray

Can make to-morrow cheerful as to-day."

POPE.

"My heart and mind and self, never in tune;

Sad for the most part, then in such a flow

Of spirits, I seem now hero, now buffoon."

LEIGH HUNT.

It rained yesterday; and, though it is midsummer, it is

unpleasantly cool to-day. The sky is clear, with almost a

steel-blue tint, and the meadows are very deeply green. The

shadows among the woods are black and massive, and the whole

face of nature looks painfully clean, like that of a healthy

little boy who has been bathed in a chilly room with very cold

water. I notice that I am sensitive to a change like this, and

that my mind goes very reluctantly to its task this morning.

I look out from my window, and think how delightful it would be

to take a seat in the sun, down under the fence, across the

street. It seems to me that if I could sit there awhile, and get

warm, I could think better and write better. Toasting in the

sunlight is conducive rather to reverie than thought, or I should

be inclined to try it. This reluctance to commence labor, and

this looking out of the window and longing for an accession of

strength, or warmth, or inspiration, or something or other not

easily named, calls back to me an experience of childhood.

It was summer, and I was attending school. The seats were hard,

and the lessons were dry, and the walls of the school-room were

very cheerless. An indulgent, sweet-faced girl was my teacher; and

I presume that she felt the irksomeness of the confinement quite

as severely as I did. The weather was delightful, and the birds

were singing everywhere; and the thought came to me, that if I

could only stay out of doors, and lie down in the shadow of a

tree, I could get my lesson. I begged the privilege of trying the

experiment. The kind heart that presided over the school-room

could not resist my petition; so I was soon lying in the coveted

shadow. I went to work very severely; but the next moment found

my eyes wandering; and heart, feeling, and fancy were going up and

down the earth in the most vagrant fashion. It was hopeless

dissipation to sit under the tree; and discovering a huge rock on

the hillside, I made my way to that, to try what virtue there

might be in a shadow not produced by foliage. Seated under the

brow of the boulder, I again applied myself to the dim-looking

text, but it had become utterly meaningless; and a musical cricket

under the rock would have put me to sleep if I had permitted

myself to remain. I found that neither tree nor rock would lend me

help; but down in the meadow I saw the brook sparkling, and

spanning it, a little bridge where I had been accustomed to sit,

hanging my feet over the water, and angling for minnows. It seemed

as if the bridge and the water might do something for me, and, in

a few minutes, my feet were dangling from the accustomed seat.

There, almost under my nose, close to the bottom of the clear,

cool stream, lay a huge speckled trout, fanning the sand with his

slow fins, and minding nothing about me at all. What could a boy

do with Colburn's First Lessons, when a living trout, as large and

nearly as long as his arm, lay almost within the reach of his

fingers? How long I sat there I do not know, but the tinkle of a

distant bell startled me, and I startled the trout, and fish and

vision faded before the terrible consciousness that I knew less of

my lesson than I did when I left the school-house.

This has always been my fortune when running after, or looking

for, moods. There is a popular hallucination that makes of

authors a romantic people who are entirely dependent upon moods

and moments of inspiration for the power to labor in their

peculiar way. Authors are supposed to write when they "feel like

it," and at no other time. Visions of Byron with a gin-bottle at

his side, and a beautiful woman hanging over his shoulder, dashing

off a dozen stanzas of Childe Harold at a sitting, flit through

the brains of sentimental youth. We hear of women who are seized

suddenly by an idea, as if it were a colic, or a flea, often at

midnight, and are obliged to rise and dispose of it in some way.

We are told of very delicate girls who carry pencils and cards

with them, to take the names and address of such angels as may

visit them in out-of-the-way places. We read of poets who go on

long sprees, and after recovery retire to their rooms and work

night and day, eating not and sleeping little, and in some

miraculous way producing wonderful literary creations. The mind of

a literary man is supposed to be like a shallow summer brook, that

turns a mill. There is no water except when it rains, and the

weather being very fickle, it is never known when there will be

water. Sometimes, however, there comes a freshet, and then the

mill runs night and day, until the water subsides, and another dry

time comes on.

Now, while I am aware, as every writer must be, that the brain

works very much better at some times than it does at others, I can

declare without reservation, that no man who depends upon moods

for the power to write can possibly accomplish much. I know men

who rely upon their moods, alike for the disposition and the

ability to write, but they are, without exception, lazy and

inefficient men. They never have accomplished much, and they never

will accomplish much. Regular eating, regular sleeping, regular

working--these are the secrets of all true literary success. A

man may throw off a single little poem by a spasm, but he cannot

write a poem of three thousand lines by spasms. Spasms that

produce poems like this, must last from five to seven hours a day,

through six days of every week, and four weeks of every month,

until the work shall be finished. There is no good reason why the

mind will not do its best by regular exercise and usage. The mower

starts in the morning with a lame back and with aching joints; but

he keeps on mowing, and the glow rises, and the perspiration

starts, and he becomes interested in his labor, and, at length, he

finds himself at work with full efficiency. He was not in the mood

for mowing when he began, but mowing brought its own mood, and he

knew it would when he began. The mind is sometimes lame in the

morning. It refuses to go to work. Our wills seem entirely

insufficient to drive it to its tasks; but if it be driven to its

work and held to it persistently, and held thus every day, it will

ultimately be able to do its best every day. A man who works his

brains for a living, must work them just as regularly as the

omnibus-driver does his horses.

We sometimes go to church and hear a preacher who depends upon his

moods for the power to preach his best. He preaches well, and we

say that he is in the mood; and then again he preaches poorly, and

we say that he is not in the mood. A public singer who has the

power to move us at her will, comes into the concert-room, and

gives her music without spirit and without making any apparent

effort to please. We say that Madame or Mademoiselle is "not in

the mood to-night." A lecturer has his moods, which, apparently,

he slips on and off as he would a dressing-gown, charming the

people of one town by his eloquence and elegance, and disgusting

another by his dullness and carelessness. We are in the habit of

saying that certain men are very unequal in their performances,

which is only a way of saying that they are moody, and dependent

upon and controlled by moods. I think that, in any work or walk of

life, a man can in a great degree become the master of his moods,

so that, as a preacher, or a singer, or a lecturer, he can do his

best every time quite as regularly as a writer can do his best

every time. Mr. Benedict somewhat inelegantly remarked, when in

this country, that the reason of Jenny Lind's success was, that

she "made a conscience of her art." If we had asked Mr. Benedict

to explain himself, he probably would have said that she

conscientiously did her best every time, in every place. This was

true of Jenny Lind. She never failed. She sang just as well in the

old church where the country people had flocked to greet her, as

in the halls of the metropolis. Yet Jenny Lind was decidedly a

woman of moods, and indulged in them when she could afford it.

The power of the will over moods of the mind is very noticeable in

children. Children often rise in the morning in any thing but an

amiable frame of mind. Petulant, impatient, quarrelsome, they

cannot be spoken to or touched without producing an explosion of

ill-nature. Sleep seems to have been a bath of vinegar to them,

and one would think the fluid had invaded their mouth and nose,

and eyes and ears, and had been absorbed by every pore of their

sensitive skins. In a condition like this, I have seen them bent

over the parental knee, and their persons subjected to blows from

the parental palm; and they have emerged from the infliction with

the vinegar all expelled, and their faces shining like the

morning--the transition complete and satisfactory to all the

parties. Three-quarters of the moods that men and women find

themselves in, are just as much under the control of the will as

this. The man who rises in the morning, with his feelings all

bristling like the quills of a hedge-hog, simply needs to be

knocked down. Like a solution of certain salts, he requires a rap

to make him crystallize. A great many mean things are done in the

family for which moods are put forward as the excuse, when the

moods themselves are the most inexcusable things of all. A man or

a woman in tolerable health has no moral right to indulge in an

unpleasant mood, or to depend upon moods for the performance of

the duties of life. If a bad mood come to such persons as these,

it is to be shaken off by a direct effort of the will, under all

circumstances.

There are moods, however, for which men are not responsible, and

the parent of these is sickness--the feeble or inharmonious

movements of the body. When my little boy wakes in the morning,

his smile is as bright as the pencil of sunlight that lies across

his coverlet; but when evening comes, he is peevish and fretful.

The little limbs are weary, and the mood is produced by weariness.

So my friend with a harassing cough is in a melancholy mood, and

my bilious friend is in a severe and savage mood, or in a dark and

gloomy mood, or in a petulant mood, or in a fearful or foreboding

mood. In truth, bile is the prolific mother of moods. The stream

of life flows through the biliary duct. When that is obstructed,

life is obstructed. When the golden tide sets back upon the liver,

it is like backwater under a mill; it stops the driving-wheel.

Bile spoils the peace of families, breaks off friendships, cuts

off man from communion with his Maker, colors whole systems of

theology, transforms brains into putty, and destroys the comfort

of a jaundiced world. The famous Dr. Abernethy had his hobby, as

most famous men have; and this hobby was "blue pill and ipecac,"

which he prescribed for every thing, with the supposition, I

presume, that all disease has its origin in the liver. Most moods,

I am sure, have their birth in the derangements of this important

organ; and while the majority of them can be controlled, there are

others for which their victims are not responsible. There are men

who cannot insult me, because I will not take an insult from them

any more than I would from a man intoxicated. When their bile

starts, I am sure they will come to me and apologize.

We all have acquaintances who are men of moods. Whenever we meet

them, we try to determine which of their moods is dominant, that

we may know how to treat them. If the severe mood be on, we would

just as soon think of whistling at a funeral as indulging in a

jest; but if the cloud be off, we have a sprightly friend and a

pleasant time with him. Goldsmith's pedagogue was a man of moods,

and his pupils understood them.

"A man severe he was, and stern to view;

I knew him well, and every truant knew:

_Well had the boding tremblers learned to trace

The day's disasters in his morning face_;

Full well they laughed with counterfeited glee

At all his jokes, for many a joke had he;

Full well the busy whisper, circling round,

Conveyed the dismal tidings when he frowned."

While I maintain that a man can generally be the master of his

moods, I am very well aware that but few men are; and it is wise

for us to know how to deal with them. The secret of many a man's

success in the world resides in his insight into the moods of men,

and his tact in dealing with them. Modern Christian philanthropists

tell us that if we would do good to the soul of a starving child, we

must first put food into his mouth, and comfortable clothing upon

his body. This, by way of manifesting a practical interest in his

welfare, and paving our way to his heart by a form of kindness which

he can thoroughly appreciate. But there is more in such an act than

this,--we change his mood. From a mood of despair or discouragement,

we translate him into a mood of cheerfulness and hopefulness; and

then we have a soul to deal with that is surrounded by the

conditions of improvement. There is much more than divine duty and

Christian forgiveness in the injunction: "if thine enemy hunger, feed

him; if he thirst, give him drink." The highest wisdom would dictate

such a policy for changing his mood, and bringing him into a condition

in which he could entertain a sense of his meanness.

It is curious to see how much fulness and emptiness of stomach

have to do with moods. A business man who has been at work hard

all day, will enter his house for dinner as crabbed as a hungry

bear--crabbed because he is as hungry as a hungry bear. The wife

understands the mood, and, while she says little to him, is

careful not to have the dinner delayed. In the mean time, the

children watch him cautiously, and do not tease him with

questions. When the soup is gulped, and he leans back and wipes

his mouth, there is an evident relaxation, and his wife ventures

to ask for the news. When the roast beef is disposed of, she

presumes upon gossip, and possibly upon a jest; and when, at last,

the dessert is spread upon the table, all hands are merry, and the

face of the husband and father, which entered the house so pinched

and savage and sharp, becomes soft and full and beaming as the

face of the round summer moon. Children are very sensitive to the

influence of hunger; and often when we think that we are

witnessing some fearful proof of the total depravity of human

nature in a young child, we are only witnessing the natural

expression of a desire for bread and milk. The politicians and all

that class of men who have axes to grind, understand this business

very thoroughly. If a measure is to be carried through, and any

man wishes to secure votes for it, he gives a dinner. If a man

wishes for a profitable contract, he gives a dinner. If he is up

for a fat office, he gives a dinner. If it is desirable that a pair

of estranged friends be brought together, and reconciled to each

other, they are invited to a dinner. If hostile interests are to be

harmonized, and clashing measures compromised, and divergent forces

brought into parallelism, all must be effected by means of a dinner.

A good dinner produces a good mood,--at least, it produces an

impressible mood. The will relaxes wonderfully under the influence

of iced champagne, and canvas-backs are remarkable softeners of

prejudice. The daughter of Herodias took Herod at a great

disadvantage, when she came in and danced before him and his friends

at his birth-day supper, and secured the head of John the Baptist.

No one, I presume, believes that if she had undertaken to dance before

him when he was hungry, she would have had the offer of a gift equal

to the half of his kingdom. It is more than likely that, under any

other circumstances, he would have been told to "sit down and show

less." It is by means of food and drink, and various entertainments

of the senses, that moods are manufactured, and used as media of

approach to the wills which it is desirable to bend or direct.

I have found moods to be very poor tests of character. Having cut

through the crust of a most forbidding mood, produced by bodily

derangement or constant and pressing labor of the brain, I have

often found a heart full of all the sweetest and richest traits of

humanity. I have found, too, that some natures know the door that

leads through the moods of other natures. There are men who never

present their moody side to me. My neighbor enters their presence

and finds them severe in aspect, hard in feeling, and abrupt in

speech. I go in immediately after, and open the door right through

that mood, into the genial good heart that sits behind it, and the

door always flies open when I come. I know men whose mood is

usually exceedingly pleasant. There is a glow of health upon their

faces. Their words are musical to women and children. They are

cheerful and chipper and sunshiny, and not easily moved to anger;

and yet I know them to be liars and full of selfishness. Under

their sweet mood, which sound health and a not over-sensitive

conscience and the satisfactions of sense engender, they conceal

hearts that are as false and foul as any that illustrate the reign

of sin in human nature. Many a Christian has times of feeling that

God is in a special manner smiling upon him, and communing with

him, and filling him with the peace and joy that only flow from

heavenly fountains, when the truth is that he is only in a good

mood. He is well, all the machinery of his mind and body is

playing harmoniously, and, of course, he feels well, and that is

all there is about it. He is not a better Christian than he was

when he slipped into the mood, and no better than he will be when

he slips out of it. If he really be a good Christian, his moods

operate like clouds and blue sky. The sun shines all the time, and

the cloudy moods only hide it;--they do not extinguish it.

There are many sad cases of insanity of a religious character

which originate in moods. A man, through a period of health, has a

bright and cheerful religious experience. The world looks pleasant

to him, the heavens smile kindly upon him, and the Divine Spirit

witnesses with his own that he is at peace and in harmony with

God. Joy thrills him as he greets the morning light, and peace

nestles upon his heart as he lies down to his nightly rest. He

feels in his soul the influx of spiritual life from the Great

Source of all life, as he opens it in worship and in prayer. But

at length there comes a change. A strange sadness creeps into his

heart. The sky that was once so bright has become dark. The prayer

that once rose as easily as incense upon the still morning air,

straight toward heaven, will not rise at all, but settles like

smoke upon him, and fills his eyes with tears. Something seems to

have come between him and his God. Strange, accusing voices are

heard within him. However deep the agony that moves him, he cannot

rend the cloud that interposes between him and his Maker. This,

now, is simply a mood produced by ill health; and I hope that

everybody who reads this will remember it. Remember that God never

changes, that a man's moods are constantly changing, and that when

a man earnestly seeks for spiritual peace, and cannot find it, and

thinks that he has committed the unpardonable sin without knowing

it, he is bilious, and needs medical treatment. Alas! what

multitudes of sad souls have walked out of this hopeless mood into

a life-long insanity, when all they needed in the first place,

perhaps, was a dose of blue pills, or half a dozen strings of

tenpins, or a sea-voyage sufficiently rough for "practical

purposes."

This subject I find to be abundantly prolific, and I see that I

have been able to do hardly more than to hint at its more

prominent aspects. It seems to me that moods only need to be

studied more, and to be better understood, to bring them very much

under the domain of our wills. A great deal is learned when we

know what a mood is, and know that we are subject to varying

frames of mind, resulting from causes which affect our health. If

I know that I am impatient and cross because I am hungry, then I

know how to get rid of my mood, and how to manage it until I do

get rid of it. If I feel unable to labor, not because I am

feeble, but because I am not in the mood, then I have the mood in

my hands, to be dealt with intelligently. If my reason tell me

that it is only a mood that hides from me the face of my Maker, my

reason will also tell me that my first business is to get rid of

my mood, and that my will must approach the work, directly or

indirectly. We are always and necessarily in some mood of mind--in

some condition of passion or feeling. It is the intensification

and the dominant influence of moods that are to be guarded against

or destroyed. Moods are dangerous only when they obscure reason,

and destroy self-control, and disturb the mental poise, and become

the media of false impressions from all the life around us and

within us.

LESSON II.

BODILY IMPERFECTIONS AND IMPEDIMENTS.

"I that am curtailed of this fair proportion,

Cheated of feature by dissembling nature,

Deformed, unfinished, sent before my time

Into this breathing world, scarce half made up."

RICHARD III.

"None can be called deformed but the unkind."

SHAKSPEARE.

"'Tis true, his nature may with faults abound;

But who will cavil when the heart is sound?"

STEPHEN MONTAGUE.

It is a bright June morning. The fresh grass is loaded with dew,

every bead of which sparkles in the light of the brilliant sun. A

big, yellow-shouldered bee comes booming through the open window,

and buzzes up and down my room, and threatens my shrinking ears,

and then dives through the window again; and his form recedes and

his hum dies away, as if it were the note of a reed-stop in the

"swell" of a church organ. There is such confusion in the songs of

the birds, that I can hardly select the different notes, so as to

name their owners. There is a great deal of bird-singing that is

simply what a weaver would call "filling." Robins and bobolinks

and blue-birds and sundry other favorites furnish the warp, and

color and characterize the tapestry of a flowing, vocal morning;

while the little, gray-backed multitude work in the neutral ground

tones, and bring the sweeter and more elaborate notes into

beautiful relief. Thus, with a little aid of imagination, I get up

some very exquisite fabrics--vocal silks and satins:--robins on a

field of chickadees; bobolinks and thrushes alternately on a

hit-or-miss ground of blackbirds, wrens, and pewees. Into the midst

of all this delicious confusion there breaks a note that belongs to

another race of creatures; and as I look from my window, and see

the singer, my eyes fill with tears. It is a little boy, possibly

twelve years old, though he looks younger, walking with a crutch.

One withered limb dangles as he goes. He is a cripple for life;

yet his face is as bright and cheerful as the face of the morning

itself; and what do you think he is singing? "Hail Columbia, happy

land," at the top of his lungs! The birds are merrily wheeling

over his head, and diving through the air, and moving here and

there as freely as the wind, yet not one among them carries a

lighter heart than that which he is jerking along by the side of

the little crutch.

As I see how cheerfully he bears the burden of his hopeless

halting, there comes back to me the story of the lame lord who

sang a different sort of song--the lame lord who died at

Missolonghi, and whose friend Trelawny--human jackal that he was--

stole to his bedside after the breath had left his body, and

examined his clubbed feet, and then went away and wrote about

them. Here was a man with regal gifts of mind--a poet of splendid

genius--a titled aristocrat--a man admired and praised wherever

the English language was read--a man who knew that he held within

himself the power to make his name immortal--a man with wealth

sufficient for all grateful luxuries--yet with clubbed feet; and

those feet! Ah! how they embittered and spoiled that man of

magnificent achievements and sublime possibilities! It would

appear, from the disgusting narrative of Mr. Trelawny, that he was

in reality the only man who had ever seen Byron's feet. Those feet

had been kept so closely hidden, or so cunningly disguised, that

nobody had known their real deformity; and the poor lord who had

carried them through his thirty-six years of life, had done it in

constantly tormented and mortified pride. Those misshapen organs

had an important agency in making him a misanthropic, morbidly

sensitive, unhappy, desperate man. When he sang, he did not forget

them; and the poor fools who turned down their shirt-collars, and

imitated his songs, and thought they were inspired by his winged

genius, had under them only a pair of halting, clubbed feet.

There is a class of unfortunate men and women in the world to whom

the boy and the bard have introduced us. They are not all lame:

but they all think they have cause to be dissatisfied with the

bodies God has given them. Perhaps they are simply ugly, and are

aware that no one can look in their faces with other thought than

that they are ugly. Now it is a pleasant thing to have a pleasant

face, and an agreeable form. It is pleasant for a man to be large,

well-shaped, and good-looking, and it is unpleasant for him to be

small, and to carry an ill-shaped form and an ugly face. It is

pleasant for a woman to feel that she has personal attractions for

those around her, and it is unpleasant for her to feel that no man

can ever turn his eyes admiringly upon her. A misshapen limb, a

hump in the back, a withered arm, a shortened leg, a clubbed foot,

a hare-lip, an unwieldy corpulence, a hideous leanness, a bald

head--all these are unpleasant possessions, and all these, I

suppose, give their possessors, first and last, a great deal of

pain. Then there is the taint of an unpopular blood, that a whole

race carry with them as a badge of humiliation. I have heard of

Africans who declared that they would willingly go through the

pain of being skinned alive, if, at the close of the operation,

they could become white men. There are men of genius, with plenty

of white blood in their veins--with only a trace of Africa in

their faces--whose lives are embittered by that trace; and who

know that the pure Anglo Saxon, if he follows his instincts, will

say to him: "Thus far,"--(through a limited range of relations,)--

"but no further."

From the depths of my soul I pity a man or woman who bears about

an irremediable bodily deformity, or the mark of the blood of a

humiliated race. I pity any human being who carries around a body

that he feels to be in any sense an unpleasant one to those whom

he meets. I pity the deformed man, and the maimed man, and the

terribly ugly man, and the black man, and the white man with black

blood in him, because he usually feels that these things bear with

them a certain degree of humiliation. I pity the man who is not

able to stand out in the broad sunlight, with other men, and to

feel that he has as goodly a frame and as fine blood and as

pleasant a presence as the average of those he sees around him. I

do not wonder at all that many of these persons become soured and

embittered and jealous. A sensitive mind, dwelling long upon

misfortunes of this peculiar character, will inevitably become

morbid; and multitudes of humbler men than Lord Byron have cursed

their fate as bitterly as he, and have even lifted their eyes to

blaspheme the Being who made them.

The two instances which I have mentioned show us that there are

two ways of taking misfortunes of this character; and one of them

seems to a good deal better than the other. Between the boy who

ignored the withered leg and the crutch, and the proud poet who

permitted a slight personal deformity to darken his whole life,

there is a distance like that between heaven and earth.

I believe in the law of compensation. Human lot is, on the whole,

well averaged. A man does not possess great gifts of person and of

mind without drawbacks somewhere. Either great duties are imposed

upon him, or great burdens are put upon his shoulders, or great

temptations assail and harass him. Something in his life, at some

time in his life, takes it upon itself to reduce his advantages to

the average standard. Nature gave Byron clubbed feet, but with

those feet she gave him a genius whose numbers charmed the world--

a genius which multitudes of commonplace or weak men would have

been glad to purchase at the price of almost any humiliating

eccentricity of person. But they were obliged to content

themselves with excellent feet, and brains of the common kind and

calibre. Providence had withered the little boy's leg, but the

loudest song I have heard from a boy in a twelvemonth came from

his lips, as he limped along alone in the open street. The

cheerful heart in his bosom was a great compensation for the

withered leg; and beyond this the boy had reason for singing over

the fact that he was forever released from military duty, and

firemen's duty, and all racing about in the service of other

people. There are individual cases of misfortune in which it is

hard to detect the compensating good, but these we must call the

"exceptions" which "prove the rule."

But the best of all compensation for natural defects and

deformities, is that which comes in the form of a peculiar love.

The mother of a poor, misshapen, idiotic boy, will, though she

have half a score of bright and beautiful children besides,

entertain for him a peculiar affection. He may not be able, in his

feeble-mindedness, to appreciate it, but her heart brims with

tenderness for him. The delicate morsel is reserved for him; and,

if he be a sufferer, the softest pillow and the tenderest nursing

will be his. A love will be bestowed upon him which gold could not

buy, and which no beauty of person, and no brilliancy of natural

gifts could possibly awaken. It is thus with every case of defect

or eccentricity of person. So sure as the mother of a child sees

in that child's person any reason for the world to regard it with

contempt or aversion, does she treat it with peculiar tenderness;

as if she were commissioned by God--as indeed she is--to make up

to it in the best coinage that which the world will certainly

neglect to bestow.

With the world at large, however, there are certain conditions on

which this variety of compensation is rendered; and a man who

would have compensation for defects of person, must accept these

conditions, or furnish them. Such a man as Lord Byron would have

been offended by pity. To have been commiserated on his

misfortune, would have made him exceedingly angry. He would not

allow himself to be treated as an unfortunate man. He bound up his

feet, and made efforts to walk that ended in intense pain, rather

than appear the lame man that he really was. Of course, there was

no compensation in the tender pity and affectionate consideration

of the world for him; nor is there any for the sad unfortunates

who inherit and exercise his spirit. But for all those who accept

their life with all its conditions, in a cheerful spirit, who give

up their pride, who take their bodies as God formed them, and make

the best of them, there is abundant compensation in the affection

of the world. A cheerful spirit, exercised in weakness, infirmity,

calamity--any sort of misfortune--is just as sure to awaken a

peculiarly affectionate interest in all observers, as a lighted

lamp is to illuminate the objects around it. I know of men and

women who are the favorites of a whole neighborhood--nay, a whole

town--because they are cheerful, and courageous, and self-respectful

under misfortune; and I know of those who are as much dreaded as

a pestilence, because they will not accept their lot--because

they grow bitter and jealous--and because they will persist in

taunts and complaints.

The number of those who are, or who consider themselves,

unfortunate in their physical conformation, is larger than the

most of us suppose. I presume that at least one-half of the

readers of this essay are any thing but well satisfied with the

"tabernacle" in which they reside. One man wishes he were a little

larger; one woman wishes she were a little smaller; one does not

like her complexion, or the color of her eyes and hair; one has a

nose too large; another has a nose too small; one has round

shoulders; another has a low forehead; and so every one becomes a

critic of his or her style of structure. When we find a man or a

woman who is absolutely faultless in form and features, we usually

find a fool. I do not remember that I ever met a very handsome man

or woman, who was not as vain and shallow as a peacock. I recently

met a magnificent woman of middle age at a railroad station. She

was surrounded by all those indescribable somethings and nothings

which mark the rich and well-bred traveller, and her face was

queenly--not sweet and pretty like a doll's face--but handsome and

stylish, and strikingly impressive, so that no man could look at

her once without turning to look again; yet I had not been in her

presence a minute, before I found, to my utter disgust, that the

old creature was as vain of her charms as a spoiled girl, and

gloried in the attention which she was conscious her face

everywhere attracted. It would seem as if nature, in making up

mankind, had always been a little short of materials, so that, if

special attention were bestowed upon the form and face, the brain

suffered; and if the brain received particular attention, why then

there was something lacking in the body.

This large class of malcontents generally find some way of

convincing themselves, however, that they are as good-looking as

the average of mankind. They make a good deal of some special

points of beauty, and imagine that these quite overshadow their

defects. Still, there is a portion of them who can never do this;

and I think of them with a sadness which it is impossible for me

to express. For a homely--even an ugly man--I have no pity to

spare. I never saw one so ugly yet, that if he had brains and a

heart, he could not find a beautiful woman sensible enough to

marry him. But for the hopelessly plain and homely sisters--"these

tears!" There is a class of women who know that they possess in

their persons no attractions for men,--that their faces are

homely, that their frames are ill-formed, that their carriage is

clumsy, and that, whatever may be their gifts of mind, no man can

have the slightest desire to possess their persons. That there

are compensations for these women, I have no doubt, but many of

them fail to find them. Many of them feel that the sweetest

sympathies of life must be repressed, and that there is a world of

affection from which they must remain shut out forever. It is hard

for a woman to feel that her person is not pleasing--harder than

for a man to feel thus. I would tell why, if it were necessary--

for there is a bundle of very interesting philosophy tied up in

the matter--but I will content myself with stating the fact, and

permitting my readers to reason about it as they will.

Now, if a homely woman, soured and discouraged by her lot, becomes

misanthropic and complaining, she will be as little loved as she

is admired; but if she accepts her lot good-naturedly, makes up

her mind to be happy, and is determined to be agreeable in all her

relations to society, she will be everywhere surrounded by loving

and sympathetic hearts, and find herself a greater favorite than

she would be were she beautiful. A woman who is entirely beyond

the reach of the jealousy of her own sex, is an exceedingly

fortunate woman; and if personal homeliness has won for her this

immunity, then homeliness has given her much to be thankful for. A

homely woman who ignores her face and form, cultivates her mind

and manners, good-naturedly gives up all pretension, and exhibits

in all her life a true and a pure heart, will have friends enough

to compensate her entirely for the loss of a husband. Friendship

is unmindful of faces, in the selection of its objects, even if

love be somewhat particular, and, sometimes, foolishly fastidious.

Life is altogether too precious a gift to be thrown away. A man

who would permit a field to be overgrown with weeds and thorns

simply because it would not naturally produce roses, would be very

foolish, particularly if the ground should only need cultivation

to enable it to yield abundantly of corn. Far be it from me to

depreciate physical symmetry and personal comeliness. They are

gifts of God, and they are very good; but there are better things

in this world than a good face, and better things than the

admiration which a good face wins. I am more and more convinced,

as the years pass away, that the choicest thing this world has for

a man is affection--not any special variety of affection, but the

approval, the sympathy, and the devotion of true hearts. It is not

necessary that this affection come from the great and the

powerful. If it be genuine, that is all the heart asks. It does

not criticize and graduate the value of the fountains from which

it springs. It is at these fountains particularly that the

unfortunates of the world are permitted to drink. They have only

to accept cheerfully the conditions of their lot, and to give free

and full play to all that is good and generous in them, to secure

in an unusual degree the love of those into whose intimate

society Providence has thrown them.

It is stated by Dr. Livingstone, the celebrated explorer of

Africa, that the blow of a lion's paw upon his shoulder, which was

so severe as to break his arm, completely annihilated fear; and he

suggests that it is possible that Providence has mercifully

arranged, that all those beasts that prey upon life shall have

power to destroy the sting of death in the animals which are their

natural victims. I do not believe that this power is mercifully

assigned to beasts of prey alone, but that the misfortunes that

assail our limbs and forms, in whatever shape and at whatever time

they may come, bring with them something which lightens the blow,

or obviates the pain, if we will accept it. There is a calm

consciousness in every soul, however harshly the lion's paw may

fall upon the body which it inhabits, that it is itself

invulnerable--that whatever may be the condition of the body, the

soul cannot be injured by physical forms or forces.

Physical calamity never comes with the power to extinguish that

which is essential to the highest manhood and womanhood, and never

fails to bring with it a motive for the adjustment of the soul to

its conditions. The little boy whose "Hail Columbia" has been

ringing in my ears all day, accepted the conditions of his life,

and the sting of his calamity has departed. It is pleasant to say

to him, and to all the brotherhood and sisterhood of ugliness and

lameness, that there is every reason to believe that there is no

such thing in heaven as a one-legged or a club-footed soul--no

such thing as an ugly or a misshapen soul--no such thing as a

blind or a deaf soul--no such thing as a soul with tainted blood

in its veins; and that out of these imperfect bodies will spring

spirits of consummate perfection and angelic beauty--a beauty

chastened and enriched by the humiliations that were visited upon

their earthly habitation.

LESSON III.

ANIMAL CONTENT.

"By sports like these are all their cares beguiled;

The sports of children satisfy the child." GOLDSMITH.

"Ay, give me back the joyous hours

When I, myself, was ripening too;

When song, the fount flung up its showers

Of beauty, ever fresh and new." GOETHE'S FAUST.

I have been watching a family of kittens, engaged in their

exquisitely graceful play. Near them lay their mother, stretched

at her length upon the flagging, taking her morning nap, and

warming herself in the sun. She had eaten her breakfast, (provided

by no care of her own, but at my expense,) had seen her little

family fed, and having nothing further to attend to, had gone off

into a doze. What a blessed freedom from care! Think of a family

of four children, with no frocks to be made for them, no hair to

brush, no shoes to provide, no socks to knit and mend, no

school-books to buy, and no nurse! Think of a living being with the

love of offspring in her bosom, and a multitude of marvellous

instincts in her nature, yet knowing nothing of God, thinking not

of the future, without a hope or an expectation, or a doubt or a

fear, passing straight on to annihilation! At the threshold of this

destiny the little kittens were carelessly playing; and they are

doubtless still playing, while I write. They have no lessons to

learn, they do not have to go to Sunday-school, they entertain no

prejudices, except against dogs which occasionally dodge into the

yard; and I judge, by the familiar way in which they play with

their mother's ears, and pounce upon her tail, that they are not

in any degree oppressed by a sense of the respect due to a parent.

Cat and kittens will eat, and frolic, and sleep, through their

brief life, and then they will curl up in some dark corner and

die.

I remember that in one of the late Mr. Joseph C. Neal's "Charcoal

Sketches," he puts into the mouth of a very sad and seedy loafer

the expression of a wish that he were a pig, and a statement of

the reasons for the wish. These reasons, as I recall them, related

to the freedom of the pig from the peculiar trials and troubles of

humanity. Pigs do not have to work for a living; they undertake no

enterprizes, and of course fail in none; they eat and sleep

through a period of months, and then come the knife and a grunt,

and that is the last of them. Now I suppose this thought of Mr.

Neal's loafer has been shared by millions of men. Not that

everybody has at some time in his life wished he were a pig, but

that nearly everybody who has had his share of the troubles and

responsibilities of life, has looked upon simple animal

carelessness and content with a certain degree of envy. It is not

necessary to go among brutes for instances of this animal content.

It can be found among men. Who does not know good-natured,

ignorant, healthy fellows, who will work all day in the field,

whistle all the way homeward, eat hugely of course food, sleep

like logs, and take no more interest in the great questions which

agitate the most of us, than the pigs they feed, and that, in

return, feed them? Who has not sighed, as he has seen how easily

the simple wants of certain simple natures are supplied? I

remember an old man who quite unexpectedly was drafted into the

grand jury, which sat in the county town less than ten miles

distant from his home; and this was the great event of his life.

He never tired of talking about it--(never tired himself, I mean,)

and a stranger could not carry on a conversation with him for five

minutes, without hearing of something which occurred when

"I was in Blanktown, on the Grand Jury." It is doubtful whether

Napoleon ever contemplated a victory with the complacent

satisfaction that filled my old friend when he alluded to his

connection with "the _grand_ jury," and emphasized the adjective

which magnified the jury and glorified him.

I confess that, when I pass through a rural town, and see the

laborers among the corn, and the boys driving their cattle, and

the girls busy in the dairies, and life passing away quietly, I

cannot avoid a twinge of regret that it would be impossible for me

to be content with the kind of life that I see around me,

especially as I know that there is one kind of pleasure--negative,

perhaps, rather than positive--which that kind of life enjoys, and

in which I can never share. Relief from great responsibilities,

and contentment with humble clothing, humble fare, humble society,

humble aims and ambitions, humble means and humble labors--ah! how

many weary, overloaded men--how many disappointed hearts--have

sighed for such a boon, and sighed knowing they could never

receive it.

It has been the habit of poets to surround simple pleasures and

pursuits with the golden atmosphere of romance,--not because they

would enjoy such pleasures and pursuits at all, but rather because

they are forever beyond their possession. A poet is always

reaching toward the unattainable, and he may reach forward to the

perfections of a life of which the best that he sees around him is

an intimation, or backward to the animal content of a life as yet

undisturbed by the intimation of something better. Bucolics are very

sweet, but their writers do not believe in them. "A nut-brown maid,"

with bare, unconscious feet and ancles, is very pretty in a picture,

but the man who painted her ascertained that she was green, and not

the most entertaining of companions. The truth is, that when we have

got along so far that we can perceive that which is poetical and

picturesque in the simplest form of rustic life, we have got too

far along to enjoy it.

I suppose that much of the charm which simple animal content has

for us, is connected with the memories of childhood. We can all

recall a period of our lives when there was joy in the consciousness

of living--when animal life, in its spontaneous overflow, flooded all

our careless hours with its own peculiar pleasure. The light was

pleasant to our eyes, vigorous appetite and digestion made ambrosia

of the homeliest fare, the simplest play brought delight, and

life--all untried--lay spread out before us in one long, golden

dream. We now watch our children at their sports, and see but little

difference between their sources of happiness and those which supply

the kittens in their play. "Pleased with a rattle, tickled with a

straw," they skip from pleasure to pleasure, and find delight in the

impulsive exercise of their little powers. We were once like them.

Life was once as fresh, and flowing, and impulsive, and objectless,

as it is with them; and when we are weary and oppressed with labor,

and loaded down with responsibility, and filled with thoughts of the

great destiny before us, we turn our eyes backward with a sigh for

days once ours, but lost forever. Lost forever! This is the romantic

pain that fills us in all our contemplations of simple animal

content. It is lost to us, because we are lost to it. Like a

passenger far out upon the sea, adventuring upon a long voyage, we

look back upon the fading hills of our native land, and sigh to

think that the breeze which bears us away can never bring us back.