but it is nothing more than a musical cheat. It sounds like truth,
but it is a lie. The lives of great men all remind us that they
have made their own memory sublime, but they do not assure us at
all that we can leave footprints like theirs behind us. If you do
not believe it, go to the cemetery yonder. There they lie--ten
thousand upturned faces--ten thousand breathless bosoms. There was
a time when fire flashed in those vacant orbits, and warm
ambitions pulsed in those bosoms. Dreams of fame and power once
haunted those hollows skulls. Those little piles of bones that
once were feet ran swiftly and determinedly through forty, fifty,
sixty, seventy years of life; but where are the prints they left?
"He lived--he died--he was buried"--is all that the headstone
tells us. We move among the monuments, we see the sculpture, but
no voice comes to us to say that the sleepers are remembered for
any thing they ever did. Natural affection pays its tribute to its
departed object, a generation passes by, the stone grows gray, and
the man has ceased to be, and is to the world as if he had never
lived. Why is it that no more have left a name behind them? Simply
because they were not endowed by their Maker with the power to do
it, and because the offices of life are mainly humble, requiring
only humble powers for their fulfilment. The cemeteries of one
hundred years hence will be like those of to-day. Of all those now
in the schools of this country, dreaming of fame, not one in
twenty thousand will be heard of then,--not one in twenty thousand
will have left a footprint behind him.
Now I believe that a school, in order to be a good one, should be
one that will fit men and women, in the best way, for the humble
positions that the great mass of them must necessarily occupy in
life. It is not necessary that boys and girls be taught any less
than they are taught now. They should receive more practical
knowledge than they do now, without a doubt, and less of that
which is simply ornamental, but they cannot know too much. An
intelligent gardener is better than a clod-hopper, and an educated
nurse is better than an ignorant one; but if the gardener and the
nurse have been spoiled for their business and their condition, by
the sentiments which they have imbibed with their knowledge, they
are made uncomfortable to themselves, and to those whom they
serve. I do not care how much knowledge a man may have acquired in
school, that school has been a curse to him if its influence has
been to make him unhappy in his place, and to fill him with futile
ambitions.
The country has great reason to lament the effect of the kind of
instruction upon which I have remarked. The universal greed for
office is nothing but an indication of the appetite for
distinction which has been diligently fed from childhood. It is
astonishing to see the rush for office on the occasion of the
change of a State or National Administration. Men will leave quiet
and remunerative employments, and subject themselves to mean
humiliations, simply to get their names into a newspaper, and to
achieve a little official importance and social distinction. This
desire for distinction seems to run through the whole social body,
as a kind of moral scrofula, developing itself in various ways,
according to circumstances and peculiarities of constitution. The
consequence is that politics have become the pursuit of small men,
and we no longer have an opportunity to put the best men into
office. The scramble for place among fools is so great and so
successful, that men of dignity and modesty retire from the field
in disgust. Everybody wants to "be something," and in order to be
something, everybody must leave his proper place in the world, and
assume a position which God never intended he should fill. Look in
upon a State legislature once, and you will find sufficient
illustration of my meaning. Not one man in five of the whole
number possesses the first qualification for making the laws of a
State, and half of them never read the constitution of the
country. I mean no contempt for the good, honest men of whom our
State legislatures are principally composed, but I wish simply to
say that there is nothing in their quality of mind, habits of
thought, intellectual power, or style of pursuits that fits them
for the great and momentous functions of legislation. They are
there, a set of "nobodies," mainly for the purpose of becoming
"somebodies," and not for any object connected with the good of
the State.
Somehow, all the students in all our schools get the idea, that a
man in order to be "somebody" must be in public life. Now think of
the fact that the millions attending school in this country have
in some way acquired this idea, and that only one in every one
thousand of these is either needed in public life, or can win
success there. Let this fact be realized, and it is easy to see
that the nine hundred and ninety-nine will feel that they are
somehow cheated out of their birthright. They desired to be in
public life, and be "somebody," but they are not, and so their
life grows tame and tasteless to them. They are disappointed. The
men solace themselves with a petty justice's commission, or a town
office of some kind, and the women--some of them--talk about
"woman's rights," and make themselves notorious and ridiculous at
public meetings. I think women have rights which they do not at
present enjoy, but I have very little confidence in the motives of
their petticoated champions, who court mobs, delight in notoriety,
and glory in their opportunity to burst away from private life,
and be recognized by the public as "somebodies." I insist on
this:--that private and even obscure life is the normal condition
of the great multitude of men and women in this world; and that,
to serve this private life, public life is instituted. Public life
has no legitimate significance save I as it is related to the
service of private life. It requires peculiar talents and peculiar
education, and brings with it peculiar trials; and the man best
fitted for it would be the last man confidently to assert his fitness
for it.
Thousands seek to become "somebodies" through the avenues of
professional life; and so professional life is full of "nobodies."
The pulpit is crowded with goodish "nobodies"--men who have no
power--no unction--no mission. They strain their brains to write
common-places, and wear themselves out repeating the rant of their
sect and the cant of their schools. The bar is cursed with
"nobodies" as much as the pulpit. The lawyers are few; the
pettifoggers are many. The bar, more than any other medium, is
that through which the ambitious youth of the country seek to
attain political eminence. Thousands go into the study of law, not
so much for the sake of the profession, as for the sake of the
advantages it is supposed to give them for political preferment.
An ambitious boy who has taken it into his head to be "somebody,"
always studies law; and as soon as he is "admitted to the bar" he
is ready to begin his political scheming. Multitudes of lawyers
are a disgrace to their profession, and a curse to their country.
They lack the brains necessary to make them respectable, and the
morals requisite for good neighborhood. They live on quarrels, and
breed them that they may live. They have spoiled themselves for
private life, and they spoil the private life around them. As for
the medical profession, I tremble to think how many enter it
because they have neither piety enough for preaching, nor brains
enough to practice law. When I think of the great army of little
men that is yearly commissioned to go forth into the world with a
case of sharp knives in one hand, and a magazine of drugs in the
other, I heave a sigh for the human race. Especially is all this
lamentable when we remember that it involves the spoiling of
thousands of good farmers and mechanics, to make poor professional
men, while those who would make good professional men are obliged
to attend to the simple duties of life, and submit to preaching
that neither feeds nor stimulates them, and medicine that kills or
fails to cure them.
There must be something radically wrong in our educational system,
when youth are generally unfitted for the station which they are
to occupy, or are forced into professions for which they have no
natural fitness. The truth is that the stuff talked to boys and
girls alike, about "aiming high," and the assurances given them,
indiscriminately, that they can be any thing that they choose to
become, are essential nuisances. Our children all go to the public
schools. They are all taught these things. They all go out into
the world with high notions, and find it impossible to content
themselves with their lot. They had hoped to realize in life that
which had been promised them in school, but all their dreams have
faded, and left them disappointed and unhappy. They envy those
whom they have been taught to consider above them, and learn to
count their own lives a failure. Girls starve in a mean poverty,
or do worse, because they are too proud to work in a chamber, or
go into a shop. American servants are obsolete, all common
employments are at a discount, the professions are crowded to
overflowing, the country throngs with demagogues, and a general
discontent with a humble lot prevails, simply because the youth of
America have had the idea drilled into them that to be in private
life, in whatever condition, is to be, in some sense, a "nobody."
It is possible that the schools are not exclusively to blame for
this state of things, and that our political harangues, and even
our political institutions, have something to do with it.
What we greatly need in this country is the inculcation of soberer
views of life. Boys and girls are bred to discontent. Everybody is
after a high place, and nearly everybody fails to get one; and,
failing, loses heart, temper, and content. The multitude dress
beyond their means, and live beyond their necessities, to keep up
a show of being what they are not. Farmers' daughters do not love
to become farmers' wives, and even their fathers and mothers
stimulate their ambition to exchange their station for one which
stands higher in the world's estimation. Humble employments are
held in contempt, and humble powers are everywhere making high
employments contemptible. Our children need to be educated to
fill, in Christian humility, the subordinate offices of life which
they must fill, and taught to respect humble callings, and to
beautify and glorify them by lives of contented and glad industry.
When public schools accomplish an end so desirable as this, they
will fulfil their mission, and they will not before. I seriously
doubt whether one school in a hundred, public or private,
comprehends its duty in this particular. They fail to inculcate
the idea that the majority of the offices of life are humble, that
the powers of the majority of the youth which they contain have
relation to those offices, that no man is respectable when he is
out of his place, and that half of the unhappiness of the world
grows out of the fact, that, from distorted views of life, men are
in places where they do not belong. Let us have this thing
altogether reformed.
LESSON IX.
PERVERSENESS.
"Because she's constant, he will change.
And kindest glances coldly meet,
And all the time he seems so strange,
His soul is fawning at her feet."
COVENTRY PATMORE.
"All that we seem to think of is to manage matters so as to do as
little good and plague and disappoint as many people as possible."
--HAZLITT.
It seems to me, either that there is a great deal of human nature
in a pig, or that there is a great deal of pig in human nature. I
find myself always sympathizing with a pig that wishes to go in an
opposite direction to that in which its owner would drive it. It
would be a sufficient reason for me to desire to go eastward, that
a man was behind me, with an oath in his mouth and a very heavy
boot on his foot, endeavoring to drive me westward. We are jealous
of our freedom. We naturally rise in opposition to a will that
undertakes to command our movements. This is not the result of
education at all; it is pure human nature. Command a child--who
shall be only old enough to understand you--to refrain from some
special act, and you excite in his heart a desire to do that act;
and he will have, nine times in ten, no reason for his desire to
do it but your command that he shall not. The youngest human soul
that has a will at all, takes the first occasion to declare its
independence.
Now, I believe this principle in human nature to be, in itself,
good. It is that which declares a man's right to himself--that
which asserts personal liberty in thought, will, and movement. I
believe it existed in Adam and Eve, and that it is more than
likely that the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was
despoiled because our beautiful great-grandmother, (for whom I
confess much sympathy and affection,) was forbidden to touch it.
It is a principle which should always be carefully distinguished
from perverseness, in all our dealings with young and old, and in
all our estimates of human character. When a child obeys a man, or
when one man obeys another, it should always be for good and
sufficient reason. Neither child nor man should be expected to
surrender his right to himself without the presentation to him of
the proper motive. When, yielding to this motive, the soul
consents to be directed or led, it becomes obedient. Compulsion
may secure conformity, but never obedience. If I, as a child or
man, am to yield myself to the direction of any other man, that
man is bound to present to me an adequate motive for the
surrender. God throws upon me personal responsibility--gives me to
myself--and no man, parent or otherwise, can make me truly
obedient without giving me the motive for obedience. When a child
or a man fails to yield to the legitimate motives of obedience, he
is perverse, and it is about perverseness in some of its forms of
manifestation that I propose to talk in this article.
At starting, I must give perverseness a somewhat broader meaning
than that thus far indicated. I will say that that person is
perverse who, from vanity, or pride of opinion and will, or
malice, or any mean consideration, refuses to yield his conduct
and himself to those motives and influences which his reason and
conscience recognize to be pure and good and true. In its least
aggravated form, perhaps, we find it among lovers. Women will
sometimes persistently ignore a passion which they know has taken
full possession of them, and grieve the heart that loves them by a
coldness and indifference which they do not feel at all. Rather
than acknowledge their affection for one whose loss would kill
them, or, what would be the same thing, kill the world for them,
they have lied, grown sick, and gone nearly insane. This is a
perverseness very uncommon. Sometimes lovers have been very tender
and devoted so long as a doubt of ultimate mutual possession
remained to give zest to their passion, but the moment this doubt
has been removed, one or the other has become incomprehensibly
indifferent.
I have noticed that very few married pairs are matches in the
matter of warmth and expression of passion between the parties.
The man will be all devotion and tenderness--brimming with
expressions of affection and exhibitions of fondness, and the
woman all coolness and passivity, or (which is much more common)
the woman will be active in expression, lavishing caresses and
tendernesses upon a man who very possibly grows harder and colder
with every delicate proof that the whole wealth of his wife's
nature is poured at his feet, as a libation upon an altar. It is
here that we see some of the strangest cases of perverseness that
it is possible to conceive. I know men who are not bad men--who,
I suppose, really love and respect their wives--and who would deny
themselves even to heroism to give them the comforts and luxuries
of life, yet who find themselves moved to reject with poorly-covered
scorn, and almost to resent, the varied expressions of affection to
which those wives give utterance. I know wives who long to pour
their hearts into the hearts of their husbands, and to get sympathetic
and fitting response, but who are never allowed to do it. They live
a constrained, suppressed, unsatisfied life. They absolutely pine
for the privilege of saying freely what they feel, in all love's varied
languages, toward men who love them, but who grow harder with
every approach of tenderness and colder with every warm, invading
breath. A shower that purifies the atmosphere, and refreshes the
face of heaven itself, sours cream, just as love's sweetest expression
sours these men.
I have known wives to walk through such an experience as this into
a condition of abject slavery--to waste their affection without
return, until they have become poor, and spiritless, and mean. I
have known them to lose their will--to become the mere dependent
mistresses of their husbands--to be creeping cravens in dwellings
where it should be their privilege to move as radiant queens. I
have known them thrown back upon themselves, until they have
become bitter railers against their husbands--uncomfortable
companions--openly and shamelessly flouting their affection. I do
not know what to make of the perverseness which induces a man to
repel the advances of a heart which worships him, and to become
hard and tyrannical in the degree by which that heart seeks to
express its affection for him. There are husbands who would take
the declaration that they do not love their wives as an insult,
yet who hold the woman who loves them in fear and restraint
through their whole life. I know wives who move about their houses
with a trembling regard to the moods and notions of their
husbands--wives who have no more liberty than slaves, who never
spend a cent of money without a feeling of guilt, and who never
give an order about the house without the same doubt of their
authority that they would have if they were only housekeepers,
employed at a very economical salary. I can think of no proper
punishment for such husbands except daily ducking in a horse-pond,
until reformation. Yet these asses are so unconscious of their
detestable habits of feeling and life, that, probably, not one of
them who reads this will think that I mean him, but will wonder
where I have lived to fall in with such outlandish people.
The most precious possession that ever comes to a man in this
world is a woman's heart. Why some graceful and most amiable women
whom I know will persist in loving some men whom I also know, is
more than I know. I will not call their love an exhibition of
perverseness, though it looks like it; but that these men with
these rich, sweet hearts in their hands, grow sour and snappish,
and surly and tyrannical and exacting, is the most unaccountable
thing in the world. If a pig will not allow himself to be driven,
he will follow a man who offers him corn, and he will eat the
corn, even though he puts his feet in the trough; but there are
men--some of them of Christian professions--who take every
tenderness their wives bring them, and every expression of
affection, and every service, and every yearning sympathy, and
trample them under feet without tasting them, and without a look
of gratitude in their eyes. Hard, cold, thin-blooded, white-livered,
contemptible curmudgeons--they think their wives weak and
foolish, and themselves wise and dignified! I beg my readers to
assist me in despising them. I do not feel adequate to the task of
doing them justice.
There is another exhibition of perverseness which we sometimes see
in families. There will be, perhaps, from two to half a dozen
sisters in a family, amiable all of them. Now, think of the
reasons which should bind them together in the tenderest sympathy.
They were born of the same mother, they were nursed at the same
heart, they were cradled under the same roof by the same hand,
they have knelt at the side of the same father, their interests,
trials, associates, standing--every thing concerning their family
and social life--are the same. The honor of one intimately
concerns the honor of the other, yet I have known such families of
sisters fly apart the moment they became in any way independent of
each other, as if they were natural enemies. I have seen them take
the part of a friend against any member of the family band, and
become disgusted with one another's society. Where matters have
not gone to this length, I have seen sisters who would never
caress each other, or, by any but the most formal and dignified
methods, express their affection for each other. I have seen them
live together for months and years as inexpressive of affection
for each other as cattle in a stall,--more so: for I have seen a
cow affectionately lick her neighbor's ear by the half-hour, while
among these girls I have failed to see a kiss, or hear a tender
word, or witness any exhibition of sisterly affection whatever.
One of the most common forms of perverseness, though one of the
most subtle and least known, is that shown by people who study to
shut everybody out from a knowledge of their nature and their
life. They make it their grand end and aim to appear to be exactly
what they are not, to appear to believe exactly what they do not
believe, and to appear to feel what they do not feel at all. This
is not because they are ashamed of themselves, or because they
really have any thing to conceal. They have simply taken on this
form of perverseness. They will not, if they can help it, allow
any man to get inside of their natures and characters. If they
write you a letter, they will mislead you. They will say to you
irreverent and shocking things, to prove to you that they are
bold, and unfeeling, and unthoughtful, when they tremble at what
they have written, and really show by their language that they are
afraid, and full of feeling, and very thoughtful. If they have a
sentiment of love for anybody, they take it as a dog would a bone,
and go and dig a hole in the ground and bury it, only resorting to
it in the dark, for private crunching. Very likely they will try
to make you believe that they live a most dainty and delicate life
--that the animals of the field, and the fowls of the air love
them, and come at their call--that clouds arrange themselves in
heaven for their benefit, and are sufficiently paid for the effort
by their admiration--that flowers excite them to frenzy--a very
fine frenzy, indeed--and that all sounds shape themselves to music
in their souls. They would have you think that they live a kind of
charmed life--that the sun woos them, and the moon pines for them,
and the sea sobs because they will not come, and the daisies wait
lovingly for their feet, yet, if you knew the truth, you would see
that they sit discontentedly among the homeliest surroundings of
domestic life, with their sleeves rolled up--confound them!
This variety of perverseness seems very inexplicable. I have seen
much of it, but do not know what to make of it. There is doubtless
something morbid in it. It is often carried to such extremes, and
managed so artfully, that multitudes are deceived by it. I know
of some very beautiful natures that pass in the world for rough
and coarse. I know men who have the reputation of being hard and
harsh, yet who are, inside, and in their own consciousness, as
gentle and sensitive as women--who put on a stern air and a
repellent manner, when they are really yearning for sympathy. I
have seen this air and manner broken through and battered down by
a friendly man, who found what he suspected behind it--a generous,
warm, noble heart. This perverseness seems to be akin to that of
the miser who knows he is rich, takes his highest delight in being
rich, and yet dresses meanly, and fares like a beggar rather than
be thought rich. Women hide themselves more than men. They are
generally more sensitive, and their life and circumscribed habits
have a tendency to the formation of morbid moods, and this among
the number.
Of the perverseness of partisanship in politics much is written, and
my pen need not dip into it; but there is a perverseness exhibited by
Christian churches in their quarrels that should be exposed and
discussed, because some people have an impression that it may
possibly be piety. "For _dum squizzle_, read _permanence_,"
said an editor, correcting a typographical error that had found its
way into his journal. It seems as strange that perverseness should
be mistaken for piety, as that "permanence" should be mistaken for
"dum squizzle," but I believe it often is. Let some little cause of
disturbance arise, and become active in a church, and it is astonishing
how both parties go to work and pray over it. The pastor, perhaps,
has said something on the subject of slavery, or he does not preach
doctrine enough, or he preaches the wrong sort of doctrine, or he
does not visit his people enough, or there is "a row" about the
singing, or about a change in the hymn-books, or about repairing
the church, or buying an organ, or something or other, and
straightway sides are taken, and the wills of both parties get
roused. It is sometimes laughable--it would always be, only that
it is too sad--to see how quickly both parties grow pious, as they
grow perverse. It would seem, as the strife waxes hot, that the
glory of God was never so much in their hearts as now. They pray
with fervor, they are constant in their public religious duties,
they pass through the most scrupulous self-examinations, and then
fight on to the bitter end; believing, I suppose, that they are
really doing God service, when they are only gratifying their own
perverse wills.