children have deserted them, and who have no friends in the world. These
cases seem pitiful enough, and it breaks our hearts to think of them.
But usually the men and women who are left desolate in their old age are
those who have been unloving in their youth. "A man that hath friends
must show himself friendly," and an aged man or woman who has made
friends through life, and been full of love and affection toward others,
is tolerably sure to be tenderly cared for in later years. But true
affection is never eager for returns. We love because we must love;
never because we expect to be loved in return. We do for others because
we wish to make them happy; and not because we wish them to do for us.
Kindness and generosity have their place in the playground. There may be
thoughtfulness for one who is weaker than the rest, or who is a
newcomer, or who, for any reason, is neglected by others. There is an
opportunity to stand up for those who are ill-used. There is a generous
sympathy for those who, in any way, are having a hard time.
In all these ways boys and girls, when they are at play, show pretty
well what they are going to be in later life. When Napoleon was at a
military school, the boys were one day playing at war. One set of them
held a fort which the others were trying to capture. The boy, Napoleon,
led the attacking party. In the midst of the fight there was a flourish
of trumpets, and a party of officers entered, who had come to inspect
the school. The boys that held the fort forgot their play, and stood
staring at the entering group. Napoleon did not lose his head for a
moment. He kept his party up to their work. He took advantage of the
interruption, and when the besieged recovered their wits, their fort
was captured. He was already the Napoleon who in the real battles of
later years knew how to turn so many seemingly adverse circumstances to
good account.
We always think of Sir Walter Scott as a very affectionate man; but once
when he was a boy he saw a dog coming toward him and carelessly threw a
stone at him. The stone broke the dog's leg. The poor creature had
strength to crawl up to him and lick his feet. This incident, he
afterward said, had given him the bitterest remorse. He never forgot it.
From that moment he resolved never to be unkind to any animal. We know
that he kept that resolution, for he wrote many of his novels with his
faithful dogs Maida, Nimrod, and Bran near him. When Maida died he had
a sculptured monument of her set up before his door.
We all know boys who throw stones at animals from pure thoughtlessness
and love of fun. But no boy with a really affectionate nature can bear
to make an animal or a human being suffer pain. A boy who begins by
being cruel to animals usually ends by being cruel to women and
children. A girl who habitually forgets to feed her kitten or her
canary birds, will be apt to forget her child later in life.
Half a century ago there lived in the state of Massachusetts a very
remarkable man named Thoreau. This man became so deeply interested in
the animal world that he built a little hut for himself near Walden
pond, and he there lived in the closest sympathy with the birds and
animals for more than two years. It is said that even the snakes loved
him, and would wind round his legs; and on taking a squirrel from a tree
the little creature would hide its head in his waistcoat. The fish in
the river knew him and would let him lift them out of the water, and the
little wood-mice came and nibbled at the cheese he held in his hand. It
was Thoreau's love for the little wild creatures which drew them to him,
for animals are as responsive to love as are human beings.
John Howard gave his life to the work of improving the condition of
prisons all over the world, and finally he died alone in Russia of jail
fever. He was followed in his labors by Elizabeth Fry in England, and by
Dorothea Dix in America. These noble philanthropists were filled with
unselfish love toward suffering humanity. They devoted their lives to
the neglected and forsaken, including the whole world in their generous
hearts; and their names and deeds will never be forgotten.
There are two principal ways in which our kindly feelings may be made
known: First, _in our words_. It is pleasant to those who do us
favors to know that we appreciate their kindness, and we should never
fail to tell them so. This is often all the return that they expect or
ask; besides, it is good for us. We strengthen our feelings by giving
them suitable expression. Loveless at last is the home in which no word
of love is ever heard. The grateful feeling to which one gives utterance
kindles the same feeling in the hearts of those who hear.
Second, _in our deeds_. If we are really grateful we are not satisfied
with simply saying, "Thank you," to those who have been kind to us, even
when we know this is all they expect. We wish to render them some
service in return. In the case of our parents, as long as they are with
us, we can best do this by doing cheerfully what they ask us to do, by
thoughtfully anticipating their wishes, and by trying to be as pure and
good as we know they want us to be.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
Abraham Lincoln was a poor boy. His early life was full of hardships;
but many a kind friend helped him in his struggle against poverty. Among
these friends of his early youth was one, Jack Armstrong, of New Salem,
Illinois, whose kind, good-hearted wife performed for Lincoln many a
motherly act of kindness. She made his clothes and "got him something to
eat while he rocked the baby." Years passed by. Lincoln became a
successful lawyer. Soon after he had entered upon the practice of his
profession at Springfield, his old friend, Jack Armstrong died. The baby
whom Lincoln had rocked grew into a stout but dissolute young man. He
was arrested, charged with the crime of murder. "Aunt Hannah," as
Lincoln used to call her, was heartbroken with sorrow for her poor,
misguided boy. In her grief she appealed to the "noble, good Abe," who
had rocked her son when he was a baby. The appeal brought tears to the
eyes of Lincoln. His generous heart was touched. He resolved to
discharge the debt of gratitude which neither his great success in life
nor the intervening years had erased from his memory. He pledged his
services without charge.
"Aunt Hannah" believed that her boy was innocent and that others wished
to fasten the crime upon him because of his bad reputation. The
circumstances of the case were as follows: While Armstrong was in the
company of several fast young men, they became intoxicated. A "free
fight" ensued in which a young fellow named Metzgar was killed. After
hearing the facts, Lincoln was convinced that the young man was not
guilty, and resolved to do his best to save him from the gallows.
Lincoln secured a postponement of the trial and spent much time in
tracing the evidence. He labored as hard to pay his old debt of
gratitude as he would have done if he had been offered a five thousand
dollar fee.
The day for the trial came. Lincoln threw his whole soul into the effort
to defend the life of his client. He succeeded in proving his innocence
beyond the shadow of a doubt. The closing of his plea was a marvel of
eloquence. He depicted the loneliness and sorrow of the widowed mother,
whose husband had once welcomed to his humble home a strange and
penniless boy. "That boy now stands before you pleading for the life of
his benefactor's son."
When the jury brought in the verdict, "not guilty," a shout of joy went
up from the crowded court room. The aged mother pressed forward through
the throng and, with tears streaming from her eyes, attempted to express
to Lincoln her gratitude for his noble effort.
Some months afterward Lincoln called to see her at her home. She urged
him to take pay for his services. "Why, Aunt Hannah," he exclaimed, "I
shan't take a cent of yours; never! Anything I can do for you, I will do
willingly, and without any charge."
True gratitude never forgets. No one can possess too much gratitude any
more than he can have too much honesty or truthfulness. It was a "pearl
of great price" in Lincoln's heart. He was truer and nobler for it; and
it did much to endear him to the American people, by whom he is still
remembered as one of the most large-hearted and liberal-minded men our
country has produced.
[Footnote: See also biographies of Lincoln, by Holland (1865); Arnold
(1868); Lamon (1872); Nicolay and Hay (1890); Schurz (1892); and Herndon
(1892, revised edition).]
VI.
CHEERFULNESS.
MEMORY GEMS.
Cheerfulness is the best promoter of health.--Addison
Give us, oh give us, the man who sings at his work.--Carlyle
Age without cheerfulness is like a Lapland winter without the sun.
--Colton
An ounce of cheerfulness is worth a pound of sadness.--Fuller
The habit of looking at the bright side of things is better than an
income of a thousand a year.--Hume.
We all love the company of cheerful people, but we do not think, as
much as we ought to, of the nature of cheerfulness itself. Because we
find that some people are naturally cheerful, we are apt to forget that
cheerfulness is a habit which can be cultivated by all. Whether we do or
do not possess a cheerful disposition, depends very largely upon our own
efforts; for if we will endeavor, while still in our early years, to
form the habit of looking on the bright side of things, and then persist
in this course as we grow older, we shall certainly attain to that
habitual cheerfulness which makes the lives of those we admire so sunny
and so pleasing.
Even the smallest matters may aid us in forming this habit. Perhaps you
have heard of the little girl who noticed, while eating her dinner, that
the golden rays of the sun fell upon her spoon. She put the spoon to her
mouth, and then exclaimed, "O mother! I have swallowed a whole spoonful
of sunshine." Some children even take a cheerful view of their
punishments, as seen in the following incident. "Little Charley had been
very naughty, and was imprisoned for an hour in the kitchen wood-box. He
speedily began amusing himself with chips and splinters, and was playing
quite busily and happily, when a neighbor entered the house by way of
the kitchen. 'Charley,' he cried, 'what are you doing there?' 'Nothing,'
said Charley, 'nothing; but mamma's just been having one of her bad
spells.'"
Cheerfulness consists in that happy frame of mind which is best
described as the shutting out of all that pertains to the morbid, the
gloomy, the fretful, and the discontented. The perfection of
cheerfulness is displayed in general good temper united to much
kindliness of heart. It arises partly from personal goodness, and partly
from belief in the goodness of others. Its face is ever directed toward
happiness. It sees "the glory in the grass, the sunshine on the flower."
It encourages happy thoughts, and lives in an atmosphere of peace. It
costs nothing, and yet is invaluable; for it blesses its possessor, and
affords a large measure of enjoyment to others.
Cheerfulness bears the same friendly regard to the mind as to the body.
It banishes all anxious care and discontent, soothes and composes the
passions, and keeps the soul in a perpetual calm. Try for a single day
to keep yourself in an easy and cheerful frame of mind; and then compare
the day with one which has been marred by discontent, and you will find
your heart open to every good motive, and your life so greatly
strengthened, that you will wonder at your own improvement, and will
feel that you are more than repaid for the effort.
Goethe once said, "Give me the man who bears a heavy load lightly, and
looks on a grave matter with a blithe and cheerful eye." And Carlyle has
pointed out that "One is scarcely sensible of fatigue whilst he marches
to music. The very stars are said to make harmony as they revolve in
their spheres. Wondrous is the strength of cheerfulness; altogether past
calculation its power of endurance. Efforts, to be permanently useful,
must be uniformly joyous--a spirit all sunshine, graceful from very
gladness, beautiful because bright."
This spirit of cheerfulness should be encouraged in our youth if we
would wish to have the benefit of it in our old age. Persons who are
always innocently cheerful and good-humored are very useful in the
world; they maintain peace and happiness, and spread a thankful temper
among all who live around them.
"A little word in kindness spoken
A motion or a tear,
Has often healed a heart that's broken,
And made a friend sincere."
Cheerfulness does not depend upon the measure of our possessions. There
is a Persian story to the effect that the great king, being out of
spirits, consulted his astrologers, and was told that happiness could be
found by wearing the shirt of a perfectly happy man. The court, and the
homes of all the prosperous classes were searched in vain; no such man
could be found. At last a common laborer was found to fulfill the
conditions; he was absolutely happy; but, alas! the remedy was as far
off as ever, for the man had no shirt.
The same truth may be illustrated by a reference to the life and
character of the Roman emperor, Nero. Few persons ever had greater means
and opportunities for self-gratification. From the senator to the slave,
everybody in the empire crouched in servile subjection before his
throne. Enormous revenues from the provinces were poured into his
coffers, and no one dared criticise his manner of spending them. He was
absolute monarch, holding the destinies of millions at his will. He came
to the throne at seventeen; and during the fifteen years of his reign he
exhausted every known means of passionate indulgence. He left nothing
untried or untouched that could stimulate the palate, or arouse his
passions, or administer in any way to his pleasure. After the great fire
in Rome, he built his golden palace, and said, "Now at last I am lodged
like a man"; but alas! his search for happiness was in vain. During his
later years he never knew a really cheerful day; and, at last, he was
forced to flee before his outraged people, and took refuge in a
miserable hut, trembling like a base coward, where, at his own request, a
slave did him the favor to end his miserable life.
In one of his famous essays, Addison says, "I have always preferred
cheerfulness to mirth. The latter I consider as an act, the former as a
habit of the mind. Mirth is like a flash of lightning that breaks
through a gloom of clouds, and glitters for a moment; cheerfulness keeps
up a kind of daylight in the mind, and fills it with a steady and
perpetual serenity."
Cheerfulness and good spirits depend in a great degree upon bodily
causes; but much may be done for the promotion of this frame of mind.
"Persons subject to low spirits should make the room in which they live
as cheerful as possible; hanging up pictures or prints, and filling the
odd nooks and corners with beautiful ornaments. A bay window looking
upon pleasant objects, and, above all, a large fire whenever the weather
will permit, are favorable to good spirits, and the tables near should
be strewed with books and pamphlets." "To this," says Sydney Smith,
"must be added as much eating and drinking as is consistent with health;
and some manual employment for men--as gardening, a carpenter's shop, or
a turning-lathe. Women have always manual employment enough, and it is a
great source of cheerfulness." For children, fresh air, occupation, and
outdoor sports are great helps in overcoming depression and gloom.
SYDNEY SMITH.
There are a few noble natures whose very presence carries sunshine with
them wherever they go; a sunshine which means pity for the poor,
sympathy for the suffering, help for the unfortunate, and kindness
toward all. It is the sunshine, and not the cloud, that colors the
flower. There is more virtue in one sunbeam than in a whole hemisphere
of cloud and gloom.
A man of this stamp is found in Sydney Smith, an English clergyman and
writer of great distinction, who was born in 1771, and died in 1845. His
was a sunny temperament. Noted for his wit, he was equally famous for
his kindness. He hated injustice; he praised virtue; he pierced humbugs;
he laughed away trouble; he preached and lived the gospel of Christian
cheerfulness.
Smith helped to found the _Edinburgh Review_, and he advocated
putting on the title-page this truthful, too truthful, sentence: "We
cultivate literature on a little oatmeal." Poor but happy, this jest is
characteristic of the man. His name became known: his society was
sought. Macaulay and he were called "the great talkers." He moved to
London, and gave lectures on moral philosophy that drew crowds, so that
the carriages of fashion blocked the streets. He was the charm of every
circle. His pen was always on the side of progress and good fellowship.
At every turn in life he made light of vexations, and never allowed
himself or those with him to indulge in morbid ideas, imaginative
forebodings, or resentment. This is what he wrote to his daughter: "I am
not situated as I should choose; but I am resolved to like it, and to
reconcile myself to it; which is more manly than to feign myself above
it and send up complaints of being thrown away." One of his favorite
expressions was, "Let us glorify the room"; which meant, throw up the
shades and let in the sunshine.
The following anecdote will help to show his bright and sparkling
disposition: At dinner with a large party of famous men and women, a
French scientist annoyed all the rest by loudly arguing for atheism, and
proclaimed his belief that there is no God. "Very good soup this,"
struck in Sydney Smith. "Yes, monsieur, it is excellent," replied the
atheist. "Pray, sir," continued Smith, "do you believe in a cook?" The
ounce of wit was worth a pound of argument.
He is one of the very few men whose names have been handed down to us by
reason of the possession of this gift, and his career should be more
fully studied.
[Footnote: See "Wit and Wisdom of Sydney Smith," by Duyckinck (1856);
"Memoirs of Sydney Smith" by his daughter, Lady Holland (1855); "Life
and Times of Sydney Smith," by Stuart J. Reid (London, 1844).]
VII.
THE LOVE OF THE BEAUTIFUL.
MEMORY GEMS.
The beautiful can never die.--Kingsley
A thing of beauty is a joy forever.--Keats
The love of beauty is an essential part of all healthy human nature.
--Ruskin
The sense of beauty is its own excuse for being.--Dr. Hedge
If eyes were made for seeing,
Then beauty is its own excuse for being.--Emerson
One of the principal objects of the large amount of "nature study" that,
within recent years, has been pursued in our public schools, is to
develop in the pupils the love of the beautiful. The beautiful in nature
and art is that which gives pleasure to the senses. The question might
be asked, "Why do some forms and colors please, and others displease?"
Yankee fashion, it might be answered by the question, "Why do we like
sugar and dislike wormwood?" It is also a fact that cultivated minds
derive more pleasure from nature and art than uncultivated minds.
This fact is aptly illustrated by the following remark of a little girl
in one of the lower grades of our public schools. Shortly after she had
taken up the study of plants and minerals she came to her teacher and
said, "Oh! we have a lovely time now when we go up to the reservoir to
play. Before we studied about plants and stones, we used to go up there
and sit down and look around; but now we find so many beautiful things
to look at. We know the plants and stones; and what pleasure it does
give us to find a new specimen!" This child's love of the beautiful was
being intelligently developed.
Natural beauty is an all-pervading presence. It unfolds into the
numberless flowers of spring. It waves in the branches of the trees and
the green blades of grass. It haunts the depths of the earth and the
sea, and gleams from the hues of the shell and the precious stone. And
not only these minute objects, but the ocean, the mountains, the clouds,
the heavens, the stars, the rising and setting sun--all overflow with
beauty. The universe is its temple; and those men who are alive to it
cannot lift their eyes without feeling themselves encompassed with it on
every side. This beauty is so precious, the enjoyments it gives are so
refined and pure, so congenial to our tenderest and noblest feelings,
and so akin to worship, that it is painful to think of the multitude of
persons living in the midst of it and yet remaining almost as blind to
it as if they were tenants of a dungeon.
All persons should seek to become sufficiently acquainted with the
beautiful in nature to secure to themselves the rich fund of happiness
which it is so well able to give. There is not a worm we tread upon, nor
a rare leaf that dances merrily as it falls before the autumn winds, but
has superior claims upon our study and admiration. The child who plucks
a rose to pieces, or crushes the fragile form of a fluttering insect,
destroys a work which the highest art could not create, nor man's best
skilled hand construct.
One of the first forms in which man's idea of the beautiful shaped
itself was in architecture. Extremely crude at first, this love for
beautiful buildings has been highly developed among civilized nations.
Ruskin says, "All good architecture is the expression of national life
and character, and is produced by a permanent and eager desire or taste
for beauty."
A taste for pictures, merely, is not in itself a moral quality; but the
taste for _good_ pictures is. A beautiful painting by one of the great
artists, a Grecian statue, or a rare coin, or magnificent building, is a
good and perfect thing; for it gives constant delight to the beholder.
The absence of the love of nature is not an assured ground of
condemnation. Its presence is an invariable sign of goodness of heart,
though by no means an evidence of moral practice. In proportion to the
degree in which it is felt, will probably be the degree in which
nobleness and beauty of character will be attained.
One of our great artists has said, that good taste is essentially a
moral quality. To his mind, the first, last, and closest trial question
to any living creature is, What do you like? Tell me what you like, and
I will tell you what you are.
Let us examine this argument. Suppose you go out into the street and ask
the first person you meet what he likes? You happen to accost a man in
rags with an unsteady step, who, straightening himself up in a half
uncertain way, answers, "A pipe and a quart of beer." You can take a
pretty good measure of his character from that answer, can you not? But
here comes a little girl, with golden hair and soft, blue eyes. "What
do you like, my little girl?" "My canary, and to run among the
flowers," is her answer. And you, little boy, with dirty hands and low
forehead, "What do you like?" "A chance to hit the sparrows with a
stone." When we have secured so much knowledge of their tastes, we
really know the character of these persons so well that we do not need
to ask any further questions about them.
The man who likes what you like must belong to the same class with you.
You may give him a different form of work to do, but as long as he likes
the things that you like, and dislikes that which you dislike, he will
not be content while employed in an inferior position.
Hearing a young lady highly praised for her beauty, Gotthold asked,
"What kind of beauty do you mean? Merely that of the body, or that also
of the mind? I see well that you have been looking no further than the
sign which Nature displays outside the house, but have never asked for
the host who dwells within. Beauty is an excellent gift of God, but many
a pretty girl is like the flower called 'the imperial crown,' which is
admired for its showy appearance, and despised for its unpleasant odor.
Were her mind as free from pride, selfishness, luxury, and levity, as
her countenance is from spots and wrinkles, and could she govern her
inward inclinations as she does her external carriage, she would have
none to match her."