Transcribed from the 1873 James R. Osgood and Company edition by David
Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org
THE
AUTOCRAT
OF
THE BREAKFAST-TABLE.
* * * * *
_EVERY MAN HIS OWN BOSWELL_.
[Picture: Decorative image]
BOSTON:
JAMES R. OSGOOD AND COMPANY,
LATE TICKNOR & FIELDS, AND FIELDS, OSGOOD, & CO.
1873.
* * * * *
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1858, by
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES,
In the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the District of
Massachusetts.
THE AUTOCRAT’S AUTOBIOGRAPHY
The interruption referred to in the first sentence of the first of these
papers was just a quarter of a century in duration.
Two articles entitled “The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table” will be found
in the “New England Magazine,” formerly published in Boston by J. T. and
E. Buckingham. The date of the first of these articles is November 1831,
and that of the second February 1832. When “The Atlantic Monthly” was
begun, twenty-five years afterwards, and the author was asked to write
for it, the recollection of these crude products of his uncombed literary
boyhood suggested the thought that it would be a curious experiment to
shake the same bough again, and see if the ripe fruit were better or
worse than the early windfalls.
So began this series of papers, which naturally brings those earlier
attempts to my own notice and that of some few friends who were idle
enough to read them at the time of their publication. The man is father
to the boy that was, and I am my own son, as it seems to me, in those
papers of the New England Magazine. If I find it hard to pardon the
boy’s faults, others would find it harder. They will not, therefore, be
reprinted here, nor as I hope, anywhere.
But a sentence or two from them will perhaps bear reproducing, and with
these I trust the gentle reader, if that kind being still breathes, will
be contented.
—“It is a capital plan to carry a tablet with you, and, when you find
yourself felicitous, take notes of your own conversation.”—
—“When I feel inclined to read poetry I take down my Dictionary. The
poetry of words is quite as beautiful as that of sentences. The
author may arrange the gems effectively, but their fhape and luftre
have been given by the attrition of ages. Bring me the fineft fimile
from the whole range of imaginative writing, and I will fhow you a
fingle word which conveys a more profound, a more accurate, and a
more eloquent analogy.”—
—“Once on a time, a notion was ftarted, that if all the people in the
world would fhout at once, it might be heard in the moon. So the
projectors agreed it fhould be done in juft ten years. Some thousand
fhip-loads of chronometers were diftributed to the selectmen and
other great folks of all the different nations. For a year
beforehand, nothing else was talked about but the awful noise that
was to be made on the great occafion. When the time came, everybody
had their ears so wide open, to hear the universal ejaculation of
BOO,—the word agreed upon,—that nobody spoke except a deaf man in one
of the Fejee Islands, and a woman in Pekin, so that the world was
never so ftill fince the creation.”—
There was nothing better than these things and there was not a little
that was much worse. A young fellow of two or three and twenty has as
good a right to spoil a magazine-full of essays in learning how to write,
as an oculist like Wenzel had to spoil his hat-full of eyes in learning
how to operate for cataract, or an _elegant_ like Brummel to point to an
armful of failures in the attempt to achieve a perfect tie. This son of
mine, whom I have not seen for these twenty-five years, generously
counted, was a self-willed youth, always too ready to utter his
unchastised fancies. He, like too many American young people, got the
spur when he should have had the rein. He therefore helped to fill the
market with that unripe fruit which his father says in one of these
papers abounds in the marts of his native country. All these by-gone
shortcomings he would hope are forgiven, did he not feel sure that very
few of his readers know anything about them. In taking the old name for
the new papers, he felt bound to say that he had uttered unwise things
under that title, and if it shall appear that his unwisdom has not
diminished by at least half while his years have doubled, he promises not
to repeat the experiment if he should live to double them again and
become his own grandfather.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES.
BOSTON _Nov._ 1_st_ 1858.
CHAPTER I
I was just going to say, when I was interrupted, that one of the many
ways of classifying minds is under the heads of arithmetical and
algebraical intellects. All economical and practical wisdom is an
extension or variation of the following arithmetical formula: 2+2=4.
Every philosophical proposition has the more general character of the
expression _a+b=c_. We are mere operatives, empirics, and egotists,
until we learn to think in letters instead of figures.
They all stared. There is a divinity student lately come among us to
whom I commonly address remarks like the above, allowing him to take a
certain share in the conversation, so far as assent or pertinent
questions are involved. He abused his liberty on this occasion by
presuming to say that Leibnitz had the same observation.—No, sir, I
replied, he has not. But he said a mighty good thing about mathematics,
that sounds something like it, and you found it, _not in the original_,
but quoted by Dr. Thomas Reid. I will tell the company what he did say,
one of these days.
—If I belong to a Society of Mutual Admiration?—I blush to say that I do
not at this present moment. I once did, however. It was the first
association to which I ever heard the term applied; a body of scientific
young men in a great foreign city who admired their teacher, and to some
extent each other. Many of them deserved it; they have become famous
since. It amuses me to hear the talk of one of those beings described by
Thackeray—
“Letters four do form his name”—
about a social development which belongs to the very noblest stage of
civilization. All generous companies of artists, authors,
philanthropists, men of science, are, or ought to be, Societies of Mutual
Admiration. A man of genius, or any kind of superiority, is not debarred
from admiring the same quality in another, nor the other from returning
his admiration. They may even associate together and continue to think
highly of each other. And so of a dozen such men, if any one place is
fortunate enough to hold so many. The being referred to above assumes
several false premises. First, that men of talent necessarily hate each
other. Secondly, that intimate knowledge or habitual association
destroys our admiration of persons whom we esteemed highly at a distance.
Thirdly, that a circle of clever fellows, who meet together to dine and
have a good time, have signed a constitutional compact to glorify
themselves and to put down him and the fraction of the human race not
belonging to their number. Fourthly, that it is an outrage that he is
not asked to join them.
[Picture: The Old Gentleman Opposite]
Here the company laughed a good deal, and the old gentleman who sits
opposite said, “That’s it! that’s it!”
I continued, for I was in the talking vein. As to clever people’s hating
each other, I think a _little_ extra talent does sometimes make people
jealous. They become irritated by perpetual attempts and failures, and
it hurts their tempers and dispositions. Unpretending mediocrity is
good, and genius is glorious; but a weak flavor of genius in an
essentially common person is detestable. It spoils the grand neutrality
of a commonplace character, as the rinsings of an unwashed wineglass
spoil a draught of fair water. No wonder the poor fellow we spoke of,
who always belongs to this class of slightly flavored mediocrities, is
puzzled and vexed by the strange sight of a dozen men of capacity working
and playing together in harmony. He and his fellows are always fighting.
With them familiarity naturally breeds contempt. If they ever praise
each other’s bad drawings, or broken-winded novels, or spavined verses,
nobody ever supposed it was from admiration; it was simply a contract
between themselves and a publisher or dealer.
If the Mutuals have really nothing among them worth admiring, that alters
the question. But if they are men with noble powers and qualities, let
me tell you, that, next to youthful love and family affections, there is
no human sentiment better than that which unites the Societies of Mutual
Admiration. And what would literature or art be without such
associations? Who can tell what we owe to the Mutual Admiration Society
of which Shakspeare, and Ben Jonson, and Beaumont and Fletcher were
members? Or to that of which Addison and Steele formed the centre, and
which gave us the Spectator? Or to that where Johnson, and Goldsmith,
and Burke, and Reynolds, and Beauclerk, and Boswell, most admiring among
all admirers, met together? Was there any great harm in the fact that
the Irvings and Paulding wrote in company? or any unpardonable cabal in
the literary union of Verplanck and Bryant and Sands, and as many more as
they chose to associate with them?
The poor creature does not know what he is talking about, when he abuses
this noblest of institutions. Let him inspect its mysteries through the
knot-hole he has secured, but not use that orifice as a medium for his
popgun. Such a society is the crown of a literary metropolis; if a town
has not material for it, and spirit and good feeling enough to organize
it, it is a mere caravansary, fit for a man of genius to lodge in, but
not to live in. Foolish people hate and dread and envy such an
association of men of varied powers and influence, because it is lofty,
serene, impregnable, and, by the necessity of the case, exclusive. Wise
ones are prouder of the title M. S. M. A. than of all their other honors
put together.
—All generous minds have a horror of what are commonly called “facts.”
They are the brute beasts of the intellectual domain. Who does not know
fellows that always have an ill-conditioned fact or two which they lead
after them into decent company like so many bull-dogs, ready to let them
slip at every ingenious suggestion, or convenient generalization, or
pleasant fancy? I allow no “facts” at this table. What! Because bread
is good and wholesome and necessary and nourishing, shall you thrust a
crumb into my windpipe while I am talking? Do not these muscles of mine
represent a hundred loaves of bread? and is not my thought the abstract
of ten thousand of these crumbs of truth with which you would choke off
my speech?
[The above remark must be conditioned and qualified for the vulgar mind.
The reader will of course understand the precise amount of seasoning
which must be added to it before he adopts it as one of the axioms of his
life. The speaker disclaims all responsibility for its abuse in
incompetent hands.]
This business of conversation is a very serious matter. There are men
that it weakens one to talk with an hour more than a day’s fasting would
do. Mark this that I am going to say, for it is as good as a working
professional man’s advice, and costs you nothing: It is better to lose a
pint of blood from your veins than to have a nerve tapped. Nobody
measures your nervous force as it runs away, nor bandages your brain and
marrow after the operation.
There are men of _esprit_ who are excessively exhausting to some people.
They are the talkers who have what may be called _jerky_ minds. Their
thoughts do not run in the natural order of sequence. They say bright
things on all possible subjects, but their zigzags rack you to death.
After a jolting half-hour with one of these jerky companions, talking
with a dull friend affords great relief. It is like taking the cat in
your lap after holding a squirrel.
What a comfort a dull but kindly person is, to be sure, at times! A
ground-glass shade over a gas-lamp does not bring more solace to our
dazzled eyes than such a one to our minds.
“Do not dull people bore you?” said one of the lady-boarders,—the same
that sent me her autograph-book last week with a request for a few
original stanzas, not remembering that “The Pactolian” pays me five
dollars a line for every thing I write in its columns.
“Madam,” said I, (she and the century were in their teens together,) “all
men are bores, except when we want them. There never was but one man
whom I would trust with my latch-key.”
“Who might that favored person be?”
“Zimmermann.”
—The men of genius that I fancy most have erectile heads like the
cobra-di-capello. You remember what they tell of William Pinkney, the
great pleader; how in his eloquent paroxysms the veins of his neck would
swell and his face flush and his eyes glitter, until he seemed on the
verge of apoplexy. The hydraulic arrangements for supplying the brain
with blood are only second in importance to its own organization. The
bulbous-headed fellows that steam well when they are at work are the men
that draw big audiences and give us marrowy books and pictures. It is a
good sign to have one’s feet grow cold when he is writing. A great
writer and speaker once told me that he often wrote with his feet in hot
water; but for this, _all_ his blood would have run into his head, as the
mercury sometimes withdraws into the ball of a thermometer.
—You don’t suppose that my remarks made at this table are like so many
postage-stamps, do you,—each to be only once uttered? If you do, you are
mistaken. He must be a poor creature that does not often repeat himself.
Imagine the author of the excellent piece of advice, “Know thyself,”
never alluding to that sentiment again during the course of a protracted
existence! Why, the truths a man carries about with him are his tools;
and do you think a carpenter is bound to use the same plane but once to
smooth a knotty board with, or to hang up his hammer after it has driven
its first nail? I shall never repeat a conversation, but an idea often.
I shall use the same types when I like, but not commonly the same
stereotypes. A thought is often original, though you have uttered it a
hundred times. It has come to you over a new route, by a new and express
train of associations.
Sometimes, but rarely, one may be caught making the same speech twice
over, and yet be held blameless. Thus, a certain lecturer, after
performing in an inland city, where dwells a _Littératrice_ of note, was
invited to meet her and others over the social teacup. She pleasantly
referred to his many wanderings in his new occupation. “Yes,” he
replied, “I am like the Huma, the bird that never lights, being always in
the cars, as he is always on the wing.”—Years elapsed. The lecturer
visited the same place once more for the same purpose. Another social
cup after the lecture, and a second meeting with the distinguished lady.
“You are constantly going from place to place,” she said.—“Yes,” he
answered, “I am like the Huma,”—and finished the sentence as before.
What horrors, when it flashed over him that he had made this fine speech,
word for word, twice over! Yet it was not true, as the lady might
perhaps have fairly inferred, that he had embellished his conversation
with the Huma daily during that whole interval of years. On the
contrary, he had never once thought of the odious fowl until the
recurrence of precisely the same circumstances brought up precisely the
same idea. He ought to have been proud of the accuracy of his mental
adjustments. Given certain factors, and a sound brain should always
evolve the same fixed product with the certainty of Babbage’s calculating
machine.
—What a satire, by the way, is that machine on the mere mathematician! A
Frankenstein-monster, a thing without brains and without heart, too
stupid to make a blunder; that turns out results like a corn-sheller, and
never grows any wiser or better, though it grind a thousand bushels of
them!
I have an immense respect for a man of talents _plus_ “the mathematics.”
But the calculating power alone should seem to be the least human of
qualities, and to have the smallest amount of reason in it; since a
machine can be made to do the work of three or four calculators, and
better than any one of them. Sometimes I have been troubled that I had
not a deeper intuitive apprehension of the relations of numbers. But the
triumph of the ciphering hand-organ has consoled me. I always fancy I
can hear the wheels clicking in a calculator’s brain. The power of
dealing with numbers is a kind of “detached lever” arrangement, which may
be put into a mighty poor watch—I suppose it is about as common as the
power of moving the ears voluntarily, which is a moderately rare
endowment.
—Little localized powers, and little narrow streaks of specialized
knowledge, are things men are very apt to be conceited about. Nature is
very wise; but for this encouraging principle how many small talents and
little accomplishments would be neglected! Talk about conceit as much as
you like, it is to human character what salt is to the ocean; it keeps it
sweet, and renders it endurable. Say rather it is like the natural
unguent of the sea-fowl’s plumage, which enables him to shed the rain
that falls on him and the wave in which he dips. When one has had _all_
his conceit taken out of him, when he has lost _all_ his illusions, his
feathers will soon soak through, and he will fly no more.
“So you admire conceited people, do you?” said the young lady who has
come to the city to be finished off for—the duties of life.
I am afraid you do not study logic at your school, my dear. It does not
follow that I wish to be pickled in brine because I like a salt-water
plunge at Nahant. I say that conceit is just as natural a thing to human
minds as a centre is to a circle. But little-minded people’s thoughts
move in such small circles that five minutes’ conversation gives you an
arc long enough to determine their whole curve. An arc in the movement
of a large intellect does not sensibly differ from a straight line. Even
if it have the third vowel as its centre, it does not soon betray it.
The highest thought, that is, is the most seemingly impersonal; it does
not obviously imply any individual centre.
Audacious self-esteem, with good ground for it, is always imposing. What
resplendent beauty that must have been which could have authorized Phryne
to “peel” in the way she did! What fine speeches are those two: “_Non
omnis mortar_,” and “I have taken all knowledge to be my province”! Even
in common people, conceit has the virtue of making them cheerful; the man
who thinks his wife, his baby, his house, his horse, his dog, and himself
severally unequalled, is almost sure to be a good-humored person, though
liable to be tedious at times.
—What are the great faults of conversation? Want of ideas, want of
words, want of manners, are the principal ones, I suppose you think. I
don’t doubt it, but I will tell you what I have found spoil more good
talks than anything else;—long arguments on special points between people
who differ on the fundamental principles upon which these points depend.
No men can have satisfactory relations with each other until they have
agreed on certain _ultimata_ of belief not to be disturbed in ordinary
conversation, and unless they have sense enough to trace the secondary
questions depending upon these ultimate beliefs to their source. In
short, just as a written constitution is essential to the best social
order, so a code of finalities is a necessary condition of profitable
talk between two persons. Talking is like playing on the harp; there is
as much in laying the hand on the strings to stop their vibrations as in
twanging them to bring out their music.
—Do you mean to say the pun-question is not clearly settled in your
minds? Let me lay down the law upon the subject. Life and language are
alike sacred. Homicide and _verbicide_—that is, violent treatment of a
word with fatal results to its legitimate meaning, which is its life—are
alike forbidden. Manslaughter, which is the meaning of the one, is the
same as man’s laughter, which is the end of the other. A pun is _primâ
facie_ an insult to the person you are talking with. It implies utter
indifference to or sublime contempt for his remarks, no matter how
serious. I speak of total depravity, and one says all that is written on
the subject is deep raving. I have committed my self-respect by talking
with such a person. I should like to commit him, but cannot, because he
is a nuisance. Or I speak of geological convulsions, and he asks me what
was the cosine of Noah’s ark; also, whether the Deluge was not a deal
huger than any modern inundation.
A pun does not commonly justify a blow in return. But if a blow were
given for such cause, and death ensued, the jury would be judges both of
the facts and of the pun, and might, if the latter were of an aggravated
character, return a verdict of justifiable homicide. Thus, in a case
lately decided before Miller, J., Doe presented Roe a subscription paper,
and urged the claims of suffering humanity. Roe replied by asking, When
charity was like a top? It was in evidence that Doe preserved a
dignified silence. Roe then said, “When it begins to hum.” Doe then—and
not till then—struck Roe, and his head happening to hit a bound volume of
the Monthly Rag-bag and Stolen Miscellany, intense mortification ensued,
with a fatal result. The chief laid down his notions of the law to his
brother justices, who unanimously replied, “Jest so.” The chief
rejoined, that no man should jest so without being punished for it, and
charged for the prisoner, who was acquitted, and the pun ordered to be
burned by the sheriff. The bound volume was forfeited as a deodand, but
not claimed.
People that make puns are like wanton boys that put coppers on the
railroad tracks. They amuse themselves and other children, but their
little trick may upset a freight train of conversation for the sake of a
battered witticism.
I will thank you, B. F., to bring down two books, of which I will mark
the places on this slip of paper. (While he is gone, I may say that this
boy, our land-lady’s youngest, is called BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, after the
celebrated philosopher of that name. A highly merited compliment.)
I wished to refer to two eminent authorities. Now be so good as to
listen. The great moralist says: “To trifle with the vocabulary which is
the vehicle of social intercourse is to tamper with the currency of human
intelligence. He who would violate the sanctities of his mother tongue
would invade the recesses of the paternal till without remorse, and
repeat the banquet of Saturn without an indigestion.”
And, once more, listen to the historian. “The Puritans hated puns. The
Bishops were notoriously addicted to them. The Lords Temporal carried
them to the verge of license. Majesty itself must have its Royal
quibble. ‘Ye be burly, my Lord of Burleigh,’ said Queen Elizabeth, ‘but
ye shall make less stir in our realm than my Lord of Leicester.’ The
gravest wisdom and the highest breeding lent their sanction to the
practice. Lord Bacon playfully declared himself a descendant of ’Og, the
King of Bashan. Sir Philip Sidney, with his last breath, reproached the
soldier who brought him water, for wasting a casque full upon a dying
man. A courtier, who saw Othello performed at the Globe Theatre,
remarked, that the blackamoor was a brute, and not a man. ‘Thou hast
reason,’ replied a great Lord, ‘according to Plato his saying; for this
be a two-legged animal _with_ feathers.’ The fatal habit became
universal. The language was corrupted. The infection spread to the
national conscience. Political double-dealings naturally grew out of
verbal double meanings. The teeth of the new dragon were sown by the
Cadmus who introduced the alphabet of equivocation. What was levity in
the time of the Tudors grew to regicide and revolution in the age of the
Stuarts.”
Who was that boarder that just whispered something about the
Macaulay-flowers of literature?—There was a dead silence.—I said calmly,
I shall henceforth consider any interruption by a pun as a hint to change
my boarding-house. Do not plead my example. If _I_ have used any such,
it has been only as a Spartan father would show up a drunken helot. We
have done with them.
—If a logical mind ever found out anything with its logic?—I should say
that its most frequent work was to build a _pons asinorum_ over chasms
which shrewd people can bestride without such a structure. You can hire
logic, in the shape of a lawyer, to prove anything that you want to
prove. You can buy treatises to show that Napoleon never lived, and that
no battle of Bunker-hill was ever fought. The great minds are those with
a wide span, which couple truths related to, but far removed from, each
other. Logicians carry the surveyor’s chain over the track of which
these are the true explorers. I value a man mainly for his primary
relations with truth, as I understand truth,—not for any secondary
artifice in handling his ideas. Some of the sharpest men in argument are
notoriously unsound in judgment. I should not trust the counsel of a
smart debater, any more than that of a good chess-player. Either may of
course advise wisely, but not necessarily because he wrangles or plays
well.
The old gentleman who sits opposite got his hand up, as a pointer lifts
his forefoot, at the expression, “his relations with truth, as I
understand truth,” and when I had done, sniffed audibly, and said I
talked like a transcendentalist. For his part, common sense was good
enough for him.
Precisely so, my dear sir, I replied; common sense, _as you understand
it_. We all have to assume a standard of judgment in our own minds,
either of things or persons. A man who is willing to take another’s
opinion has to exercise his judgment in the choice of whom to follow,
which is often as nice a matter as to judge of things for one’s self. On
the whole, I had rather judge men’s minds by comparing their thoughts
with my own, than judge of thoughts by knowing who utter them. I must do
one or the other. It does not follow, of course, that I may not
recognize another man’s thoughts as broader and deeper than my own; but
that does not necessarily change my opinion, otherwise this would be at
the mercy of every superior mind that held a different one. How many of
our most cherished beliefs are like those drinking-glasses of the ancient
pattern, that serve us well so long as we keep them in our hand, but
spill all if we attempt to set them down! I have sometimes compared
conversation to the Italian game of _mora_, in which one player lifts his
hand with so many fingers extended, and the other gives the number if he
can. I show my thought, another his; if they agree, well; if they
differ, we find the largest common factor, if we can, but at any rate
avoid disputing about remainders and fractions, which is to real talk
what tuning an instrument is to playing on it.
—What if, instead of talking this morning, I should read you a copy of
verses, with critical remarks by the author? Any of the company can
retire that like.
ALBUM VERSES.
When Eve had led her lord away,
And Cain had killed his brother,
The stars and flowers, the poets say,
Agreed with one another
To cheat the cunning tempter’s art,
And teach the race its duty,
By keeping on its wicked heart
Their eyes of light and beauty.
A million sleepless lids, they say,
Will be at least a warning;
And so the flowers would watch by day,
The stars from eve to morning.
On hill and prairie, field and lawn,
Their dewy eyes upturning,
The flowers still watch from reddening dawn
Till western skies are burning.
Alas! each hour of daylight tells
A tale of shame so crushing,
That some turn white as sea-bleached shells,
And some are always blushing.
But when the patient stars look down
On all their light discovers,
The traitor’s smile, the murderer’s frown,
The lips of lying lovers,
They try to shut their saddening eyes,
And in the vain endeavour
We see them twinkling in the skies,
And so they wink forever.
What do _you_ think of these verses my friends?—Is that piece an
impromptu? said my landlady’s daughter. (Aet. 19 +. Tender-eyed blonde.
Long ringlets. Cameo pin. Gold pencil-case on a chain. Locket.
Bracelet. Album. Autograph book. Accordeon. Reads Byron, Tupper, and
Sylvanus Cobb, junior, while her mother makes the puddings. Says “Yes?”
when you tell her anything.)—_Oui et non_, _ma petite_,—Yes and no, my
child. Five of the seven verses were written off-hand; the other two
took a week,—that is, were hanging round the desk in a ragged, forlorn,
unrhymed condition as long as that. All poets will tell you just such
stories. _C’est le_ DERNIER _pas qui coute_. Don’t you know how hard it
is for some people to get out of a room after their visit is really over?
They want to be off, and you want to have them off, but they don’t know
how to manage it. One would think they had been built in your parlour or
study, and were waiting to be launched. I have contrived a sort of
ceremonial inclined plane for such visitors, which being lubricated with
certain smooth phrases, I back them down, metaphorically speaking,
stern-foremost, into their “native element,” the great ocean of
out-doors. Well, now, there are poems as hard to get rid of as these
rural visitors. They come in glibly, use up all the serviceable rhymes,
_day_, _ray_, _beauty_, _duty_, _skies_, _eyes_, _other_, _brother_,
_mountain_, _fountain_, and the like; and so they go on until you think
it is time for the wind-up, and the wind-up won’t come on any terms. So
they lie about until you get sick of the sight of them, and end by
thrusting some cold scrap of a final couplet upon them, and turning them
out of doors. I suspect a good many “impromptus” could tell just such a
story as the above.—Here turning to our landlady, I used an illustration
which pleased the company much at the time, and has since been highly
commanded. “Madam,” I said, “you can pour three gills and three quarters
of honey from that pint jug, if it is full, in less than one minute; but,
Madam, you could not empty that last quarter of a gill, though you were
turned into a marble Hebe, and held the vessel upside down for a thousand
years.”
[Picture: The Landlady’s Daughter]
One gets tired to death of the old, old rhymes, such as you see in that
copy of verses,—which I don’t mean to abuse, or to praise either. I
always feel as if I were a cobbler, putting new top-leathers to an old
pair of boot-soles and bodies, when I am fitting sentiments to these
venerable jingles.
. . . . youth
. . . . . morning
. . . . . truth
. . . . . warning
Nine tenths of the “Juvenile Poems” written spring out of the above
musical and suggestive coincidences.
“Yes?” said our landlady’s daughter.
I did not address the following remark to her, and I trust, from her
limited range of reading, she will never see it; I said it softly to my
next neighbour.
When a young female wears a flat circular side—curl, gummed on each
temple,—when she walks with a male, not arm in arm, but his arm against
the back of hers,—and when she says “Yes?” with the note of
interrogation, you are generally safe in asking her what wages she gets,
and who the “feller” was you saw her with.
“What were you whispering?” said the daughter of the house, moistening
her lips, as she spoke, in a very engaging manner.
“I was only laying down a principle of social diagnosis.”
“Yes?”
—It is curious to see how the same wants and tastes find the same
implements and modes of expression in all times and places. The young
ladies of Otaheite, as you may see in Cook’s Voyages, had a sort of
crinoline arrangement fully equal in radius to the largest spread of our
own lady-baskets. When I fling a Bay-State shawl over my shoulders, I am
only taking a lesson from the climate that the Indian had learned before
me. A _blanket_-shawl we call it, and not a plaid; and we wear it like
the aborigines, and not like the Highlanders.
—We are the Romans of the modern world,—the great assimilating people.
Conflicts and conquests are of course necessary accidents with us, as
with our prototypes. And so we come to their style of weapon. Our army
sword is the short, stiff, pointed _gladius_ of the Romans; and the
American bowie-knife is the same tool, modified to meet the daily wants
of civil society. I announce at this table an axiom not to be found in
Montesquieu or the journals of Congress:—
The race that shortens its weapons lengthens its boundaries.
_Corollary_. It was the Polish _lance_ that left Poland at last with
nothing of her own to bound.
“Dropped from her nerveless grasp the _shattered spear_!”
What business had Sarmatia to be fighting for liberty with a fifteen-foot
pole between her and the breasts of her enemies? If she had but clutched
the old Roman and young American weapon, and come to close quarters,
there might have been a chance for her; but it would have spoiled the
best passage in “The Pleasures of Hope.”
—Self-made men?—Well, yes. Of course everybody likes and respects
self-made men. It is a great deal better to be made in that way than not
to be made at all. Are any of you younger people old enough to remember
that Irishman’s house on the marsh at Cambridgeport, which house he built
from drain to chimney-top with his own hands? It took him a good many
years to build it, and one could see that it was a little out of plumb,
and a little wavy in outline, and a little queer and uncertain in general
aspect. A regular hand could certainly have built a better house; but it
was a very good house for a “self-made” carpenter’s house, and people
praised it, and said how remarkably well the Irishman had succeeded.
They never thought of praising the fine blocks of houses a little farther
on.
Your self-made man, whittled into shape with his own jack-knife, deserves
more credit, if that is all, than the regular engine-turned article,
shaped by the most approved pattern, and French-polished by society and
travel. But as to saying that one is every way the equal of the other,
that is another matter. The right of strict social discrimination of all
things and persons, according to their merits, native or acquired, is one
of the most precious republican privileges. I take the liberty to
exercise it, when I say, that, _other things being equal_, in most
relations of life I prefer a man of family.
What do I mean by a man of family?—O, I’ll give you a general idea of
what I mean. Let us give him a first-rate fit out; it costs us nothing.
Four or five generations of gentlemen and gentlewomen; among them a
member of his Majesty’s Council for the Province, a Governor or so, one
or two Doctors of Divinity, a member of Congress, not later than the time
of top-boots with tassels.
Family portraits. The member of the Council, by Smibert. The great
merchant-uncle, by Copley, full length, sitting in his arm-chair, in a
velvet cap and flowered robe, with a globe by him, to show the range of
his commercial transactions, and letters with large red seals lying
round, one directed conspicuously to The Honourable etc. etc.
Great-grandmother, by the same artist; brown satin, lace very fine, hands
superlative; grand old lady, stiffish, but imposing. Her mother, artist
unknown; flat, angular, hanging sleeves; parrot on fist. A pair of
Stuarts, viz., 1. A superb full-blown, mediaeval gentleman, with a fiery
dash of Tory blood in his veins, tempered down with that of a fine old
rebel grandmother, and warmed up with the best of old India Madeira; his
face is one flame of ruddy sunshine; his ruffled shirt rushes out of his
bosom with an impetuous generosity, as if it would drag his heart after
it; and his smile is good for twenty thousand dollars to the Hospital,
besides ample bequests to all relatives and dependants. 2. Lady of the
same; remarkable cap; high waist, as in time of Empire; bust _à la
Josephine_; wisps of curls, like celery-tips, at sides of forehead;
complexion clear and warm, like rose-cordial. As for the miniatures by
Malbone, we don’t count them in the gallery.
Books, too, with the names of old college-students in them,—family
names;—you will find them at the head of their respective classes in the
days when students took rank on the catalogue from their parents’
condition. Elzevirs, with the Latinized appellations of youthful
progenitors, and _Hic liber est meus_ on the title-page. A set of
Hogarth’s original plates. Pope, original edition, 15 volumes, London,
1717. Barrow on the lower shelves, in folio. Tillotson on the upper, in
a little dark platoon of octo-decimos.
Some family silver; a string of wedding and funeral rings; the arms of
the family curiously blazoned; the same in worsted, by a maiden aunt.
If the man of family has an old place to keep these things in, furnished
with claw-footed chairs and black mahogany tables, and tall bevel-edged
mirrors, and stately upright cabinets, his outfit is complete.
No, my friends, I go (always, other things being equal) for the man who
inherits family traditions and the cumulative humanities of at least four
or five generations. Above all things, as a child, he should have
tumbled about in a library. All men are afraid of books, who have not
handled them from infancy. Do you suppose our dear _didascalos_ over
there ever read _Poli Synopsis_, or consulted _Castelli Lexicon_, while
he was growing up to their stature? Not he; but virtue passed through
the hem of their parchment and leather garments whenever he touched them,
as the precious drugs sweated through the bat’s handle in the Arabian
story. I tell you he is at home wherever he smells the invigorating
fragrance of Russia leather. No self-made man feels so. One may, it is
true, have all the antecedents I have spoken of, and yet be a boor or a
shabby fellow. One may have none of them, and yet be fit for councils
and courts. Then let them change places. Our social arrangement has
this great beauty, that its strata shift up and down as they change
specific gravity, without being clogged by layers of prescription. But I
still insist on my democratic liberty of choice, and I go for the man
with the gallery of family portraits against the one with the
twenty-five-cent daguerreotype, unless I find out that the last is the
better of the two.
—I should have felt more nervous about the late comet, if I had thought
the world was ripe. But it is very green yet, if I am not mistaken; and
besides, there is a great deal of coal to use up, which I cannot bring
myself to think was made for nothing. If certain things, which seem to
me essential to a millennium, had come to pass, I should have been
frightened; but they haven’t. Perhaps you would like to hear my
LATTER-DAY WARNINGS.
When legislators keep the law,
When banks dispense with bolts and locks,
When berries, whortle—rasp—and straw—
Grow bigger _downwards_ through the box,—
When he that selleth house or land
Shows leak in roof or flaw in right,—
When haberdashers choose the stand
Whose window hath the broadest light,—
When preachers tell us all they think,
And party leaders all they mean,—
When what we pay for, that we drink,
From real grape and coffee-bean,—
When lawyers take what they would give,
And doctors give what they would take,—
When city fathers eat to live,
Save when they fast for conscience’ sake,—
When one that hath a horse on sale
Shall bring his merit to the proof,
Without a lie for every nail
That holds the iron on the hoof,—
When in the usual place for rips
Our gloves are stitched with special care,
And guarded well the whalebone tips
Where first umbrellas need repair,—
When Cuba’s weeds have quite forgot
The power of suction to resist,
And claret-bottles harber not
Such dimples as would hold your fist,—
When publishers no longer steal,
And pay for what they stole before,—
When the first locomotive’s wheel
Rolls through the Hoosac tunnel’s bore;—
_Till_ then let Cumming a blaze away,
And Miller’s saints blow up the globe;
But when you see that blessed day,
_Then_ order your ascension robe!
The company seemed to like the verses, and I promised them to read others
occasionally, if they had a mind to hear them. Of course they would not
expect it every morning. Neither must the reader suppose that all these
things I have reported were said at any one breakfast-time. I have not
taken the trouble to date them, as Raspail, _père_, used to date every
proof he sent to the printer; but they were scattered over several
breakfasts; and I have said a good many more things since, which I shall
very possibly print some time or other, if I am urged to do it by
judicious friends.
I finished off with reading some verses of my friend the Professor, of
whom you may perhaps hear more by and by. The Professor read them, he
told me, at a farewell meeting, where the youngest of our great
Historians met a few of his many friends at their invitation.
Yes, we knew we must lose him,—though friendship may claim
To blend her green leaves with the laurels of fame;
Though fondly, at parting, we call him our own,
’Tis the whisper of love when the bugle has blown.
As the rider that rests with the spur on his heel,—
As the guardsman that sleeps in his corselet of steel,—
As the archer that stands with his shaft on the string,
He stoops from his toil to the garland we bring.
What pictures yet slumber unborn in his loom
Till their warriors shall breathe and their beauties shall bloom,
While the tapestry lengthens the life-glowing dyes
That caught from our sunsets the stain of their skies!
In the alcoves of death, in the charnels of time,
Where flit the gaunt spectres of passion and crime,
There are triumphs untold, there are martyrs unsung,
There are heroes yet silent to speak with his tongue!
Let us hear the proud story which time has bequeathed
From lips that are warm with the freedom they breathed!
Let him summon its tyrants, and tell us their doom,
Though he sweep the black past like Van Tromp with his broom!
* * * * *
The dream flashes by, for the west-winds awake
On pampas, on prairie, o’er mountain and lake,
To bathe the swift bark, like a sea-girdled shrine,
With incense they stole from the rose and the pine.
So fill a bright cup with the sunlight that gushed
When the dead summer’s jewels were trampled and crushed:
THE TRUE KNIGHT OF LEARNING,—the world holds him dear,—
Love bless him, Joy crown him, God speed his career!