Sin has many tools, but a lie is the handle which fits them all.
—I think, Sir,—said the divinity-student,—you must intend that for one of
the sayings of the Seven Wise Men of Boston you were speaking of the
other day.
I thank you, my young friend,—was my reply,—but I must say something
better than that, before I could pretend to fill out the number.
—The schoolmistress wanted to know how many of these sayings there were
on record, and what, and by whom said.
—Why, let us see,—there is that one of Benjamin Franklin, “the great
Bostonian,” after whom this lad was named. To be sure, he said a great
many wise things,—and I don’t feel sure he didn’t borrow this,—he speaks
as if it were old. But then he applied it so neatly!—
“He that has once done you a kindness will be more ready to do you
another than he whom you yourself have obliged.”
Then there is that glorious Epicurean paradox, uttered by my friend, the
Historian, in one of his flashing moments:—
“Give us the luxuries of life, and we will dispense with its
necessaries.”
To these must certainly be added that other saying of one of the wittiest
of men:—
“Good Americans, when they die, go to Paris.”—
The divinity-student looked grave at this, but said nothing.
The schoolmistress spoke out, and said she didn’t think the wit meant any
irreverence. It was only another way of saying, Paris is a heavenly
place after New York or Boston.
A jaunty-looking person, who had come in with the young fellow they call
John,—evidently a stranger,—said there was one more wise man’s saying
that he had heard; it was about our place, but he didn’t know who said
it.—A civil curiosity was manifested by the company to hear the fourth
wise saying. I heard him distinctly whispering to the young fellow who
brought him to dinner, _Shall I tell it_? To which the answer was, _Go
ahead_!—Well,—he said,—this was what I heard:—
“Boston State-House is the hub of the solar system. You couldn’t pry
that out of a Boston man if you had the tire of all creation straightened
out for a crowbar.”
Sir,—said I,—I am gratified with your remark. It expresses with pleasing
vivacity that which I have sometimes heard uttered with malignant
dulness. The satire of the remark is essentially true of Boston,—and of
all other considerable—and inconsiderable—places with which I have had
the privilege of being acquainted. Cockneys think London is the only
place in the world. Frenchmen—you remember the line about Paris, the
Court, the World, etc.—I recollect well, by the way, a sign in that city
which ran thus: “Hôtel l’Univers et des États Unis”; and as Paris _is_
the universe to a Frenchman, of course the United States are outside of
it.—“See Naples and then die.”—It is quite as bad with smaller places. I
have been about, lecturing, you know, and have found the following
propositions to hold true of all of them.
1. The axis of the earth sticks out visibly through the centre of each
and every town or city.
2. If more than fifty years have passed since its foundation, it is
affectionately styled by the inhabitants the “_good old_ town
of”—(whatever its name may happen to be.)
3. Every collection of its inhabitants that comes together to listen to
a stranger is invariably declared to be a “remarkably intelligent
audience.”
4. The climate of the place is particularly favorable to longevity.
5. It contains several persons of vast talent little known to the world.
(One or two of them, you may perhaps chance to remember, sent short
pieces to the “Pactolian” some time since, which were “respectfully
declined.”)
Boston is just like other places of its size;—only perhaps, considering
its excellent fish-market, paid fire-department, superior monthly
publications, and correct habit of spelling the English language, it has
some right to look down on the mob of cities. I’ll tell you, though, if
you want to know it, what is the real offence of Boston. It drains a
large water-shed of its intellect, and will not itself be drained. If it
would only send away its first-rate men, instead of its second-rate ones,
(no offence to the well-known exceptions, of which we are always proud,)
we should be spared such epigrammatic remarks as that which the gentleman
has quoted. There can never be a real metropolis in this country, until
the biggest centre can drain the lesser ones of their talent and
wealth.—I have observed, by the way, that the people who really live in
two great cities are by no means so jealous of each other, as are those
of smaller cities situated within the intellectual basin, or
_suction-range_, of one large one, of the pretensions of any other.
Don’t you see why? Because their promising young author and rising
lawyer and large capitalist have been drained off to the neighboring big
city,—their prettiest girl has been exported to the same market; all
their ambition points there, and all their thin gilding of glory comes
from there. I hate little toad-eating cities.
—Would I be so good as to specify any particular example?—Oh,—an example?
Did you ever see a bear-trap? Never? Well, shouldn’t you like to see me
put my foot into one? With sentiments of the highest consideration I
must beg leave to be excused.
Besides, some of the smaller cities are charming. If they have an old
church or two, a few stately mansions of former grandees, here and there
an old dwelling with the second story projecting, (for the convenience of
shooting the Indians knocking at the front-door with their tomahawks,)—if
they have, scattered about, those mighty square houses built something
more than half a century ago, and standing like architectural boulders
dropped by the former diluvium of wealth, whose refluent wave has left
them as its monument,—if they have gardens with elbowed apple-trees that
push their branches over the high board-fence and drop their fruit on the
side-walk,—if they have a little grass in the side-streets, enough to
betoken quiet without proclaiming decay,—I think I could go to pieces,
after my life’s work were done, in one of those tranquil places, as
sweetly as in any cradle that an old man may be rocked to sleep in. I
visit such spots always with infinite delight. My friend, the Poet,
says, that rapidly growing towns are most unfavorable to the imaginative
and reflective faculties. Let a man live in one of these old quiet
places, he says, and the wine of his soul, which is kept thick and turbid
by the rattle of busy streets, settles, and, as you hold it up, you may
see the sun through it by day and the stars by night.
—Do I think that the little villages have the conceit of the great
towns?—I don’t believe there is much difference. You know how they read
Pope’s line in the smallest town in our State of Massachusetts?—Well,
they read it
“All are but parts of one stupendous HULL!”
—Every person’s feelings have a front-door and a side-door by which they
may be entered. The front-door is on the street. Some keep it always
open; some keep it latched; some, locked; some, bolted,—with a chain that
will let you peep in, but not get in; and some nail it up, so that
nothing can pass its threshold. This front-door leads into a passage
which opens into an ante-room, and this into the inferior apartments.
The side-door opens at once into the sacred chambers.
There is almost always at least one key to this side-door. This is
carried for years hidden in a mother’s bosom. Fathers, brothers,
sisters, and friends, often, but by no means so universally, have
duplicates of it. The wedding-ring conveys a right to one; alas, if none
is given with it!
If nature or accident has put one of these keys into the hands of a
person who has the torturing instinct, I can only solemnly pronounce the
words that Justice utters over its doomed victim,—_The Lord have mercy on
your soul_! You will probably go mad within a reasonable time,—or, if
you are a man, run off and die with your head on a curb-stone, in
Melbourne or San Francisco,—or, if you are a woman, quarrel and break
your heart, or turn into a pale, jointed petrifaction that moves about as
if it were alive, or play some real life-tragedy or other.
Be very careful to whom you trust one of these keys of the side-door.
The fact of possessing one renders those even who are dear to you very
terrible at times. You can keep the world out from your front-door, or
receive visitors only when you are ready for them; but those of your own
flesh and blood, or of certain grades of intimacy, can come in at the
side-door, if they will, at any hour and in any mood. Some of them have
a scale of your whole nervous system, and can play all the gamut of your
sensibilities in semitones,—touching the naked nerve-pulps as a pianist
strikes the keys of his instrument. I am satisfied that there are as
great masters of this nerve-playing as Vieuxtemps or Thalberg in their
lines of performance. Married life is the school in which the most
accomplished artists in this department are found. A delicate woman is
the best instrument; she has such a magnificent compass of sensibilities!
From the deep inward moan which follows pressure on the great nerves of
right, to the sharp cry as the filaments of taste are struck with a
crashing sweep, is a range which no other instrument possesses. A few
exercises on it daily at home fit a man wonderfully for his habitual
labors, and refresh him immensely as he returns from them. No stranger
can get a great many notes of torture out of a human soul; it takes one
that knows it well,—parent, child, brother, sister, intimate. Be very
careful to whom you give a side-door key; too many have them already.
—You remember the old story of the tender-hearted man, who placed a
frozen viper in his bosom, and was stung by it when it became thawed? If
we take a cold-blooded creature into our bosom, better that it should
sting us and we should die than that its chill should slowly steal into
our hearts; warm it we never can! I have seen faces of women that were
fair to look upon, yet one could see that the icicles were forming round
these women’s hearts. I knew what freezing image lay on the white
breasts beneath the laces!
A very simple _intellectual_ mechanism answers the necessities of
friendship, and even of the most intimate relations of life. If a watch
tells us the hour and the minute, we can be content to carry it about
with us for a life-time, though it has no second-hand and is not a
repeater, nor a musical watch,—though it is not enamelled nor
jewelled,—in short, though it has little beyond the wheels required for a
trustworthy instrument, added to a good face and a pair of useful hands.
The more wheels there are in a watch or a brain, the more trouble they
are to take care of. The movements of exaltation which belong to genius
are egotistic by their very nature. A calm, clear mind, not subject to
the spasms and crises which are so often met with in creative or
intensely perceptive natures, is the best basis for love or
friendship.—Observe, I am talking about _minds_. I won’t say, the more
intellect, the less capacity for loving; for that would do wrong to the
understanding and reason;—but, on the other hand, that the brain often
runs away with the heart’s best blood, which gives the world a few pages
of wisdom or sentiment or poetry, instead of making one other heart
happy, I have no question.
If one’s intimate in love or friendship cannot or does not share all
one’s intellectual tastes or pursuits, that is a small matter.
Intellectual companions can be found easily in men and books. After all,
if we think of it, most of the world’s loves and friendships have been
between people that could not read nor spell.
But to radiate the heat of the affections into a clod which absorbs all
that is poured into it, but never warms beneath the sunshine of smiles or
the pressure of hand or lip,—this is the great martyrdom of sensitive
beings,—most of all in that perpetual _auto da fé_ where young womanhood
is the sacrifice.
—You noticed, perhaps, what I just said about the loves and friendships
of illiterate persons,—that is, of the human race, with a few exceptions
here and there. I like books,—I was born and bred among them, and have
the easy feeling, when I get into their presence, that a stable-boy has
among horses. I don’t think I undervalue them either as companions or as
instructors. But I can’t help remembering that the world’s great men
have not commonly been great scholars, nor its great scholars great men.
The Hebrew patriarchs had small libraries, I think, if any; yet they
represent to our imaginations a very complete idea of manhood, and, I
think, if we could ask in Abraham to dine with us men of letters next
Saturday, we should feel honored by his company.
What I wanted to say about books is this: that there are times in which
every active mind feels itself above any and all human books.
—I think a man must have a good opinion of himself, Sir,—said the
divinity-student,—who should feel himself above Shakspeare at any time.
My young friend,—I replied,—the man who is never conscious of a state of
feeling or of intellectual effort entirely beyond expression by any form
of words whatsoever is a mere creature of language. I can hardly believe
there are any such men. Why, think for a moment of the power of music.
The nerves that make us alive to it spread out (so the Professor tells
me) in the most sensitive region of the marrow just where it is widening
to run upwards into the hemispheres. It has its seat in the region of
sense rather than of thought. Yet it produces a continuous and, as it
were, logical sequence of emotional and intellectual changes; but how
different from trains of thought proper! how entirely beyond the reach of
symbols!—Think of human passions as compared with all phrases! Did you
ever hear of a man’s growing lean by the reading of “Romeo and Juliet,”
or blowing his brains out because Desdemona was maligned? There are a
good many symbols, even, that are more expressive than words. I remember
a young wife who had to part with her husband for a time. She did not
write a mournful poem; indeed, she was a silent person, and perhaps
hardly said a word about it; but she quietly turned of a deep orange
color with jaundice. A great many people in this world have but one form
of rhetoric for their profoundest experiences,—namely, to waste away and
die. When a man can _read_, his paroxysm of feeling is passing. When he
can _read_, his thought has slackened its hold.—You talk about reading
Shakspeare, using him as an expression for the highest intellect, and you
wonder that any common person should be so presumptuous as to suppose his
thought can rise above the text which lies before him. But think a
moment. A child’s reading of Shakspeare is one thing, and Coleridge’s or
Schlegel’s reading of him is another. The saturation-point of each mind
differs from that of every other. But I think it is as true for the
small mind which can only take up a little as for the great one which
takes up much, that the suggested trains of thought and feeling ought
always to rise above—not the author, but the reader’s mental version of
the author, whoever he may be.
I think most readers of Shakspeare sometimes find themselves thrown into
exalted mental conditions like those produced by music. Then they may
drop the book, to pass at once into the region of thought without words.
We may happen to be very dull folks, you and I, and probably are, unless
there is some particular reason to suppose the contrary. But we get
glimpses now and then of a sphere of spiritual possibilities, where we,
dull as we are now, may sail in vast circles round the largest compass of
earthly intelligences.
—I confess there are times when I feel like the friend I mentioned to you
some time ago,—I hate the very sight of a book. Sometimes it becomes
almost a physical necessity to talk out what is in the mind, before
putting anything else into it. It is very bad to have thoughts and
feelings, which were meant to come out in talk, _strike in_, as they say
of some complaints that ought to show outwardly.
I always believed in life rather than in books. I suppose every day of
earth, with its hundred thousand deaths and something more of
births,—with its loves and hates, its triumphs and defeats, its pangs and
blisses, has more of humanity in it than all the books that were ever
written, put together. I believe the flowers growing at this moment send
up more fragrance to heaven than was ever exhaled from all the essences
ever distilled.
—Don’t I read up various matters to talk about at this table or
elsewhere?—No, that is the last thing I would do. I will tell you my
rule. Talk about those subjects you have had long in your mind, and
listen to what others say about subjects you have studied but recently.
Knowledge and timber shouldn’t be much used, till they are seasoned.
—Physiologists and metaphysicians have had their attention turned a good
deal of late to the automatic and involuntary actions of the mind. Put
an idea into your intelligence and leave it there an hour, a day, a year,
without ever having occasion to refer to it. When, at last, you return
to it, you do not find it as it was when acquired. It has domiciliated
itself, so to speak,—become at home,—entered into relations with your
other thoughts, and integrated itself with the whole fabric of the
mind.—Or take a simple and familiar example; Dr. Carpenter has adduced
it. You forget a name, in conversation,—go on talking, without making
any effort to recall it,—and presently the mind evolves it by its own
involuntary and unconscious action, while you were pursuing another train
of thought, and the name rises of itself to your lips.
[Picture: Our Benj. Franklin]
There are some curious observations I should like to make about the
mental machinery, but I think we are getting rather didactic.
—I should be gratified, if Benjamin Franklin would let me know something
of his progress in the French language. I rather liked that exercise he
read us the other day, though I must confess I should hardly dare to
translate it, for fear some people in a remote city where I once lived
might think I was drawing their portraits.
—Yes, Paris is a famous place for societies. I don’t know whether the
piece I mentioned from the French author was intended simply as Natural
History, or whether there was not a little malice in his description. At
any rate, when I gave my translation to B. F. to turn back again into
French, one reason was that I thought it would sound a little bald in
English, and some people might think it was meant to have some local
bearing or other,—which the author, of course, didn’t mean, inasmuch as
he could not be acquainted with anything on this side of the water.
[The above remarks were addressed to the school-mistress, to whom I
handed the paper after looking it over. The divinity-student came and
read over her shoulder,—very curious, apparently, but his eyes wandered,
I thought. Fancying that her breathing was somewhat hurried and high, or
_thoracic_, as my friend, the Professor, calls it, I watched her a little
more closely.—It is none of my business.—After all, it is the
imponderables that move the world,—heat, electricity, love. _Habet_?]
This is the piece that Benjamin Franklin made into boarding-school
French, such as you see here; don’t expect too much;—the mistakes give a
relish to it, I think.
LES SOCIÉTÉS POLYPHYSIOPHILOSOPHIQUES.
Ces Sociétés là sont une Institution pour suppléer aux besoins
d’esprit et de coeur de ces individus qui ont survécu à leurs
émotions à l’égard du beau sexe, et qui n’ont pas la distraction de
l’habitude de boire.
Pour devenir membre d’une de ces Sociétés, on doit avoir le moins de
cheveux possible. S’il y en reste plusieurs qui resistent aux
dépilatoires naturelles et autres, on doit avoir quelques
connaissances, n’importe dans quel genre. Dès le moment qu’on ouvre
la porte de la Société, on a un grand intérêt dans toutes les choses
dont on ne sait rien. Ainsi, un microscopiste démontre un nouveau
_flexor_ du _tarse_ d’un _melolontha vulgaris_. Douze savans
improvisés, portans des besicles, et qui ne connaissent rien des
insectes, si ce n’est les morsures du _culex_, se précipitent sur
l’instrument, et voient—une grande bulle d’air, dont ils
s’émerveillent avec effusion. Ce qui est un spectacle plein
d’instruction—pour ceux qui ne sont pas de ladite Société. Tous les
membres regardent les chimistes en particulier avec un air
d’intelligence parfaite pendant qu’ils prouvent dans un discours
d’une demiheure que O6 N3 H5 C6 etc. font quelque chose qui n’est
bonne à rien, mais qui probablement a une odeur très désagréable,
selon l’habitude des produits chimiques. Après celà vient un
mathématicien qui vous bourre avec des a+b et vous rapporte enfin un
x+y, dont vous n’avex pas besoin et qui ne change nullement vos
relations avec la vie. Un naturaliste vous parle des formations
spéciales des animaux excessivement inconnus, dont vous n’avez jamais
soupçonné l’existence. Ainsi il vous décrit les _follicules_ de
_l’appendix vermiformis_ d’un _dzigguetai_. Vous ne savez pas ce que
c’est qu’un _follicule_. Vous ne savez pas ce que c’est qu’un
_appendix uermiformis_. Vous n’avez jamais entendu parler du
_dzigguetai_. Ainsi vous gagnez toutes ces connaisances à la fois,
qui s’attachent à votre esprit comme l’eau adhére aux plumes d’un
canard. On connait toutes les langues _ex officio_ en devenant
membre d’une de ces Sociétés. Ainsi quand on entend lire un Essai
sur les dialectes Tchutchiens, on comprend tout celà de suite, et
s’instruit énormément.
Il y a deux espèces d’individus qu’on trouve toujours à ces Sociétés:
1° Le membre à questions; 2° Le membre à “Bylaws.”
La _question_ est une spécialité. Celui qui en fait métier ne fait
jamais des réponses. La question est une manière très commode de
dire les choses suivantes: “Me voilà! Je ne suis pas fossil, moi,—je
respire encore! J’ai des idées,—voyez mon intelligence! Vous ne
croyiez pas, vous autres, que je savais quelque chose de celà! Ah,
nous avons un peu de sagacité, voyez vous! Nous ne sommes nullement
la bête qu’on pense!”—_Le faiseur de questions donne peu d’attention
aux réponses qu’on fait_; _ce n’est pas là dans sa spécialité_.
Le membre à “Bylaws” est le bouchon de toutes les émotions mousseuses
et généreuses qui se montrent dans la Société. C’est un empereur
manqué,—un tyran à la troisème trituration. C’est un esprit dur,
borné, exact, grand dans les petitesses, petit dans les grandeurs,
selon le mot du grand Jefferson. On ne l’aime pas dans la Société,
mais on le respecte et on le craint. Il n’y a qu’un mot pour ce
membre audessus de “Bylaws.” Ce mot est pour lui ce que l’Om est aux
Hundous. C’est sa religion; il n’y a rien audelà. Ce mot là c’est
la CONSTITUTION!
Lesdites Sociétés publient des feuilletons de tems en tems. On les
trouve abandonnés à sa porte, nus comme des enfans nouveaunés, faute
de membrane cutanée, ou même papyracée. Si on aime la botanique, on
y trouve une mémoire sur les coquilles; si on fait des études
zoölogiques, on square trouve un grand tas de q’ √-1, ce qui doit
être infiniment plus commode que les encyclopédies. Ainsi il est
clair comme la métaphysique qu’on doit devenir membre d’une Société
telle que nous décrivons.
_Recette pour le Dépilatoire Physiophilosophique_
Chaux vive lb. ss. Eau bouillante Oj.
Dépilez avec. Polissez ensuite.
I told the boy that his translation into French was creditable to him;
and some of the company wishing to hear what there was in the piece that
made me smile, I turned it into English for them, as well as I could, on
the spot.
The landlady’s daughter seemed to be much amused by the idea that a
depilatory could take the place of literary and scientific
accomplishments; she wanted me to print the piece, so that she might send
a copy of it to her cousin in Mizzourah; she didn’t think he’d have to do
anything to the outside of his head to get into any of the societies; he
had to wear a wig once, when he played a part in a tabullo.
No,—said I,—I shouldn’t think of printing that in English. I’ll tell you
why. As soon as you get a few thousand people together in a town, there
is somebody that every sharp thing you say is sure to hit. What if a
thing was written in Paris or in Pekin?—that makes no difference.
Everybody in those cities, or almost everybody, has his counterpart here,
and in all large places.—You never studied _averages_ as I have had
occasion to.
I’ll tell you how I came to know so much about averages. There was one
season when I was lecturing, commonly, five evenings in the week, through
most of the lecturing period. I soon found, as most speakers do, that it
was pleasanter to work one lecture than to keep several in hand.
—Don’t you get sick to death of one lecture?—said the landlady’s
daughter,—who had a new dress on that day, and was in spirits for
conversation.
I was going to talk about averages,—I said,—but I have no objection to
telling you about lectures, to begin with.
A new lecture always has a certain excitement connected with its
delivery. One thinks well of it, as of most things fresh from his mind.
After a few deliveries of it, one gets tired and then disgusted with its
repetition. Go on delivering it, and the disgust passes off, until,
after one has repeated it a hundred or a hundred and fifty times, he
rather enjoys the hundred and first or hundred and fifty-first time,
before a new audience. But this is on one condition,—that he never lays
the lecture down and lets it cool. If he does, there comes on a loathing
for it which is intense, so that the sight of the old battered manuscript
is as bad as sea-sickness.
A new lecture is just like any other new tool. We use it for a while
with pleasure. Then it blisters our hands, and we hate to touch it.
By-and-by our hands get callous, and then we have no longer any
sensitiveness about it. But if we give it up, the calluses disappear;
and if we meddle with it again, we miss the novelty and get the
blisters.—The story is often quoted of Whitefield, that he said a sermon
was good for nothing until it had been preached forty times. A lecture
doesn’t begin to be old until it has passed its hundredth delivery; and
some, I think, have doubled, if not quadrupled, that number. These old
lectures are a man’s best, commonly; they improve by age, also,—like the
pipes, fiddles, and poems I told you of the other day. One learns to
make the most of their strong points and to carry off their weak ones,—to
take out the really good things which don’t tell on the audience, and put
in cheaper things that do. All this degrades him, of course, but it
improves the lecture for general delivery. A thoroughly popular lecture
ought to have nothing in it which five hundred people cannot all take in
a flash, just as it is uttered.
—No, indeed,—I should be very sorry to say anything disrespectful of
audiences. I have been kindly treated by a great many, and may
occasionally face one hereafter. But I tell you the _average_ intellect
of five hundred persons, taken as they come, is not very high. It may be
sound and safe, so far as it goes, but it is not very rapid or profound.
A lecture ought to be something which all can understand, about something
which interests everybody. I think, that, if any experienced lecturer
gives you a different account from this, it will probably be one of those
eloquent or forcible speakers who hold an audience by the charm of their
manner, whatever they talk about,—even when they don’t talk very well.
But an _average_, which was what I meant to speak about, is one of the
most extraordinary subjects of observation and study. It is awful in its
uniformity, in its automatic necessity of action. Two communities of
ants or bees are exactly alike in all their actions, so far as we can
see. Two lyceum assemblies, of five hundred each, are so nearly alike,
that they are absolutely undistinguishable in many cases by any definite
mark, and there is nothing but the place and time by which one can tell
the “remarkably intelligent audience” of a town in New York or Ohio from
one in any New England town of similar size. Of course, if any principle
of selection has come in, as in those special associations of young men
which are common in cities, it deranges the uniformity of the assemblage.
But let there be no such interfering circumstances, and one knows pretty
well even the look the audience will have, before he goes in. Front
seats: a few old folk,—shiny-headed,—slant up best ear towards the
speaker,—drop off asleep after a while, when the air begins to get a
little narcotic with carbonic acid. Bright women’s faces, young and
middle-aged, a little behind these, but toward the front—(pick out the
best, and lecture mainly to that.) Here and there a countenance, sharp
and scholarlike, and a dozen pretty female ones sprinkled about. An
indefinite number of pairs of young people,—happy, but not always very
attentive. Boys, in the background, more or less quiet. Dull faces
here, there,—in how many places! I don’t say dull _people_, but faces
without a ray of sympathy or a movement of expression. They are what
kill the lecturer. These negative faces with their vacuous eyes and
stony lineaments pump and suck the warm soul out of him;—that is the
chief reason why lecturers grow so pale before the season is over. They
render _latent_ any amount of vital caloric; they act on our minds as
those cold-blooded creatures I was talking about act on our hearts.
Out of all these inevitable elements the audience is generated,—a great
compound vertebrate, as much like fifty others you have seen as any two
mammals of the same species are like each other. Each audience laughs,
and each cries, in just the same places of your lecture; that is, if you
make one laugh or cry, you make all. Even those little indescribable
movements which a lecturer takes cognizance of, just as a driver notices
his horse’s cocking his ears, are sure to come in exactly the same place
of your lecture always. I declare to you, that as the monk said about
the picture in the convent,—that he sometimes thought the living tenants
were the shadows, and the painted figures the realities,—I have sometimes
felt as if I were a wandering spirit, and this great unchanging
multivertebrate which I faced night after night was one ever-listening
animal, which writhed along after me wherever I fled, and coiled at my
feet every evening, turning up to me the same sleepless eyes which I
thought I had closed with my last drowsy incantation!
—Oh, yes! A thousand kindly and courteous acts,—a thousand faces that
melted individually out of my recollection as the April snow melts, but
only to steal away and find the beds of flowers whose roots are memory,
but which blossom in poetry and dreams. I am not ungrateful, nor
unconscious of all the good feeling and intelligence everywhere to be met
with through the vast parish to which the lecturer ministers. But when I
set forth, leading a string of my mind’s daughters to market, as the
country-folk fetch in their strings of horses—Pardon me, that was a
coarse fellow who sneered at the sympathy wasted on an unhappy lecturer,
as if, because he was decently paid for his services, he had therefore
sold his sensibilities.—Family men get dreadfully homesick. In the
remote and bleak village the heart returns to the red blaze of the logs
in one’s fireplace at home.
“There are his young barbarians all at play,”—
if he owns any youthful savages.—No, the world has a million roosts for a
man, but only one nest.
—It is a fine thing to be an oracle to which an appeal is always made in
all discussions. The men of facts wait their turn in grim silence, with
that slight tension about the nostrils which the consciousness of
carrying a “settler” in the form of a fact or a revolver gives the
individual thus armed. When a person is really full of information, and
does not abuse it to crush conversation, his part is to that of the real
talkers what the instrumental accompaniment is in a trio or quartette of
vocalists.
—What do I mean by the real talkers?—Why, the people with fresh ideas, of
course, and plenty of good warm words to dress them in. Facts always
yield the place of honor, in conversation, to thoughts about facts; but
if a false note is uttered, down comes the finger on the key and the man
of facts asserts his true dignity. I have known three of these men of
facts, at least, who were always formidable,—and one of them was
tyrannical.
—Yes, a man sometimes makes a grand appearance on a particular occasion;
but these men knew something about almost everything, and never made
mistakes.—He? _Veneers_ in first-rate style. The mahogany scales off
now and then in spots, and then you see the cheap light stuff—I
found—very fine in conversational information, the other day when we were
in company. The talk ran upon mountains. He was wonderfully well
acquainted with the leading facts about the Andes, the Apennines, and the
Appalachians; he had nothing in particular to say about Ararat, Ben
Nevis, and various other mountains that were mentioned. By and by some
Revolutionary anecdote came up, and he showed singular familiarity with
the lives of the Adamses, and gave many details relating to Major André.
A point of Natural History being suggested, he gave an excellent account
of the air-bladder of fishes. He was very full upon the subject of
agriculture, but retired from the conversation when horticulture was
introduced in the discussion. So he seemed well acquainted with the
geology of anthracite, but did not pretend to know anything of other
kinds of coal. There was something so odd about the extent and
limitations of his knowledge, that I suspected all at once what might be
the meaning of it, and waited till I got an opportunity.—Have you seen
the “New American Cyclopædia?” said I.—I have, he replied; I received an
early copy.—How far does it go?—He turned red, and answered,—To
Araguay.—Oh, said I to myself,—not quite so far as Ararat;—that is the
reason he knew nothing about it; but he must have read all the rest
straight through, and, if he can remember what is in this volume until he
has read all those that are to come, he will know more than I ever
thought he would.
Since I had this experience, I hear that somebody else has related a
similar story. I didn’t borrow it, for all that.—I made a comparison at
table some time since, which has often been quoted and received many
compliments. It was that of the mind of a bigot to the pupil of the eye;
the more light you pour on it, the more it contracts. The simile is a
very obvious, and, I suppose I may now say, a happy one; for it has just
been shown me that it occurs in a Preface to certain Political Poems of
Thomas Moore’s published long before my remark was repeated. When a
person of fair character for literary honesty uses an image, such as
another has employed before him, the presumption is, that he has struck
upon it independently, or unconsciously recalled it, supposing it his
own.
It is impossible to tell, in a great many cases, whether a comparison
which suddenly suggests itself is a new conception or a recollection. I
told you the other day that I never wrote a line of verse that seemed to
me comparatively good, but it appeared old at once, and often as if it
had been borrowed. But I confess I never suspected the above comparison
of being old, except from the fact of its obviousness. It is proper,
however, that I proceed by a formal instrument to relinquish all claim to
any property in an idea given to the world at about the time when I had
just joined the class in which Master Thomas Moore was then a somewhat
advanced scholar.
I, therefore, in full possession of my native honesty, but knowing the
liability of all men to be elected to public office, and for that reason
feeling uncertain how soon I may be in danger of losing it, do hereby
renounce all claim to being considered the _first_ person who gave
utterance to a certain simile or comparison referred to in the
accompanying documents, and relating to the pupil of the eye on the one
part and the mind of the bigot on the other. I hereby relinquish all
glory and profit, and especially all claims to letters from autograph
collectors, founded upon my supposed property in the above
comparison,—knowing well, that, according to the laws of literature, they
who speak first hold the fee of the thing said. I do also agree that all
Editors of Cyclopedias and Biographical Dictionaries, all Publishers of
Reviews and Papers, and all Critics writing therein, shall be at liberty
to retract or qualify any opinion predicated on the supposition that I
was the sole and undisputed author of the above comparison. But,
inasmuch as I do affirm that the comparison aforesaid was uttered by me
in the firm belief that it was new and wholly my own, and as I have good
reason to think that I had never seen or heard it when first expressed by
me, and as it is well known that different persons may independently
utter the same idea,—as is evinced by that familiar line from Donatus,—
“Pereant illi qui ante nos nostra dixerunt,”—
now, therefore, I do request by this instrument that all well-disposed
persons will abstain from asserting or implying that I am open to any
accusation whatsoever touching the said comparison, and, if they have so
asserted or implied, that they will have the manliness forthwith to
retract the same assertion or insinuation.
* * * * *
I think few persons have a greater disgust for plagiarism than myself.
If I had even suspected that the idea in question was borrowed, I should
have disclaimed originality, or mentioned the coincidence, as I once did
in a case where I had happened to hit on an idea of Swift’s.—But what
shall I do about these verses I was going to read you? I am afraid that
half mankind would accuse me of stealing their thoughts, if I printed
them. I am convinced that several of you, especially if you are getting
a little on in life, will recognize some of these sentiments as having
passed through your consciousness at some time. I can’t help it,—it is
too late now. The verses are written, and you must have them. Listen,
then, and you shall hear
WHAT WE ALL THINK.
THAT age was older once than now,
In spite of locks untimely shed,
Or silvered on the youthful brow;
That babes make love and children wed.
That sunshine had a heavenly glow,
Which faded with those “good old days,”
When winters came with deeper snow,
And autumns with a softer haze.
That—mother, sister, wife, or child—
The “best of women” each has known.
Were schoolboys ever half so wild?
How young the grandpapas have grown,
That _but for this_ our souls were free,
And _but for that_ our lives were blest;
That in some season yet to be
Our cares will leave us time to rest.
Whene’er we groan with ache or pain,
Some common ailment of the race,—
Though doctors think the matter plain,—
That ours is “a peculiar case.”
That when like babes with fingers burned
We count one bitter maxim more,
Our lesson all the world has learned,
And men are wiser than before.
That when we sob o’er fancied woes,
The angels hovering overhead
Count every pitying drop that flows
And love us for the tears we shed.
That when we stand with tearless eye
And turn the beggar from our door,
They still approve us when we sigh,
“Ah, had I but _one thousand more_!”
That weakness smoothed the path of sin,
In half the slips our youth has known;
And whatsoe’er its blame has been,
That Mercy flowers on faults outgrown.
Though temples crowd the crumbled brink
O’erhanging truth’s eternal flow,
Their tablets bold with _what we think_,
Their echoes dumb to _what we know_;
That one unquestioned text we read,
All doubt beyond, all fear above,
Nor crackling pile nor cursing creed
Can burn or blot it: GOD IS LOVE!