HUMAN NATURE.
THE MINISTER’S WOOING.
[Sidenote: Ignorant selfishness.]
He was one of that class of people who, of a freezing day, will
plant themselves directly between you and the fire, and then stand
and argue to prove that selfishness is the root of all moral evil.
Simeon said he always had thought so; and his neighbors sometimes
supposed that nobody could enjoy better experimental advantages
for understanding the subject. He was one of those men who suppose
themselves submissive to the divine will, to the uttermost extent
demanded by the extreme theology of that day, simply because they
have no nerves to feel, no imagination to conceive, what endless
happiness or suffering is, and who deal therefore with the great
question of the salvation or damnation of myriads as a problem of
theological algebra, to be worked out by their inevitable x, y, z.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Sensitiveness to blame.]
A generous, upright nature is always more sensitive to blame than
another,—sensitive in proportion to the amount of its reverence for
good.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Depression after exaltation.]
It is a hard condition of our existence that every exaltation must
have its depression. God will not let us have heaven here below, but
only such glimpses and faint showings as parents sometimes give to
children, when they show them beforehand the jewelry and pictures
and stores of rare and curious treasures which they hold for the
possession of their riper years. So it very often happens that the
man who has gone to bed an angel, feeling as if all sin were forever
vanquished, and he himself immutably grounded in love, may wake the
next morning with a sick-headache, and, if he be not careful, may
scold about his breakfast like a miserable sinner.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: French nature.]
True Frenchwoman as she was, always in one rainbow shimmer of fancy
and feeling, like one of those cloud-spotted April days, which give
you flowers and rain, sun and shadow, and snatches of bird-singing,
all at once.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Simple honesty _vs._ worldliness.]
He is one of those great, honest fellows, without the smallest notion
of the world we live in, who think, in dealing with men, that you
must go to work and prove the right or the wrong of a matter; just as
if anybody cared for that! Supposing he is right,—which appears very
probable to me,—what is he going to do about it? No moral argument,
since the world began, ever prevailed over twenty-five per cent.
profit.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Duty _vs._ expediency.]
“Madam,” said the doctor, “I’d sooner my system should be sunk in the
sea than that it should be a millstone round my neck to keep me from
my duty. Let God take care of my theology; I must do my duty.”
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Joy of living.]
There are some people so evidently broadly and heartily of this world
that their coming into a room always materializes the conversation.
We wish to be understood that we mean no disparaging reflection on
such persons; they are as necessary to make up a world as cabbages to
make up a garden; the great, healthy principles of cheerfulness and
animal life seem to exist in them in the gross; they are wedges and
ingots of solid, contented vitality.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: A boy’s growth.]
“Oh, you go ’long, Massa Marvin; ye’ll live to count dat ar’ boy for
de staff o’ yer old age yit, now I tell ye; got de makin’ o’ ten
or’nary men in him; kittles dat’s full allers will bile over; good
yeast will blow at de cork,—lucky ef it don’t bust de bottle. Tell
ye, der’s angels hes der hooks in sich, an’ when de Lord wants him,
dey’ll haul him in safe an’ sound.”
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Will-power.]
“Law me! what’s de use? I’se set out to b’liebe de Catechize, an’
I’se gwine to b’liebe it, so!”
* * * * *
[Sidenote: The world’s injustice.]
“But, Marie, how unjust is the world! how unjust both in praise and
blame.”
OLDTOWN FOLKS.
[Sidenote: Selfish love.]
These dear, good souls who wear their life out for you, have they not
a right to scold you, and dictate to you, and tie up your liberty,
and make your life a burden to you? If they have not, who has? If
you complain, you break their worthy old hearts. They insist on the
privilege of seeking your happiness by thwarting you in everything
you want to do, and putting their will instead of yours in every step
of your life.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Expressive silence.]
Aunt Lois, as I have often said before, was a good Christian, and
held it her duty to govern her tongue. True, she said many sharp and
bitter things; but nobody but herself and her God knew how many more
she would have said had she not reined herself up in conscientious
silence. But never was there a woman whose silence could express
more contempt and displeasure than hers. You could feel it in the
air about you, though she never said a word. You could feel it in
the rustle of her dress, in the tap of her heels over the floor,
in the occasional flash of her sharp black eye. She was like a
thunder-cloud, whose quiet is portentous, and from which you every
moment expect a flash or an explosion.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Power of a tone.]
That kind of tone which sounds so much like a blow that one dodges
one’s head involuntarily.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Making the best of it.]
“There’s no use in such talk, Lois: what’s done’s done; and if the
Lord let it be done, we may. We can’t always make people do as we
would. There’s no use in being dragged through the world like a dog
under a cart, hanging back and yelping. What we must do, we may as
well do willingly,—as well walk as be dragged.”
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Influence of heredity and association.]
It is strange that no human being grows up who does not so intertwist
in his growth the whole idea and spirit of his day, that rightly
to dissect out his history would require one to cut to pieces and
analyze society, law, religion, the metaphysics, and the morals of
his time; and, as all things run back to those of past days, the
problem is still further complicated. The humblest human being is
the sum total of a column of figures which go back through centuries
before he was born.
[Sidenote: Personal magnetism.]
Supposing a man is made like an organ, with two or three banks of
keys, and ever so many stops, so that he can play all sorts of
tunes on himself; is it being a hypocrite with each person to play
precisely the tune, and draw out exactly the stop, which he knows
will make himself agreeable and further his purpose?
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Physical good humor.]
That charming gift of physical good humor, which is often praised
as a virtue in children and in grown people, but which is a mere
condition of the animal nature.
SAM LAWSON’S STORIES.
[Sidenote: Effect of sinning.]
“Ye know sinnin’ will always make a man leave prayin’.”
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Scepticism.]
“You look at the folks that’s allers tellin’ you what they don’t
believe,—they don’t believe this, an’ they don’t believe that,—an’
what sort o’ folks is they? Why, like yer Aunt Lois, sort o’ stringy
an’ dry. There ain’t no ’sorption got out o’ not believin’ nothin’.”
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Life.]
“That ’are’s jest the way folks go all their lives, boys. It’s all
fuss, fuss, and stew, stew, till ye get somewhere; an’ then it’s
fuss, fuss, an’ stew, stew, to get back again; jump here an’ scratch
your eyes out, an’ jump there an’ scratch ’em in again,—that ’are’s
life.”
PEARL OF ORR’S ISLAND.
[Sidenote: Life as a play.]
There are those people who possess a peculiar faculty of mingling
in the affairs of this life as spectators as well as actors. It
does not, of course, suppose any coldness of nature or want of
human interest or sympathy,—nay, it often exists more completely
with people of the tenderest human feeling. It rather seems to be a
kind of distinct faculty working harmoniously with all the others;
but he who possesses it needs never to be at a loss for interest or
amusement; he is always a spectator at a tragedy or a comedy, and
sees in real life a humor and a pathos beyond anything he can find
shadowed in books.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: A childlike nature.]
Mrs. Pennel had one of those natures, gentle, trustful, and hopeful,
because not very deep; she was one of the little children of the
world, whose faith rests on childlike ignorance, and who know not
the deeper needs of deeper natures; such see only the sunshine, and
forget the storm.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Unintended hurts.]
All that there was developed of him, at present, was a fund of
energy, self-esteem, hope, courage, and daring, the love of action,
life, and adventure; his life was in the outward and present, not
in the inward and reflective; he was a true ten-year-old boy,
in its healthiest and most animal perfection. What she was, the
small pearl with the golden hair, with her frail and high-strung
organization, her sensitive nerves, her half-spiritual fibres, her
ponderings, and marvels, and dreams, her power of love and yearning
for self-devotion, our reader may, perhaps, have seen. But if ever
two children, or two grown people, thus organized, are thrown into
intimate relations, it follows, from the very laws of their being,
that one must hurt the other, simply by being itself; one must always
hunger for what the other has not to give.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Real love.]
“I always thought that my wife must be one of the sort of women who
pray.”
“And why?” said Mara, in surprise.
“Because I need to be loved a great deal, and it is only that kind
who pray who know how to love _really_.”
LITTLE FOXES.
[Sidenote: Difficulty of self-knowledge.]
It is astonishing how much we think about ourselves, yet to how
little purpose; how very clever people will talk and wonder about
themselves and each other, not knowing how to use either themselves
or each other,—not having as much practical philosophy in the matter
of their own character and that of their friends as they have in
respect to the screws of their gas-fixtures or the management of
their water-pipes.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Reserve not understood.]
There are in every family circle individuals whom a certain
sensitiveness of nature inclines to quietness and reserve; and there
are very well-meaning families where no such quietness and reserve
is possible. Nobody can be let alone, nobody may have a secret,
nobody can move in any direction, without a host of inquiries and
comments: “Who is your letter from? Let’s see.”—“My letter is from
So-and-so.”—“He writing to you! I didn’t know that. What’s he writing
about?”—“Where did you go yesterday? What did you buy? What did you
give for it? What are you going to do with it?”—“Seems to me that’s
an odd way to do. I shouldn’t do so.”—“Look here, Mary; Sarah’s going
to have a dress of silk tissue this spring. Now I think they’re too
dear, don’t you?”
I recollect seeing in some author a description of a true gentleman,
in which, among other things, he was characterized as the man that
asks the fewest questions. This trait of refined society might be
adopted into home-life in a far greater degree than it is, and make
it far more agreeable.
If there is perfect unreserve and mutual confidence, let it show
itself in free communications coming unsolicited. It may fairly be
presumed that, if there is anything our intimate friends wish us to
know, they will tell us of it, and that when we are in close and
confidential terms with persons, and there are topics on which they
do not speak to us, it is because for some reason they prefer to keep
silence concerning them; and the delicacy that respects a friend’s
silence is one of the charms of life.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Shyness of love.]
It comes far easier to scold our friend in an angry moment than to
say how much we love, honor, and esteem him in a kindly mood. Wrath
and bitterness speak themselves and go with their own force; love
is shame-faced, looks shyly out of the window, lingers long at the
door-latch.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Throwing away happiness.]
For the contentions that loosen the very foundations of love,
that crumble away all its fine traceries and carved work, about
what miserable, worthless things do they commonly begin! A dinner
underdone, too much oil consumed, a newspaper torn, a waste of coal
or soap, a dish broken!—and for this miserable sort of trash, very
good, very generous, very religious people will sometimes waste
and throw away by double-handfuls the very thing for which houses
are built and all the paraphernalia of a home established,—_their
happiness_. Better cold coffee, smoky tea, burnt meat, better any
inconvenience, any loss, than a loss of _love_; and nothing so surely
turns away love as constant fault-finding.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Morbid feelings.]
There is _fretfulness_, a mizzling, drizzling rain of discomforting
remark; there is _grumbling_, a northeast snowstorm that never
clears; there is _scolding_, the thunder-storm with lightning and
hail. All these are worse than useless; they are positive _sins_,
by whomsoever indulged,—sins as great and real as many that are
shuddered at in polite society. All these are for the most part but
the venting on our fellow-beings of morbid feelings resulting from
dyspepsia, over-taxed nerves, or general ill-health.
HOUSE AND HOME PAPERS.
[Sidenote: Love of a bargain.]
Milton says that the love of fame is the last infirmity of noble
minds. I think he had not rightly considered the subject. I believe
that last infirmity is the love of getting things cheap! Understand
me, now. I don’t mean the love of getting cheap things, by which
one understands showy, trashy, ill-made, spurious articles, bearing
certain apparent resemblances to better things. All really sensible
people are quite superior to that sort of cheapness. But those
fortunate accidents which put within the power of a man things really
good and valuable for half or a third of their value, what mortal
virtue and resolution can withstand?
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Warning for mothers.]
Mothers who throw away the key of their children’s hearts in
childhood sometimes have a sad retribution. As the children never
were considered when they were little and helpless, so they do not
consider when they are strong and powerful.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Careful observation.]
I think the best things on all subjects in this world of ours are
said, not by the practical workers, but by the careful observers.
THE CHIMNEY CORNER.
[Sidenote: Looking through blue glasses.]
Friend Theophilus was born on the shady side of Nature, and endowed
by his patron saint with every grace and gift which can make a
human creature worthy and available, except the gift of seeing the
bright side of things. His bead-roll of Christian virtues includes
all the graces of the spirit except hope; and so, if one wants to
know exactly the flaw, the defect, the doubtful side, and to take
into account all the untoward possibilities of any person, place,
or thing, he had best apply to friend Theophilus. He can tell you
just where and how the best-laid scheme is likely to fail, just the
screw that will fall loose in the smoothest working machinery, just
the flaw in the most perfect character, just the defect in the best
written book, just the variety of thorn that must accompany each
particular species of rose.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Châteaux en Espagne.]
Rudolph is another of the _habitués_ of our chimney corner,
representing the order of young knighthood in America, and his dreams
and fancies, if impracticable, are always of a kind to make every one
think him a good fellow. He who has no romantic dreams at twenty-one
will be a horribly dry peascod at fifty; therefore it is that I gaze
reverently at all Rudolph’s châteaux in Spain, which want nothing to
complete them except solid earth to stand on.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Care inevitable to human nature.]
The fact is that care and labor are as much correlated to human
existence as shadow is to light; there is no such thing as excluding
them from any mortal lot. You may make a canary-bird or a gold-fish
live in absolute contentment without a care or labor, but a human
being you cannot. Human beings are restless and active in their
very nature, and will do something, and that something will prove a
care, a labor, and a fatigue, arrange it how you will. As long as
there is anything to be desired and not yet attained, so long its
attainment will be attempted; so long as that attainment is doubtful
or difficult, so long will there be care and anxiety.
THE MAYFLOWER.
[Sidenote: “Cuteness.”]
He possessed a great share of that characteristic national trait so
happily denominated “cuteness,” which signifies an ability to do
everything without trying, to know everything without learning, and
to make more use of one’s _ignorance_ than other people do of their
knowledge.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Making people like us.]
It sometimes goes a great way towards making people like us to take
it for granted that they do already.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: A common mode of reasoning.]
She therefore repeated over exactly what she said before, only in
a much louder tone of voice, and with much more vehement forms of
asseveration,—a mode of reasoning which, if not entirely logical,
has at least the sanction of very respectable authorities among the
enlightened and learned.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Danger in apparent safety.]
There is no point in the history of reform, either in communities or
individuals, so dangerous as that where danger seems entirely past.
As long as a man thinks his health failing, he watches, he diets,
and will undergo the most heroic self-denial; but let him once set
himself down as cured, and how readily does he fall back to one soft,
indulgent habit after another, all tending to ruin everything that he
has before done!
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Self-deception.]
How strange that a man may appear doomed, given up, and lost, to the
eye of every looker-on, before he begins to suspect himself!
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Convenient duties.]
What would people do if the convenient shelter of duty did not afford
them a retreat in cases where they are disposed to change their minds?
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Too much heart.]
A man can sometimes become an old bachelor because he has _too much_
heart, as well as too little.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Privileged truth-tellers.]
These privileged truth-tellers are quite a necessary of life to young
ladies in the full tide of society, and we really think it would be
worth while for every dozen of them to unite to keep a person of this
kind on a salary for the benefit of the whole.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Two kinds of frankness.]
There is one kind of frankness which is the result of perfect
unsuspiciousness, and which requires a measure of ignorance of
the world and of life; this kind appeals to our generosity and
tenderness. There is another which is the frankness of a strong but
pure mind, acquainted with life, clear in its discrimination and
upright in its intention, yet above disguise or concealment; this
kind excites respect. The first seems to proceed simply from impulse,
the second from impulse and reflection united; the first proceeds,
in a measure, from ignorance, the second from knowledge; the first
is born from an undoubting confidence in others, the second from a
virtuous and well-grounded reliance on one’s self.
PINK AND WHITE TYRANNY.
[Sidenote: Genial and ungenial natures.]
There are people who, wherever they move, freeze the hearts of those
they touch, and chill all demonstration of feeling; and there are
warm natures, that unlock every fountain, and bid every feeling gush
forth.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Power of beauty.]
“Oh, nonsense! now, John, don’t talk humbug. I’d like to see _you_
following goodness when beauty is gone. I’ve known lots of plain
old maids that were perfect saints and angels; yet men crowded and
jostled by them to get at the pretty sinners. I dare say now,” she
added, with a bewitching look over her shoulder at him, “you’d rather
have me than Miss Almira Carraway,—hadn’t you, now?”
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Growing alike.]
“The thing with you men,” said Grace, “is that you want your wives to
see with your eyes, all in a minute, what has got to come with years
and intimacy, and the gradual growing closer and closer together.
The husband and wife, of themselves, drop many friendships and
associations that at first were mutually distasteful, simply because
their tastes have grown insensibly to be the same.”
DEACON PITKIN’S FARM.
[Sidenote: A New England woman.]
Diana Pitkin was like some of the fruits of her native hills, full of
juices which tend to sweetness in maturity, but which, when not quite
ripe, have a pretty decided dash of sharpness. There are grapes that
require a frost to ripen them, and Diana was somewhat akin to these.
AGNES OF SORRENTO.
[Sidenote: Acceptable advice.]
Then he had given her advice which exactly accorded with her own
views; and such advice is always regarded as an eminent proof of
sagacity in the giver.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Dual nature.]
But, reviewing his interior world, and taking a survey of the work
before him, he felt that sense of a divided personality which often
becomes so vivid in the history of individuals of strong will and
passion. It seemed to him that there were two men within him: the one
turbulent, passionate, demented; the other vainly endeavoring, by
authority, reason, and conscience, to bring the rebel to subjection.
The discipline of conventual life, the extraordinary austerities
to which he had condemned himself, the monotonous solitude of his
existence, all tended to exalt the vivacity of the nervous system,
which in the Italian constitution is at all times disproportionately
developed; and when those weird harp-strings of the nerves are once
thoroughly unstrung, the fury and tempest of the discord sometimes
utterly bewilders the most practiced self-government.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Power of an honest character.]
“Son, it is ever so,” replied the monk. “If there be a man that cares
neither for duke nor emperor, but for God alone, then dukes and
emperors will give more for his good word than for a whole dozen of
common priests.”
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Relation of age to youth.]
“We old folks are twisted and crabbed and full of knots with
disappointment and trouble, like the mulberry-trees that they keep
for vines to run on.”
UNCLE TOM’S CABIN.
[Sidenote: Persistence.]
“Dis yer matter ’bout persistence, feller-niggers,” said Sam,
with the air of one entering into an abstruse subject, “dis yer
’sistency ’s a thing what ain’t seed into very clar by most anybody.
Now, yer see, when a feller stands up for a thing one day and night,
de contrar’ de next, folks ses (an’ naturally enough dey ses), Why,
he ain’t persistent—hand me dat ar’ bit o’ corn-cake, Andy. But let’s
look inter it. I hope the gent’lmen and de fair sex will scuse my
usin’ an or’nary sort o’ ’parison. Here! I’m a tryin’ to get top o’
der hay. Wal, I puts up my larder dis yer side; ’tain’t no go;—den,
’cause I don’t try dere no more, but puts my larder right de contrar’
side, ain’t I persistent? I’m persistent in wantin’ to get up which
ary side my larder is; don’t ye see, all on ye?”
* * * * *
[Sidenote: The negro love of beauty.]
The negro, it must be remembered, is an exotic of the most gorgeous
and superb countries of the world, and he has, deep in his heart,
a passion for all that is splendid, rich, and fanciful; a passion
which, rudely indulged by an untrained taste, draws on him the
ridicule of the colder and more correct white race.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Effect of harshness.]
The ear that has never heard anything but abuse is strangely
incredulous of anything so heavenly as kindness.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: “Blessings brighten as they take their flight.”]
Marie was one of those unfortunately constituted mortals, in whose
eyes whatever is lost and gone assumes a value which it never had in
possession. Whatever she had she seemed to survey only to pick flaws
in it; but once fairly away, there was no end to her valuation of it.
DRED.
[Sidenote: Speaking as a friend.]
“Now, Miss Nina, I want to speak as a friend.”
“No, you sha’n’t; it is just what people say when they are going to
say something disagreeable. I told Clayton, once for all, that I
wouldn’t have him speak as a friend to me.”
* * * * *
[Sidenote: ’Scuses.]
“Ah, lots of ’scuses I keeps! I tell you now, ’scuses is excellent
things. Why, ’scuses is like dis yer grease dat keeps de wheels from
screaking. Lord bless you, de whole world turns ’round on ’scuses.
Whar de world be if everybody was such fools to tell de raal reason
for everyting they are gwine for to do, or ain’t gwine for to!”
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Use of a chatterbox.]
Every kind of creature has its uses, and there are times when
a lively, unthinking chatterbox is a perfect godsend. Those
unperceiving people who never notice the embarrassment of others, and
who walk with the greatest facility into the gaps of conversation,
simply because they have no perception of any difficulty there, have
their hour; and Nina felt positively grateful to Mr. Carson for the
continuous and cheerful rattle which had so annoyed her the day
before.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Good and evil inseparable.]
It is our fatality that everything that does good must do harm. It is
the condition of our poor, imperfect life here.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: “Streaked men.”]
“But den, you see, honey, der’s some folks der’s _two_ men in
’em,—one is a good one, and t’oder is very bad. Wal, dis yer was jest
dat sort.... He was one of dese yer streaked men, dat has drefful
ugly streaks; and, some of dem times, de Lord only knows what he
won’t do.”
* * * * *
[Sidenote: First steps.]
There is something in the first essay of a young man, in any
profession, like the first launching of a ship, which has a
never-ceasing hold on human sympathies.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: From different standpoints.]
There is no study in human nature more interesting than the aspects
of the same subject seen in the points of view of different
characters. One might almost imagine that there were no such thing as
absolute truth, since a change of situation or temperament is capable
of changing the whole force of an argument.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Fine natures perverted.]
As good wine makes the strongest vinegar, so fine nature perverted
makes the worst vice.
SUNNY MEMORIES OF FOREIGN LANDS.
[Sidenote: Lost confidence.]
There are some people who involve in themselves so many of the
elements which go to make up our confidence in human nature
generally, that to lose confidence in them seems to undermine our
faith in human virtue.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Wit.]
Truly, wit, like charity, covers a multitude of sins. A man who
has the faculty of raising a laugh in this sad, earnest world is
remembered with indulgence and complacency.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Value of ready expression.]
But so it always is. The man who has exquisite gifts of expression
passes for more, popularly, than the man with great and grand ideas,
who utters but imperfectly.
POGANUC PEOPLE.
[Sidenote: Opinionated people.]
Miss Debby was one of those human beings who carry with them the
apology for their own existence. It took but a glance to see that
she was one of those forces of nature which move always in straight
lines, and which must be turned out for if one wishes to avoid a
collision. All Miss Debby’s opinions had been made up, catalogued,
and arranged at a very early period of life, and she had no thought
of change. She moved in a region of certainties, and always took
her own opinions for granted with a calm supremacy altogether above
reason. Yet there was all the while about her a twinkle of humorous
consciousness, a vein of original drollery, which gave piquancy to
the brusqueness of her manner, and prevented people from taking
offence.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Difficulty of confession.]
It is curious that men are not generally ashamed of any form of
anger, wrath, or malice; but of the first step towards a nobler
nature,—the confession of a wrong,—they are ashamed.
LITTLE PUSSY WILLOW.
[Sidenote: Animal spirits.]
When people work hard all day, and have a good digestion, it is not
necessary that a thing should be very funny to make them laugh
tremendously.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: First false step.]
Boys, and men too, sometimes, by a single step, and that step taken
in a sudden hurry of inconsideration, get into a network of false
positions, in which they are very uneasy and unhappy, but live along
from day to day seeing no way out.
QUEER LITTLE PEOPLE.
[Sidenote: Marks of genius.]
“Depend upon it, my dear,” said Mrs. Nut-cracker, solemnly, “that
fellow must be a genius.”
“Fiddlestick on his genius!” said old Mr. Nut-cracker; “what does he
do?”
“Oh, nothing, of course; that’s one of the first marks of genius.
Geniuses, you know, never can come down to common life.”
* * * * *
[Sidenote: A busy-body.]
Old Mother Magpie was about the busiest character in the forest. But
you must know that there is a great difference between being busy and
being industrious. One may be very busy all the time, and yet not in
the least industrious; and this was the case with Mother Magpie.
She was always full of everybody’s business but her own,—up and down,
here and there, everywhere but in her own nest, knowing every one’s
affairs, telling what everybody had been doing or ought to do, and
ready to cast her advice _gratis_ at every bird and beast of the
woods.
A DOG’S MISSION.
[Sidenote: Broken idols.]
Do you, my brother, or grown-up sister, ever do anything like this?
Do your friendships and loves ever go the course of our Charley’s
toy? First, enthusiasm; second, satiety; third, discontent; then
picking to pieces; then dropping and losing! How many idols are in
your box of by-gone playthings? And may it not be as well to suggest
to you, when you find flaws in your next one, to inquire before you
pick to pieces whether you can put together again, or whether what
you call defect is not a part of its nature? A tin locomotive won’t
draw a string of parlor chairs, by any possible alteration, but it
may be very pretty for all that it was made for. Charley and you
might both learn something from this.
MY WIFE AND I.
[Sidenote: Soul-language.]
“There are people in this world who don’t understand each other’s
vernacular. Papa and I could no more discuss any question of the
inner life together than if he spoke Chickasaw and I spoke French.”
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Characters worth exploring.]
It is a charming thing, in one’s rambles, to come across a tree, or a
flower, or a fine bit of landscape that we can think of afterwards,
and feel richer for its being in the world. But it is more, when one
is in a strange place, to come across a man that you feel thoroughly
persuaded is, somehow or other, morally and intellectually worth
exploring. Our lives tend to become so hopelessly commonplace, and
the human beings we meet are generally so much one just like another,
that the possibility of a new and peculiar style of character in an
acquaintance is a most enlivening one.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Unsuspected danger.]
The man who has begun to live and work by artificial stimulant never
knows where he stands, and can never count upon himself with any
certainty. He lets into his castle a servant who becomes the most
tyrannical of masters. He may resolve to turn him out, but will find
himself reduced to the condition in which he can neither do with nor
without him.
In short, the use of stimulant to the brain power brings on a
disease in whose paroxysms a man is no more his own master than
in the ravings of fever, a disease that few have the knowledge to
understand, and for whose manifestations the world has no pity.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Heredity.]
Out of every ten young men who begin the use of stimulants as a
social exhilaration, there are perhaps five in whose breast lies
coiled up and sleeping this serpent, destined in after years to be
the deadly tyrant of their life—this curse, unappeasable by tears, or
prayers, or agonies—with whom the struggle is like that of Laocoön
with the hideous python, yet songs and garlands and poetry encircle
the wine-cup, and ridicule and contumely are reserved for him who
fears to touch it.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Personality.]
We are all familiar with the fact that there are some people who, let
them sit still as they may, and conduct themselves never so quietly,
nevertheless impress their personality on those around them, and make
their presence felt.
WE AND OUR NEIGHBORS.
[Sidenote: Friendly gossip.]
A great deal of good sermonizing, by the way, is expended on gossip,
which is denounced as one of the seven deadly sins of society; but,
after all, gossip has its better side; if not a Christian grace, it
certainly is one of those weeds which show a good warm soil.
The kindly heart, that really cares for everything human it meets,
inclines toward gossip in a good way. Just as a morning-glory throws
out tendrils, and climbs up and peeps cheerily into your window, so
a kindly gossip can’t help watching the opening and shutting of your
blinds, and the curling smoke from your chimney.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Persistency.]
If you _will_ have your own way, and persist in it, people _have to_
make up with you.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Right side of human nature.]
Human nature is always interesting, if one takes it right side out.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Human nettles.]
It is rather amusing to a general looker-on in this odd world
of ours to contrast the serene, cheerful good faith with which
these constitutionally active individuals go about criticising,
and suggesting, and directing right and left, with the dismay and
confusion of mind they leave behind them wherever they operate.
They are often what the world calls well-meaning people, animated
by a most benevolent spirit, and have no more intention of
giving offence than a nettle has of stinging. A large, vigorous,
well-growing nettle has no consciousness of the stings it leaves in
the delicate hands that have been in contact with it; it has simply
acted out its innocent and respectable nature as a nettle. But a
nettle armed with the power of locomotion on an ambulatory tour, is
something the results of which may be fearful to contemplate.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Flaws in gems.]
Ideal heroes are not plentiful, and there are few gems that don’t
need rich setting.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Impossibility of evading trouble.]
People who hate trouble generally get a good deal of it. It’s all
very well for a gentle, acquiescent spirit to be carried through life
by _one_ bearer. But when half a dozen bearers quarrel and insist on
carrying one opposite ways, the more facile the spirit, the greater
the trouble.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Righteousness through repentance.]
Perhaps there is never a time when man or woman has a better chance,
with suitable help, of building a good character, than just after a
humiliating fall which has taught the sinner his own weakness, and
given him a sad experience of the bitterness of sin.
Nobody wants to be sold under sin, and go the whole length in
iniquity; and when one has gone just far enough in wrong living to
perceive in advance all its pains and penalties, there is often an
agonized effort to get back to respectability, like the clutching
of the drowning man for the shore. The waters of death are cold and
bitter, and nobody wants to be drowned.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: “I told you so.”]
“Whence is the feeling of satisfaction which we have when things that
we always said we knew turn out just as we predicted? Had we really
rather our neighbor would be proved a thief and a liar than to be
proved in a mistake ourselves? Would we be willing to have somebody
topple headlong into destruction for the sake of being able to say,
‘I told you so’?”
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Gossip.]
In fact, the gossip plant is like the grain of mustard-seed, which,
though it be the least of all seeds, becometh a great tree, and the
fowls of the air lodge in its branches, and chatter mightily there at
all seasons.