1888
It seems to me that the constructive age of man begins when he has
passed fifty. Not until then can he be a master builder. As I sped past
the fifty-fifth milestone life itself became better, broader, fuller. My
plans were wider, the distances I wanted to go stretched before me,
beyond the normal strength of an average lifetime. This I knew, but
still I pressed on, indifferent of the speed or strain. There were
indications that my strength had not been dissipated, that the years
were merely notches that had not cut deep, that had scarcely scarred the
surface of the trunk. The soul, the mind, the zest of doing--all were
keen and eager.
The conservation of the soul is not so profound a matter as it is
described. It consists in a guardianship of the gateways through which
impressions enter, or pass by; it consists in protecting one's inner
self from wasteful associations.
The influence of what we read is of chief importance to character. At
the beginning of 1888 I received innumerable requests from people all
over New York and Brooklyn for advice on the subject of reading. In the
deluge of books that were beginning to sweep over us many readers were
drowned. The question of what to read was being discussed everywhere.
I opposed the majority of novels because they were made chiefly to set
forth desperate love scrapes. Much reading of love stories makes one
soft, insipid, absent-minded, and useless. Affections in life usually
work out very differently. The lady does not always break into tears,
nor faint, nor do the parents always oppose the situation, so that a
romantic elopement is possible. Excessive reading of these stories makes
fools of men and women. Neither is it advisable to read a book because
someone else likes it. It is not necessary to waste time on Shakespeare
if you have no taste for poetry or drama merely because so many others
like them; nor to pass a long time with Sir William Hamilton when
metaphysics are not to your taste. When you read a book by the page,
every few minutes looking ahead to see how many chapters there are
before the book will be finished, you had better stop reading it. There
was even a fashion in books that was absurd. People were bored to death
by literature in the fashion.
For a while we had a Tupper epidemic, and everyone grew busy writing
blank verse--very blank. Then came an epidemic of Carlyle, and everyone
wrote turgid, involved, twisted and breakneck sentences, each noun with
as many verbs as Brigham Young had wives. Then followed a romantic
craze, and everyone struggled to combine religion and romance, with
frequent punches at religion, and we prided ourselves on being sceptical
and independent in our literary tastes. My advice was simply to make up
one's mind what to read, and then read it. Life is short, and books are
many. Instead of making your mind a garret crowded with rubbish, make
it a parlour, substantially furnished, beautifully arranged, in which
you would not be ashamed to have the whole world enter.
There was so much in the world to provoke the soul, and yet all
persecution is a blessing in some way. The so-called modern literature,
towards the close of the nineteenth century, was becoming more and more
the illegitimate offspring of immaturity in thought and feeling. We were
the slaves of our newspapers; each morning a library was thrown on our
doorstep. But what a jumbled, inconsequent, muddled-up library! It was
the best that could be made in such a hurry, and it satisfied most of
us, though I believe there were conservative people who opened it only
to read the marriage and the death notices. The latter came along fast
enough.
In January, 1888, that well-known American jurist and illustrious
Brooklynite, Judge Joseph Neilson, died. He was an old friend of mine,
of everyone who came upon his horizon. For a long while he was an
invalid, but he kept this knowledge from the world, because he wanted no
public demonstration. The last four years of his life he was confined to
his room, where he sat all the while calm, uncomplaining, interested in
all the affairs of the world, after a life of active work in it. He
belonged to that breed which has developed the brain and brawn of
American character--the Scotch-Irish. If Christianity had been a
fallacy, Judge Neilson would have been just the man to expose it. He who
on the judicial bench sat in solemn poise of spirit, while the ablest
jurists and advocates of the century were before him to be prompted,
corrected, or denied, was not the man to be overcome by a religion of
sophistry or mere pretence. Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase said that he
had studied the Christian religion as he had studied a law case, and
concluded that it was divine. Judge Neilson's decisions will be quoted
in court rooms as long as Justice holds its balance. The supremacy of a
useful life never leaves the earth--its influence remains behind.
The whole world, it seemed to me, was being spiritualised by the
influences of those whose great moments on earth had planted tangible
and material benefits, years after they themselves were invisible. It
was an elemental fact in the death chamber of Mr. Roswell, the great
botanist, in England; in the relieved anxieties in Berlin; in the
jubilation in Dublin; by the gathering of noblemen in St. Petersburg;
and in the dawn of this new year. I could see a tendency in European
affairs to the unification of nations.
The German and the French languages had been struggling for the
supremacy of Europe. As I foresaw events then, the two would first
conquer Europe, and the stronger of the two would swallow the other.
Then the English language would devour that, and the world would have
but one language. Over a million people had already began the study of
Volapük, a new language composed of all languages. This was an
indication of world nationalisation. Congresses of nations, meeting for
various purposes, were establishing brotherhood. It looked as though
those who were telling us again in 1888 that the second coming of Christ
was at hand were right. The divine significance of things was greater
than it had ever been.
There was some bigotry in religious affairs, of course. In our religion
we were as far from unity of feeling then as we had ever been. The
Presbyterian bigot could be recognised by his armful of Westminster
catechisms. The Methodist bigot could be easily identified by his
declaration that unless a man had been converted by sitting on the
anxious seat he was not eligible. The way to the church militant,
according to this bigot, was from the anxious seat, one of which he
always carried with him. The Episcopal bigot struggled under a great
load of liturgies. Without this man's prayer-books no one could be
saved, he said. The Baptist bigot was bent double with the burden of his
baptistry.
"It does not seem as if some of you had been properly washed," he said,
"and I shall proceed to put under the water all those who have neglected
their ablutions." Religion was being served in a kind of ecclesiastical
hash that, naturally enough, created controversy, as very properly it
should. In spite of these things, however, some creed of religious
faith, whichever it might be, was universally needed. I hope for a
church unity in the future. When all the branches in each denomination
have united, then the great denominations nearest akin will unite, and
this absorption will go on until there will be one great millennial
Church, divided only for geographical convenience into sections as of
old, when it was the Church of Laodicea, the Church of Philadelphia, the
Church of Thyatira. In the event of this religious evolution then there
will be the Church of America, the Church of Europe, the Church of Asia,
the Church of Africa, and the Church of Australia.
We are all builders, bigots, or master mechanics of the divine will.
The number of men who built Brooklyn, and who have gone into eternal
industry, were increasing. One day I paused a moment on the Brooklyn
Bridge to read on a stone the names of those who had influenced the
building of that span of steel, the wonder of the century. They were
the absent ones: The president, Mr. Murphy, absent; the vice-president,
Mr. Kingsley, absent; the treasurer, Mr. Prentice, absent; the engineer,
Mr. Roebling, absent. Our useful citizens were going or gone. A few days
after this Alfred S. Barnes departed. He has not disappeared, nor will
until our Historical Hall, our Academy of Music, and Mercantile Library,
our great asylums of mercy, and churches of all denominations shall have
crumbled. His name has been a bulwark of credit in the financial affairs
over which he presided. He was a director of many universities. What
reinforcement to the benevolence of the day his patronage was! I enjoyed
a warm personal friendship with him for many years, and my gratitude and
admiration were unbounded. He was a man of strict integrity in business
circles, the highest type of a practical Christian gentleman. Unlike so
many successful business men, he maintained an unusual simplicity of
character. He declined the Mayoralty and Congressional honours that he
might pursue the ways of peace.
The great black-winged angel was being desperately beaten back, however,
by the rising generation of doctors, young, hearty, industrious,
ambitious graduates of the American universities. How bitterly
vaccination was fought even by ministers of the Gospel. Small wits
caricatured it, but what a world-wide human benediction it proved. I
remember being in Edinburgh a few weeks after the death of Sir James Y.
Simpson, and his photograph was in every shop window, in honour of the
man who first used chloroform as an anæsthetic. In former days they
tried to dull pain by using the hasheesh of the Arabs. Dr. Simpson's wet
sponge was a blessing put into the hands of the surgeon. The millennium
for the souls of men will be when the doctors have discovered the
millennium for their bodies.
Dr. Bush used to say in his valedictory address to the students of the
medical college, "Young gentlemen, you have two pockets: a large pocket
and a small pocket. The large pocket is for your annoyances and your
insults, the small pocket for your fees."
In March, 1888, we lost a man who bestowed a new dispensation upon the
dumb animals that bear our burdens--Henry Bergh. Abused and ridiculed
most of his life, he established a great work for the good men and women
of the ensuing centuries to carry out. Long may his name live in our
consecrated memory. In the same month, from Washington to Toledo, the
long funeral train of Chief Justice White steamed across country,
passing multitudes of uncovered heads bowed in sorrowing respect, while
across the sea men honoured his distinguished memory.
What a splendid inheritance for those of us who must pass out of the
multitude without much ado, if we are not remembered among the bores of
life. There were bores in the pulpit who made their congregations dread
Sundays; made them wish that Sunday would come only once a month. At one
time an original Frenchman actually tried having a Sunday only once
every ten days. A minister should have a conference with his people
before he preaches, otherwise how can he tell what medicine to give
them? He must feel the spiritual pulse. Every man is a walking eternity
in himself, but he will never qualify if he insists on being a bore,
even if he have to face sensational newspaper stories about himself.
I never replied to any such tales except once, and that once came about
in the spring of 1888. I regarded it as a joke. Some one reported that
one evening, at a little gathering in my house, there were four kinds of
wine served. I was much interviewed on the subject. I announced in my
church that the report was false, that we had no wine. I did not take
the matter as one of offence. If I had been as great a master of
invective and satire as Roscoe Conkling I might have said more. In the
spring of this year he died. The whole country watched anxiously the
news bulletins of his death. He died a lawyer. About Conkling as a
politician I have nothing to say. There is no need to enter that field
of enraged controversy. As a lawyer he was brilliant, severely logical,
if he chose to be, uproarious with mirth if he thought it appropriate.
He was an optimist. He was on board the "Bothnia" when she broke her
shaft at sea, and much anxiety was felt for him. I sailed a week later
on the "Umbria," and overtaking the "Bothnia," the two ships went into
harbour together. Meeting Mr. Conkling the next morning, in the
North-Western Hotel, at Liverpool, I asked him if he had not been
worried.
"Oh, no," he said; "I was sure that good fortune would bring us through
all right."
He was the only lawyer I ever knew who could afford to turn away from a
seat on the bench of the Supreme Court of the United States. He had
never known misfortune. Had he ever been compelled to pass through
hardships he would have been President in 1878. Because of certain
peculiarities, known to himself, as well as to others, he turned aside
from politics. Although neither Mr. Conkling nor Mr. Blaine could have
been President while both lived, good people of all parties hoped for
Mr. Conkling's recovery.
The national respect shown at the death-bed of the lawyer revealed the
progress of our times. Lawyers, for many years in the past, had been
ostracised. They were once forbidden entrance to Parliament. Dr. Johnson
wrote the following epitaph, which is obvious enough:--
God works wonders now and then;
Here lies a lawyer an honest man.