I want it to be understood that I consider that a certain number of
persons are at liberty to dislike me peremptorily, without showing
cause, and that they give no offense whatever in so doing.
If I did not cheerfully acquiesce in this sentiment toward myself
on the part of others, I should not feel at liberty to indulge my
own aversions. I try to cultivate a Christian feeling to all my
fellow-creatures, but inasmuch as I must also respect truth and
honesty, I confess to myself a certain number of inalienable dislikes
and prejudices, some of which may possibly be shared by others. Some
of these are purely instinctive; for others I can assign a reason. Our
likes and dislikes play so important a part in the order of things that
it is well to see on what they are founded.
There are persons I meet occasionally who are too intelligent by half
for my liking. They know my thoughts beforehand, and tell me what I
was going to say. Of course they are masters of all my knowledge, and
a good deal besides; have read all the books I have read, and in later
editions; have had all the experiences I have been through,--and more,
too. In my private opinion, every mother's son of them will lie at any
time rather than confess ignorance.
I have a kind of dread, rather than hatred, of persons with a large
excess of vitality--great feeders, great laughers, great story-tellers,
who come sweeping over their company with a huge tidal wave of animal
spirits and boisterous merriment. I have pretty good spirits myself,
and enjoy a little mild pleasantry, but I am oppressed and extinguished
by these great lusty, noisy creatures, and feel as if I were a mute at
a funeral when they get into full blast.
I cannot get along much better with those drooping, languid people,
whose vitality falls short as much as that of the others is in excess.
I have not life enough for two; I wish I had. It is not very enlivening
to meet a fellow-creature whose expression and accents say, "You are
the hair that breaks the camel's back of my endurance; you are the last
drop that makes my cup of woe run over"; persons whose heads drop on
one side like those of toothless infants; whose voices recall the tones
in which our old snuffling choir used to wail out the verse of
"Life is the time to serve the Lord."
There is another style which does not captivate me. I recognize an
attempt at the _grand manner_ now and then, in persons who are well
enough in their way, but of no particular importance, socially or
otherwise. Some family tradition of wealth or distinction is apt to be
at the bottom of it, and it survives all the advantages that used to
set it off: I like family pride as well as my neighbors, and respect
the high-born fellow-citizen whose progenitors have not worked in
their shirt-sleeves for the last two generations full as much as I
ought to. But _grandpère oblige_; a person with a known grandfather is
too distinguished to find it necessary to put on airs. The few Royal
Princes I have happened to know were very easy people to get along
with, and had not half the social knee-action I have often seen in the
collapsed dowagers who lifted their eyebrows at me in my earlier years.
My heart does not warm as it should do toward the persons, not
intimates, who are always _too_ glad to see me when we meet by
accident, and discover all at once that they have a vast deal to
unbosom themselves to me.
There is one blameless person whom I cannot love and have no excuse
for hating. It is the innocent fellow-creature, otherwise inoffensive
to me, whom I find I have involuntarily joined on turning a corner.
I suppose the Mississippi, which was flowing quietly along, minding
its own business, hates the Missouri for coming into it all at once
with its muddy stream. I suppose the Missouri in like manner hates the
Mississippi for diluting with its limpid but insipid current the rich
reminiscences of the varied soils through which its own stream has
wandered. I will not compare myself to the clear or the turbid current,
but I will own that my heart sinks when I find all of a sudden I am in
for a corner confluence, and I cease loving my neighbor as myself until
I can get away from him.--_The Poet at the Breakfast Table._
* * * * *
An Illinois boy was asked to write an essay on Masonry, and here is
what he wrote: "King Solomon was a man who lived so many years in the
country that he was the whole push. He was an awfully wise man, and
one day two women came to him, each holding to the leg of a baby and
nearly pulling it in two and each claiming it. And King Solomon wasn't
feeling right good and he said: "Why couldn't the brat have been twins
and stopped this bother?" And then he called for his machete and was
going to Weylerize the poor innocent little baby, and give each woman
a piece of it, when the real mother of the baby said: 'Stop, Solomon;
stay thy hand. Let the old hag have it. If I can't have a whole baby I
won't have any.' Then Solomon told her to take the baby and go home and
wash its face, for he knew it was hers. He told the other woman to go
chase herself. King Solomon built Solomon's Temple and was the father
of Masons. He had seven hundred wives and three hundred lady friends,
and that's why there are so many Masons in the world. My papa says King
Solomon was a warm member and I think he was hot stuff myself. That is
all I know about King Solomon."