This, however, I do not purpose now to discuss further. Neither shall I

speak of the second deficiency,--that of home influences,--any further

than it is connected with the third, namely, a culpable neglect of

circumstances which minister directly to character. I design to speak

only of those evils which lie on the surface, patent to the most casual

observer, and which may be removed without any change in the structure

of society. And among the first of these I reckon the mean and meagre

homes provided for the college students. If the State were poor, if

the question were between mere rude shelter and no college education,

we should do well to choose the former, and our choice would be our

glory. It would be worthwhile even to live in such a house as Thoreau

suggests, a tool-box with a few augur-holes bored in it to admit air,

and a hook to hook down the lid at night. But we are not poor.

Society has money enough to do everything it wishes to do; and it has

provided no better homes for its young men because it has not come to

the point of believing that better homes are necessary. Sometimes it

affects to maintain that this way of living is beneficial, and talks of

the disciplinary power of soldiers' fare. It is true that a soldier,

living on a crust of bread and lying on the ground for love of country

or of duty, is ennobled by it; but it is also true, that a miser doing

the same things for love of stocks and gold is degraded; and a dreamer

doing it serenely unconscious is neither ennobled nor degraded, but is

simply laying the foundation for dyspepsia. To despise the elegances of

life when they interfere with its duties the part of a hero. To be

indifferent to them when they stand in the way of knowledge is the

attribute of a philosopher. To disregard them when they would

contribute to both character and culture is neither the one nor the

other. It was very well to cultivate the muses on a little oatmeal,

when resources were so scanty that a bequest of seven hundred and

seventy-nine pounds seventeen shillings and two pence was a gift

munificent enough to confer upon the donor the honor of giving his name

to the College so endowed; when a tax of one peck of corn, or twelve

pence a year, from each family was all could reasonably be levied for

the maintenance of poor scholars at the College; when the

Pilgrims--hardly escaped from persecution, and plunged into the midst

of perils by Indian warfare, perils by frost and famine and disease,

but filled with the love of liberty, and fired with the conviction that

only fortified by learning could be a blessing--gave of their scanty

stock and their warm hearts, one man his sheep, another his nine

shillings' worth of cotton cloth, a third his pewter flagon, and so on

down to the fruit-dish, the sugar-spoon, the silver-tipt jug, and the

trencher-salt; but a generation that is not astonished when a man pays

six thousand dollars for a few feet land to bury himself in, is without

excuse in not providing for its sons a dignified and respectable home

during the four years of their college life,--years generally when they

are most susceptible of impressions, most impatient of restraints, most

removed from society, and most need to be surrounded by every

inducement to a courteous and Christian life. What was a large winded

liberality then may be but niggardliness or narrowness now. If indeed

there be a principle in the case, the principle that this arrangement

is better adapted to a generous growth than a more ornate one, then let

it be carried out. Let all public edifices and private houses be

reduced to a scale of Spartan simplicity; let camel's-hair and leathern

girdles take the place of broadcloth, and meat be locusts and wild

honey. But so long as treasures of art and treasures of wealth are

lavished on churches, and courthouses, and capitols, and private

dwellings, so long as earth and sea are forced to give up the riches

which are in them for the adornment of the person and the enjoyment of

the palate, we cannot consistently bring forward either principles or

practice to defend our neglect withal. If the experiment of a rough

and primitive life is to be tried, let it be tried at home, where

community of interests, and diversity of tastes, and the refinements of

family and social life, will prevent it from degenerating into a fatal

failure; but do not let a horde of boys colonize in a base and shabby

dwelling, unless you are willing to admit the corollary that they may

to that extent become base and shabby. If they do become so they are

scarcely blameworthy; if they do not, it is no thanks to the system,

but because other causes come in to deflect its conclusions. But why

set down a weight at one end of the lever because there is a power at

the other? Why not wait until, in the natural course of things, lever

comes to an obstacle, and then let power bear down with all its might

to remove it?

Doubtless those who look back upon their college days through the

luminous mist of years, see no gray walls or rough floors, and count it

only less than sacrilege to find spot or wrinkle or any such thing on

the garments of their alma mater. But awful is the gift of the gods

that we can become used to things; awful, since, by becoming used to

them, we become insensible to their faults and tolerant of their

defects. Harvard is beloved of her sons: would she be any less beloved

if she were also beautiful to outside barbarians? Would her fame be

less fair, or her name less dear, if those who come up to her solemn

feasts, filled the idea of her greatness, could not only tell her

towers, but consider her palaces, without being forced to bury their

admiration and reverence under the first threshold which they cross?

O, be sure the true princess is not yet found, for king's daughter is

all glorious within.

Deficiency takes shelter under antiquity and associations: associations

may, indeed, festoon unlovely places, but would they cluster any less

richly around walls that were stately and adequate? Is it not fitter

that associations should adorn, than that they should conceal? If here

and there a relic of the olden time is cherished because it is

olden,--a house, a book, a dress,--shall we then live only in the

houses, read only the books, and wear the dresses of our ancestors? If

here and there some ship has breasted the billows of time, and sails

the seas today because of its own inherent grace and strength, shall

we, therefore, cling to crazy old crafts that can with difficulty be

towed out of harbor, and must be kept afloat by constant application of

tar and oakum? As I read the Bible and the world, gray hairs are a

crown unto a man only when they are found in the way of righteousness.

Laden with guilt and heavy woes, behold the AGED SINNER goes. A seemly

old age is fair and beautiful, and to be had in honor by all people;

but an old age squalid and pinched is of all things most pitiful.

After the Oration and Poem, which, having nothing distinctive, I pass

over, comes the "Collation." The members of the Senior Class prepare a

banquet,--sometimes separately and sometimes in clubs, at an expense

ranging from fifty to five hundred dollars,--to which they invite as

many friends as they choose, or as are available. The banquet is quite

as rich, varied, and elegant as you find at evening parties, and the

occasion is a merry and pleasant one. But it occurred to me that there

may be unpleasant things connected with this custom. In a class of

seventy-five, in a country like America, it is probable that a certain

proportion are ill able to meet the expense which such custom

necessitates. Some have fought their own way through college. Some

must have been fought through by their parents. To them I should think

this elaborate and considerable outlay must be a very sensible

inconvenience. The mere expense of books and board, tuition and

clothing, cannot be met without strict economy, and much parental and

family sacrifice. And at the end of it all, when every nerve has been

strained, and must be strained harder still before the man can be

considered fairly on his feet and able to run his own race in life,

comes this new call for entirely uncollegiate disbursements. Of course

it is only a custom. There is no college by-law, I suppose, which

prescribes a valedictory SYMPOSIUM. Probably it grew up gradually from

small ice-cream beginnings to its present formidable proportions; but a

custom is as rigid as a chain. I wondered whether the moral character

of the young men was generally strong enough, by the time they were in

their fourth collegiate year, to enable them to go counter to the

custom, if it involved personal sacrifice at home,--whether there was

generally sufficient courtliness, not to say Christianity, in the

class,--whether there was sufficient courtesy, chivalry,

high-breeding,--to make the omission of this party-giving unnoticeable,

or not unpleasant. I by no means say, that the inability of a portion

of the students to entertain their friends sumptuously should prevent

those who are able from doing so. As the world is, some will be rich

and some will be poor. This is a fact which they have to face the

moment they go out into the world; and the sooner they grapple with it,

and find out its real bearings and worth, or worthlessness, the better.

Boys are usually old enough by the time they are graduated to

understand and take philosophically such a distinction. Nor do I admit

that poor people have any right to be sore on the subject of their

poverty. The one sensitiveness which I cannot comprehend, with which I

have no sympathy, for which I have no pity, and of which I have no

tolerance, is sensitiveness about poverty. It is an essentially vulgar

feeling. I cannot conceive how a man who has any real elevation of

character, any self-respect, can for a moment experience so ignoble a

shame. One may be annoyed at the inconveniences, and impatient of the

restraints of poverty; but to be ashamed to be called poor or to be

thought poor, to resort to shifts, not for the sake of being

comfortable or elegant, but of seeming to be above the necessity of

shifts, is an indication of an inferior mind, whether it dwell in

prince or in peasant. The man who does it shows that he has not in his

own opinion character enough to stand alone. He must be supported by

adventitious circumstances, or he must fall. Nobody, therefore, need

ever expect to receive sympathy from me in recounting the social pangs

or slights of poverty. You never can be slighted, if you do not slight

yourself. People may attempt to do it, but their shafts have no barb.

You turn it all into natural history. It is a psychological phenomenon,

a study, something to be analyzed, classified, reasoned from, and bent

to your own convenience, but not to be taken to heart. It amuses you;

it interests you; it adds to your stock of facts; it makes life curious

and valuable: but if you suffer from it, it is because you have not

basis, stamina; and probably you deserve be slighted. This, however,

is true only when people have become somewhat concentrated. Children

know nothing of it. They live chiefly from without, not from within.

Only gradually as they approach maturity do they cut loose from the

scaffolding, and depend upon their own centre of gravity. Appearances

are very strong in school. Money and prodigality have great weight

there, notwithstanding the democracy of attainments and abilities.

Have the students self-poise enough to refrain from these festive

expenses without suffering mortification? Have they virtue enough to

refrain from them with the certainty of incurring such suffering? Have

they nobility, and generosity, and largeness of soul enough, while

abstaining themselves for conscience' sake, to share in the plans, and

sympathize without servility in the pleasures of their rich comrades?

to look on with friendly interest, without cynicism or concealed

malice, at the preparations in which they do not join? Or do they

yield to selfishness, and gratify their own vanity, weakness,

self-indulgence, and love of pleasure, at whatever cost to their

parents? Or is there such a state of public opinion and usage in

College, that this custom is equally honored in the breach and in the

observance?

When the feasting was over, the most picturesque part of the day began.

The College green put off suddenly its antique gravity, and became

"Embrouded ..... as it were a mede

Alle ful of fresshe floures, white and rede,"

"floures" which to their gay hues and graceful outlines added the rare

charm of fluttering in perpetual motion. It was a kaleidoscope without

angles. To me, niched in the embrasure of an old upper window, the

scene, it seemed, might have stepped out of the Oriental splendor of

Arabian Nights. I never saw so many well-dressed people together in my

life before. That seems a rather tame fact to buttress Arabian Nights

withal, but it implies much. The distance was a little too great for

one to note personal and individual beauty; but since I have heard that

Boston is famous for its ugly women, perhaps that was an advantage, as

diminishing likewise individual ugliness. If no one was strikingly

handsome, no one was strikingly plain. And though you could not mark

the delicacies of faces, you could have the full effect of

costume,--rich, majestic, floating, gossamery, impalpable. Everything

was fresh, spotless, and in tune. It scarcely needed music to resolve

all the incessant waver and shimmer into a dance; but the music came,

and, like sand-grains under the magnet, the beautiful atoms swept into

stately shapes and tremulous measured activity,--

"A fine, sweet earthquake gently moved

By the soft wind of whispering silks."

Then it seemed like a German festival, and came back to me the

Fatherland, the lovely season of the Blossoming, the short, sweet

bliss-month among the Blumenbuhl Mountains.

Nothing call be more appropriate, more harmonious, than dancing on the

green. Youth, and gaiety, and beauty--and in summer we are all young,

and gay, and beautiful--mingle well with the eternal youth of blue sky,

and velvet sward, and the light breezes toying in the treetops. Youth

and Nature kiss each other in the bright, clear purity of the happy

summer-tide. Whatever objections lie against dancing elsewhere must

veil their faces there.

If only men would not dance! It is the most unbecoming exercise which

they can adopt. In women you have the sweep and wave of drapery,

gentle undulations, summer-cloud floatings, soft, sinuous movements,

fluency of pliant forms, the willowy bend and rebound of lithe and

lovely suppleness. It is grace generic,--the sublime, the evanescent

mysticisin of motion, without use, without aim, except its own

overflowing and all-sufficing fascination. But when a man dances, it

reminds me of that amusing French book called "Le Diable Boiteux,"

which has been free-thinkingly translated, "The Devil on Two Sticks."

A woman's dancing is gliding, swaying, serpentine. A man's is jerks,

hops, convulsions, and acute angles. The woman is light, airy,

indistinctly defined. Airy movements are in keeping. The man is

sombre in hue, grave in tone, distinctly outlined; and nothing is more

incongruous, to my thinking, than his dancing. The feminine drapery

conceals processes and gives results. The masculine absence of drapery

reveals processes, and thereby destroys results.

Once upon a time, long before the Flood, the clergyman of a

country-village, possessed with such a zeal as Paul bore record of

concerning Israel, conceived it his duty to "make a note" of sundry

young members of his flock who had met for a drive and a supper, with a

dance fringed upon the outskirts. The fame whereof being noised

abroad, a sturdy old farmer, with a good deal of shrewd sense and

mother-wit in his brains, and a fine, indirect way of hitting the nail

on the head with a side-stroke, was questioned in a neighboring village

as to the facts of the case. "Yes," he said, surlily, "the young folks

had a party, and got up a dance, and the minister was mad,--and I don't

blame him,--he thinks nobody has any business to dance, unless he knows

how better than they did!" It was a rather different casus belli from

that which the worthy clergyman would have preferred before a council;

but it "meets my views" precisely as to the validity of the objections

urged against dancing. I would have women dance, and women only,

because it is the most beautiful thing in the world. And I think my

views are Scriptural, for I find that it was the VIRGINS of Israel that

were to go forth in the dances of them that make merry. It was the

DAUGHTERS of Shiloh that went out to dance in dances at the feast of

the Lord on the south of Lebonah.

From my window overlooking the green, I was led away into some one or

other of the several halls to see the "round dances"; and it was like

going from Paradise to Pandemonium. From the pure and healthy lawn,

all the purer for the pure and peaceful people pleasantly walking up

and down in the sunshine and shade, or grouped in the numerous windows,

like bouquets of rare tropical flowers,--from the green, rainbowed in

vivid splendor, and alive with soft, tranquil motion, fair forms, and

the flutter of beautiful and brilliant colors,--from the green,

sanctified already by the pale faces of sick, and wounded, and maimed

soldiers who had gone out from the shadows of those sheltering trees to

draw the sword for country, and returned white wraiths of their

vigorous youth, the sad vanguard of that great army of blessed martyrs

who shall keep forever in the mind of this generation how costly and

precious a thing is liberty, who shall lift our worldly age out of the

slough of its material prosperity in to the sublimity of suffering and

sacrifice,--from suggestions, and fancies, and dreamy musing, and

"phantasms sweet," into the hall, where, for flower-scented summer air

were thick clouds of fine, penetrating dust; and for lightly trooping

fairies, a jam of heated human beings, so that you shall hardly come

nigh the dancers for the press; and when you have, with difficulty, and

many contortions, and much apologizing, threaded the solid mass,

piercing through the forest of fans,--what? An enclosure, but no more

illusion.

Waltzing is a profane and vicious dance. When it is prosecuted in the

centre of a great crowd, in a dusty hall, on a warm midsummer day, it

is also a disgusting dance. Night is its only appropriate time. The

blinding, dazzling gas-light throws a grateful glare over the salient

points of its indecency, and blends the whole into a wild whirl that

dizzies and dazes one; but the uncompromising afternoon, pouring in

through manifold windows, tears away every illusion, and reveals the

whole coarseness and commonness and all the repulsive details of this

most alien and unmaidenly revel. The very POSE of the dance is

profanity. Attitudes which are the instinctive expression of intimate

emotions, glowing rosy-red in the auroral time of tenderness, and

justified in unabashed freedom only by a long and faithful habitude of

unselfish devotion, are here openly, deliberately, and carelessly

assumed by people who have but a casual and partial

society-acquaintance. This I reckon profanity. This is levity the

most culpable. This is a guilty and wanton waste of delicacy. That it

is practised by good girls and tolerated by good mothers does not prove

that it is good. Custom blunts the edge of many perceptions. A good

thing soiled may be redeemed by good people; but waltz as many as you

may, spotless maidens, you will only smut yourselves, and not cleanse

the waltz. It is of itself unclean.

There were, besides, peculiar desagrements on this occasion. As I said,

there was no illusion,--not a particle. It was no Vale of Tempe, with

Nymphs and Apollos. The boys were boys, young, full of healthful

promise, but too much in the husk for exhibition, and not entirely at

ease in their situation,--indeed, very much NOT at ease,--unmistakably

warm, nervous, and uncomfortable. The girls were pretty enough girls,

I dare say, under ordinary circumstances,--one was really lovely, with

soft cheeks, long eyelashes, eyes deep and liquid, and Tasso's gold in

her hair, though of a bad figure, ill set off by a bad dress,--but

Venus herself could not have been seen to advantage in such evil plight

as they, panting, perspiring, ruffled, frowzy,--puff-balls revolving

through an atmosphere of dust,--a maze of steaming, reeking human

couples, inhumanly heated and simmering together with a more than

Spartan fortitude.

It was remarkable, and at the same time amusing, to observe the

difference in the demeanor of the two sexes. The lions and the fawns

seemed to have changed hearts,--perhaps they had. It was the boys that

were nervous. The girls were unquailing. The boys were, however,

heroic. They tried bravely to hide the fox and his gnawings; but

traces were visible. They made desperate feint of being at the height

of enjoyment and unconscious of spectators; but they had much modesty,

for all that. The girls threw themselves into it pugnis et

calcibus,--unshrinking, indefatigable. Did I say that it was amusing?

I should rather say that it was painful. Can it be anything but

painful to see young girls exhibiting the hardihood of the

"professional" without the extenuating necessity?

There is another thing which girls and their mothers do not seem to

consider. The present mode of dress renders waltzing almost as

objectionable in a large room as the boldest feats of a French

ballet-dancer.

If the title of my article do not sufficiently indicate the depth and

breadth of knowledge on which my opinions assume to be based, let me,

that I may not seem to claim confidence upon false pretences, confess

that I have never seen, either in this country or abroad, any

ballet-dancer or any dancer on any stage. I do not suppose that I have

ever been at any assembly where waltzing was a part of the amusements

half a dozen times in my life, and never in the daytime, upon this

occasion. I also admit that the sensations with which one would look

upon this performance at Harvard would depend very much upon whether

one went to it from that end of society which begins at the Jardin

Mabille, or that which begins at a New England farm-house. I speak

from the stand-point of the New England farm-house. Whether that or

the Jardin Mabille is nearer the stand-point of the Bible, every one

must decide for himself. When I say "this is right, this is wrong," I

do not wish to be understood as settling the question for others, but

as expressing my own strongest conviction. When I say that the present

mode of dress renders waltzing almost as objectionable in a large room

as the boldest feats of a French ballet-dancer, I mean that, from what

I have heard and read of ballet-dancers, I judge that these girls

gyrating in the centre of their gyrating and unmanageable hoops, cannot

avoid, or do not know how to avoid, at any rate do not avoid, the

exposure which the short skirts of the ballet-dancer are intended to

make, and which, taking to myself all the shame of both the prudery and

the coarseness if I am wrong, I call an indecent exposure. In the

glare and glamour of gas-light, it is flash and clouds and

indistinctness. In the broad and honest daylight it is not. Indeed, I

do not know that I will say "almost." Anything which tends to remove

from woman her sanctity is not only almost, but altogether

objectionable. Questionable action is often consecrated by holy

motive, and there, even mistake is not fatal; but in this thing is no

noble principle to neutralize practical error.

I do not speak thus about waltzing because I like to say it; but ye

have compelled me. If one member suffers, all the members suffer with

it. I respect and revere woman, and I cannot see her destroying or

debasing the impalpable fragrance and delicacy of her nature without

feeling the shame and shudder in my own heart. Great is my boldness of

speech towards you, because great is my glorying of you. Though I

speak as a fool, yet as a fool receive me. My opinions may be rustic.

They are at least honest; and it not be that the first fresh

impressions of an unprejudiced and uninfluenced observer are as likely

to be natural and correct views as those which are the result of many

after-thoughts, long and use, and an experience of multifold

fascinations, combined with the original producing cause? My opinions

may be wrong, but they will do no harm; the penalty will rest alone on

me: while, if they are right, they may serve as a nail or two to be

fastened by the masters of assemblies.

O girls, I implore you to believe me! They are not your true friends

who would persuade you that you can permit this thing with impunity.

It is not they who best know your strength, your power, your

possibilities. It is not they who pay you the truest homage. Believe

ME, for it is not possible that I can have any but the highest motive.

If the evil of foreign customs is to be incorporated into American

society, if foul freedom of manners is to defile our pure freedom of

life, if the robes of our refinement are to be white only when relieved

against the dark background revealed by polluted stage of a corrupt

metropolis, on you will fall the burden of the consequences. Believe

ME, for your weal and mine are one. Your glory is my glory. Your

degradation is mine. There are honeyed words whose very essence is

insult. There are bold and bitter words whose roots lie in the deepest

reverence. Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and of the Sadducees.

Beware of the honor which is dishonor.

I hear that the ground is taken that the affairs of Class-Day are not a

legitimate subject of public comment; that it is a private matter of

the Senior Class, of which one has no more right to speak in print than

one has so to speak of a house in Beacon Street to which one might be

invited. Is it indeed so? I have no right to go into Mr. Smith's house

in Beacon Street,--I use the term Smith as simply generic, not meaning

to imply for a moment that so plebeian a name ever marred a Beacon

Street door-plate,--and subsequently print that I was hospitably

entreated, or that the chair-covers were faded and the conversation

brilliant. Neither have I any right to go into Master Jones's room, in

Hollis Hall, and inform the public that he keeps wine in his cigar-box,

and that he entertained his friends awkwardly or gracefully. But

suppose all the Beacon Street families have a custom of devoting one

day of every year to festivities, in which festivities all Boston, and

all the friends, and the friends' friends, whom each Beacon Street

family chooses to invite, are invited to partake. The Common, and the

State-House, and the Music-Hall, &c. are set apart for dancing, the

houses are given up to feasting,--and this occurs year after year. Is

it a strictly private affair? I have still no right to denounce or

applaud or in any way characterize Mr. Smith's special arrangements;

but have I not a right to discuss in the most public manner the general

features of the custom? May I not say that I consider feasting a

possible danger, and the dancing a certain evil, and assign my reasons

for these opinions?

I have spoken of the condition of some of the buildings. I find in the

College records repeated instances of the College authorities appealing

to the public concerning this very thing. So early as 1651, the Rev.

Henry Dunster, President of the College, represented to the

Commissioners of the United Colonies the decaying condition of the

College buildings, and the necessity of their repair and enlargement:

and the Commisioners reply, that they will recommend to the Colonies to

give some yearly help, by pecks, half-bushels, and bushels of wheat.

Is a subject that is brought before Congress improper to be brought

before the public in a magazine?

I have spoken of the banqueting arranged by the Senior Class. Is that

private? I find in a book regularly printed and published, a book

written by a former President of the College,--a man whom no words of

mine can affect, yet whom I cannot pass without laying at his feet my

tribute of gratitude and reverence; a man who lives to receive from his

contemporaries the honors which are generally awarded only by

posterity,--I find in this book accounts of votes passed by the

Corporation and Overseers, prohibiting Commencers from "preparing or

providing either plum-cake, or roasted, boiled, or baked meats, or pies

of any kind"; and afterwards, if anyone should do anything contrary to

this act, or "go about to evade it by plain cake, they shall not be

admitted to their degree; and also, "that commons be of better quality,

have more variety, clean table-cloths of convenient length and breadth

twice a week, and that plates be allowed." Now if the plum-cake and

pies of the "Commencers" are spread before the public, how shall one

know that the plum-cake and pies of an occasion at least equally

public, and only a month beforehand, must not be mentioned? If any

family in Beacon Street should publish its housekeeping rules and items

in this unhesitating manner, I think a very pardonable confusion of

ideas might exist as to what was legitimately public, and what must be

held private. If it be said that these items concern a period from

which the many years that have since elapsed remove the seal of

silence, I have but to turn to the Boston Daily Advertiser, a journal

whose taste and judgment are unquestionable, and find in its issue of

July 18, 1863, eight closely printed columns devoted to a minute

description of what they said, and what they did, at the College

festival arranged by the Association of the Alumni, in which

description may be read such eminently private incidents as that--by

some unfortunate mistake, which would have been a death-blow to any

Beacon Street housekeeper--there were one hundred more guests than

there were plates, and--what it might be hoped would be quite

unnecessary to state--that the unlucky De trop "bore the disappointment

with the most admirable good-breeding, AND RETIRED FROM THE HALL

WITHOUT NOISE OR DISTURBANCE." (Noble army of martyrs! Let a monument

more durable than brass rise in the hearts of their countrymen to

commemorate their heroism, and let it graven all over, in characters of

living light, with the old-time query, "Why didn't Jack eat his

supper?")

I find also in the same issue of the same paper the Commencement

Dinner, its guests, its quantity and quality, its talk, its singing of

songs, and giving of gifts, spread before the public. If, now, the

festivities of Commencement and of the Alumni Association are public,

by what token shall one know that the festivities of Class-Day, which

have every appearance of being just as public, are in reality a family

affair, and strictly private?

I have spoken of waltzing. The propriety of my speaking must stand or

fall with the previous count. But in the book to which I have before

referred is recorded a vote passed by the Overseers, "To restrain

unsuitable and unseasonable dancing in the College." If a rule of the

College is published throughout the land, is not the land in some

measure appealed to, and may it not speak when it thinks it sees a

custom in open and systematic violation of the rule?

But, independent of this special rule, Harvard College was founded in

the early days of the Colony. It was the pet and pride and hope of the

colonists. They gave to it of their abundance and their poverty. To

what end? "Dreading to leave an illiterate ministry to the churches,"

says the author of "New England First-Fruits." The first Constitution

of the College declares one of its objects to be "to make and establish

all such orders, statutes, and constitutions as they shall see

necessary for the instituting, guiding, and furthering of the said

College, and the several members thereof, from time to time, in piety,

morality, and learning." Later, its objects are said to be "the

advancement of all good literature, arts, and sciences," and "the

education of the English and Indian youth of this country in knowledge

and godliness." Of the rules of the College, one is, "Let every

student be earnestly pressed to consider well the main end of his life

and studies is, to know God and Jesus Christ, which is eternal life,

and, therefore, to lay Christ in the bottom, as the only foundation of

all sound knowledge and learning." Quincy says that to the

Congregational clergy the "institution is perhaps more indebted than to

any other class of men for early support, if not for existence." That

it has not avowedly turned aside from its original object is indicated

by the motto which it still bears, Christo et Ecclesiae. Now I wish to

know if the official sanction of this College, founded by

statesmen-clergy for the promotion of piety and learning, to further

the welfare of the State, consecrated to Christ and the Church, is to

be given to a practice which no one will maintain positively conduces

to either piety or learning, which many believe to be positively

detrimental to both, and which an overwhelming majority of the clergy

who founded the College, and of their ecclesiastical descendants at the

present day, would, I am confident, condemn, and yet is not to be

publicly spoken of, because it is a private affair! Has it any right

to privacy? Does the College belong to a Senior Class, or to the

State? Have the many donations been given, and the appropriations been

made, for the pleasure or even profit of any one class, or for the

whole Commonwealth? Has any class any right to introduce in any

College hall, or anywhere, as a College class, with the sanction of the

Faculty, a custom which is entirely disconnected with either learning

or piety, a custom of doubtful propriety, not to say morality inasmuch

as many believe it to be wrong, and a custom, therefore, whose tendency

is to weaken confidence in the College, and consequently to restrict

its beneficence? And is the discussion of this thing a violation of

the rites of hospitality?

These are my counts against "Class-Day," as it is now conducted. It

contains much that is calculated to promote neither learning nor

godliness, but to retard both. Neither literary nor moral excellence

seems to enter as an element into its standard. In point of notoriety

and popular interest it seems to me to reach, if not to over-top,

Commencement-Day, and therefore it tends to subordinate scholarship to

other and infinitely less important matters. It in a manner

necessitates an expenditure which many are ill able to bear, and under

which, I have reason to believe, many parents do groan, being burdened.

It has not the pleasure and warmth of reunion to recommend it, for it

precedes separation. The expense is not incurred by men who are

masters of their own career, who know where they stand and what they

can do; but chiefly by boys who are dependent upon others, and whose

knowledge of ways and means is limited, while their knowledge of wants

is deep and pressing and aggressive. It is an extraordinary and

unnecessary expense, coming in the midst of ordinary and necessary

expense, while the question of reimbursement is still entirely in

abeyance. It launches young men at the outset of their career into

extravagance and display,--limited indeed in range, but rampant within

that range,--and thereby throws the influence of highest authority in

favor of, rather than against, that reckless profusion, display, and

dissipation which is the weakness and the bane of our social life. It

signalizes in a marked and public manner the completion of the most

varied and thorough course of study in the country, and the

commencement of a career which should be the most noble and beneficial,

not by peculiar and appropriate ceremonies, but by the commonest rites

of the lecture-room and ball-room; and I cannot but think that,

especially at this period of history, when no treasure is esteemed too

precious for sacrifice, and the land is red with the blood of her best

and bravest,--when Harvard herself mourns for her children lost, but

glories in heroes fallen,--that the most obvious and prominent customs

of Class-Day would be more honored in the breach than in the observance.

I look upon the violation of hospitality as one of the seven deadly

sins,--a sin for which no punishment is too great; but this sin I have

not consciously, and I do not think I have actually, committed. I

cannot but suspect, that, if I had employed the language of exclusive

eulogy,--such language as is employed at and concerning the

Commencement dinners and the Alumni dinners, I might have described the

celebration of Class-Day with much more minuteness than I have

attempted to do, and should have heard no complaints of violated

hospitality. This I would gladly have done, had it been possible. As

it was not, I have pointed out those features which seemed to me

objectionable,--certainly with no design so ridiculous as that of

setting up myself against Harvard University, but equally certainly

with no heart so craven as to shrink from denouncing what seemed to me

wrong because it would be setting myself against Harvard University.

Opinions must be judged by their own weight, not by the weight of the

persons who utter them. The fair fame of Harvard is the possession of

every son and daughter of Massachusetts, and the least stain that mars

her escutcheon is the sorrow of all. But Harvard is not the Ark of the

Covenant, to be touched only by consecrated hands, upon penalty of

instant death. She is honorable, but not sacred; wise, but not

infallible. To Christo et Ecclesiae, she has a right; to Noli me

tangere, she has none. A very small hand may hurl an arrow. If it is

heaven-directed, it may pierce in between the joints of the armor. If

not, it may rebound upon the archer. I make the venture, promising

that I shall not follow the example of that President of Harvard who

died of a broken heart, because, according to Cotton Mather, he "FELL

UNDER THE DISPLEASURE OF CERTAIN GOOD MEN WHO MADE A FIGURE IN THAT

NEIGHBORHOOD."

As it may never again happen to me to be writing about colleges, I

desire to say in this paper everything I have to say on the subject,

and therefore take this opportunity to refer to the practice of

"hazing," although it is but remotely connected with Class-Day. If we

should find it among hinds, a remnant of the barbarisms of the Dark

Ages, blindly handed down by such slow-growing people as go to mill

with their meal on side of the saddle and a stone on the other to

balance, as their fathers did, because it never occurred to them to

divide the meal into two parcels and make it balance itself, we should

be surprised; but "hazing" occurs among boys who have been accustomed

to the circulation of ideas, boys old enough and intelligent enough

understand the difference between brutality and frolic, old enough to

know what honor and rage mean, and therefore I cannot conceive how they

should countenance a practice which entirely ignores and defies honor,

and which not a single redeeming feature. It has neither wisdom nor

wit, no spirit, no genius, no impulsiveness, scarcely boyish mirth. A

narrow range of stale practical jokes, lighted up by no gleam of

originality, seems to be transmitted from year to year with as much

fidelity as the Hebrew Bible, and not half the latitude allowed to

clergymen of the English Established Church. But besides its

platitude, its one over-powering and fatal characteristic is its

intense and essential cowardice. Cowardice is its head and front and

bones and blood. One boy does not single out another boy of his own

weight, and take his chances in a fair stand-up fight. But a party of

Sophomores club together in such numbers as to render opposition

useless, and pounce upon their victim unawares, as Brooks and his

minions pounced upon Sumner, and as the Southern chivalry is given to

doing. For sweet pity's sake, let this mode of warfare be monopolized

by the Southern chivalry.

The lame excuse is offered, that it does the Freshmen good,--takes the

conceit out of them. But if there is any Class in College so divested

of conceit as to be justified in throwing stones, it is surely not the

Sophomore Class. Moreover, whatever good it may do the sufferers, it

does harm, and only harm, to the perpetrators; and neither the Law nor

the Gospel requires a man to improve other people's characters at the

expense of his own. Nobody can do a wrong without injuring himself;

and no young man can do a mean, cowardly wrong like this without

suffering severest injury. It is the very spirit of the slaveholder, a

dastardly and detestable, a tyrannical and cruel spirit. If young men

are so blinded by custom and habit that a meanness is not to them a

meanness because it has been practised for years, so much the worse for

the young men, and so much the worse for our country, whose sweat of

blood attests the bale and blast which this evil spirit has wrought. If

uprightness, if courage, if humanity and rectitude and the mind

conscious to itself of right are anything more than a name, let the

young men who mean to make time minister to life scorn this debasing

and stupid practice.

Why, as one resource against this, as well as for its own intrinsic

importance, should there not be a military department to every college,

as well as a mathematical department? Why might not every college be a

military normal school, so that the exuberance and riot of animal

spirits, the young, adventurous strength and joy in being, might not

only be kept from striking out as now in illegitimate, unworthy, and

hurtful directions, but might become the very basis and groundwork of

useful purposes. Such exercise would be so promotive of health and

discipline, it would so train and LIMBER the physical powers, that the

superior quality of study would, I doubt not, more than atone for

whatever deficiency in quantity might result. And even suppose a

little less attention should be given to Euclid and Homer, which is of

the greater importance now-a-days, an ear that can detect a false

quantity in a Greek verse, or an eye that can sight a Rebel nine

hundred yards off, and a hand that can pull a trigger and shoot him?

Knowledge is power; but knowledge must sharpen its edges and polish its

points, if it would be greatliest available in days like these. The

knowledge that can plant batteries and plan campaigns, that is fertile

in expedients and wise to baffle the foe, is just now the strongest

power. Diagrams and first-aorists are good, and they who have fed on

such meat have grown great, and done the state service in their

generation; but these times demand new measures and new men. It is

conceded that we shall probably be for many years a military nation.

At least a generation of vigilance shall be the price of our liberty.

And even of peace we can have no stronger assurance than a wise and

wieldy readiness for war. But the education of our unwarlike days is

not adequate to the emergencies of this martial hour. We must be

seasoned with something stronger than Attic salt, or we shall be cast

out and trodden under foot of men. True, all education is worthy.

Everything that exercises the mind fits it for its work; but

professional education is indispensable to professional men. And the

profession, par excellence, of every man of this generation is war.

Country overrides all personal considerations. Lawyer, minister, what

not, a man's first duty is the salvation of his country. When she

calls, he must go; and before she calls, let him, if possible, prepare

himself to serve her in the best manner. As things are now at Harvard,

college boys are scarcely better than cow-boys for the army. Their

costly education runs greatly to waste. It gives no them direct

advantage over the clod who stumbles against a trisyllable. So far as

it makes them better men, of course they are better soldiers; but for

all of military education which their college gives them, they are fit

only for privates, whose sole duty is to obey. They know nothing of

military drill or tactics or strategy. The State cannot afford this

waste. She cannot afford to lose the fruits of mental toil and

discipline. She needs trained mind even more than trained muscle. It

is harder to find brains than to find hands. The average mental

endowment may be no higher in college than out; but granting it to be

as high, the culture which it receives gives it immense advantage. The

fruits of that culture, readiness, resources, comprehensiveness, should

all be held in the service of the State. Military knowledge and

practice should be imparted and enforced to utilize ability, and make

it the instrument, not only of personal, but of national welfare. That

education which gives men the advantage over others in the race of life

should be so directed as to convey that advantage to country, when she

stands in need. Every college might and should be made a nursery of

athletes in mind and body, clear-eyed, stout-hearted, strong-limbed,

cool-brained,--a nursery of soldiers; quick, self-possessed, brave and

cautions and wary, ready in invention, skilful to command men and

evolve from a mob an army,--a nursery of gentlemen, reminiscent of no

lawless revels, midnight orgies, brutal outrages, launching out already

attainted into an attainting world, but with many a memory of

adventure, wild, it may be, and not over-wise, yet pure as a breeze

from the hills,--banded and sworn

"To serve as model for the mighty world,

To break the heathen and uphold the Christ,

To ride abroad redressing human wrongs,

To speak no slander, no, nor listen to it,

To lead sweet lives in purest chastity,

Not only to keep down the base in man,

But teach high thought, and amiable words,

And courtliness, and the desire of fame,

And love of truth, and all that makes a man."

SUCCESS IN LIFE

THE SUCCESSFUL

There are successes more melancholy than any failure. There are

failures more noble than success. The man who began life as a

ploughboy, who went from his father's farm to the great city with his

wardrobe tied up in his handkerchief, and one dollar in his pocket, and

who by application, economy, and forecast has amassed a fortune, is not

necessarily a successful man. If his object was to amass a fortune, he

is so far successful; but it is a mean and miserable object, and his

life would be a contemptible, if it were not a terrible, failure. We do

not keep this sufficiently in mind. American society, and perhaps all

society, is too apt to do homage to material prosperity; but material

prosperity may be obtained by the sacrifice of moral grandeur; and so

obtained, it is an apple of Sodom. A man may call out his whole

energy, wield all his power, and wealth follow as one of the results.

This is well. Wealth may even be an object, if it be a subordinate

object,--the servant of a higher power. Wealth may minister to the

best part of man,--but only minister, not master. Only as a minister

it deserves regard. When it usurps the throne and becomes monarch, it

is of all things most pitiful and abject. The man who sets out with the

determination to be rich as an end, sets out with a very ignoble

determination; and he who seeks or values wealth for the respect which

it secures and the position it gives, is not very much higher in the

scale; yet such people are often held up to the admiration and

imitation of American youth; and oftener still have those men been held

up for imitation who, whether by determination or drift, had become

rich, and whose sole claim to distinction was that they had become

rich. Again and again I have seen "success" which seemed to me to be

the brand of ignominy rather than the stamp of worth,--the epitaph of

culture, if not of character. I look on with a profound and regretful

pity. You successful,--YOU! with half your powers lying dormant,--you,

with your imagination stifled, your conscience unfaithful, your

chivalry deadened into shrewdness, your religion a thing of tithes and

forms;--you successful, in whom romance has died out; to whom fidelity

and constancy and aspiration are nothing but a voice; who remember love

and heroism and self-sacrifice only as the vaporings of youth; who

measure principles by your purse, utility by your using; who see

nothing glorious this side of honesty; nothing terrible in the

surrender of faith; nothing degrading that is not amenable to the law;

nothing in your birthright that may not be sold for a mess of pottage,

if only the mess be large enough, and the pottage savory;--you

successful? Is this success? Then, indeed, humanity is a base and

bitter failure.

It is not necessary that a man should be a robber or a murderer, in

order to degrade himself. Without defrauding his neighbor of a cent,

without laying himself open to a single accusation of illegality or

violence, a man may destroy himself. A moral suicide, he kills out all

that belongs to his highest nature, and leaves but a bare and battered

wreck where the temple of the holy Ghost should rise.

"Measure not the work

Until the day's out, and the labor done;

Then bring your gauges."

Is that man successful who trades on his country's necessities? He, not

a politician, nor a horse-jockey, nor a footpad, but a man who talks of

honor and integrity,--a man of standing and influence, whose virtue is

not tempted by hunger, whose life has been such that he may be supposed

intelligently to comprehend the interests which are at stake, and the

measures which should be taken to secure them,--is he successful

because he obtains in a few months, by the perquisites--not illegal,

but strained to the extreme verge of legal--of an office,--not illegal,

but accidental, not in the line of promotion,--a sum of money which the

greatest merit and the highest office in the land cannot claim for

years? He is shrewd. He understands his business. He knows the ins

and outs. He can manage the sharpers. He can turn an honest penny,

and a good many of them. He need not refuse to do himself a good turn

with his left hand, while he is doing his country a good turn with his

right. It is all fair and aboveboard. He does the business assigned

him, and does it well. He takes no more compensation than the law

allows. The money may as well go to him as to shoddy contractors,

Shylock sutlers, and the legion of plebeian rascals. But it was a good

stroke. It was a great chance. It was a rare success.

O wretched failure! O pitiful abortion! O accursed hunger for gold!

When the nation struggles in a death-agony, when her life-blood is

poured out from hundreds of noble hearts, when men and women and

children are sending up to the Lord the incense of daily sacrifice in

her behalf, and we know not yet whether prayer and effort, whether

faith and works, shall avail,--whether our lost birthright, sought

carefully, and with tears, shall be restored to us once more,--in this

solemn and awful hour, a man can close his eyes and ears to the fearful

sights and great signs in the heavens, and, stooping earthward, delve

with his muck-rake in the gutter for the paltry pennies! A man? A MAN!

Is this manhood? Is this manliness? Is this the race that our

institutions engender? Is this the best production which we have a

right to expect? Is this the result which Christianity and

civilization combine to offer? Is this the advantage which the

nineteenth century claims over its predecessors? Is this the flower of

all the ages,--earth's last, best gift to heaven?

No,--no,--no,--this is a changeling, and no child. The true brother's

blood cries to us from Baltimore. It rings out from the East where

Winthrop fell. It swells up from the West with Lyon's dirge. And all

along, from hill and valley and river-depths, where the soil is

drenched, and the waters are reddened, and nameless graves are

scattered,--cleaving clearly through the rattle of musketry, mingling

grandly with the "diapason of the cannonade," or floating softly up

under the silent stars, "the thrilling, solemn, proud, pathetic voice"

ceases not to cry unto us day and night; its echoes linger tenderly and

tearfully around every hearth-stone, and vibrate with a royal resonance

from mountain to sea-shore. The mother bends to it in her silent

watches. The soldier, tempest-tost, hears it through the creaking

cordage, and every true heart knows its brother, and takes up the

magnificent strain,--victorious, triumphant, exultant,--

"Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori."

Sweet and honorable is it for country to die.

THE UNSUCCESSFUL

The unsuccessful men are all around us; and among them are those who

confound all distinctions set up by society, and illustrate the great

law of compensation set up by God, cutting society at right angles, and

obtuse angles, and acute angles, unnoticed, or but flippantly mentioned

by the careless, but giving food for intimate reflections to those for

whom things suggest thoughts.

Have you not seen them,--these unsuccessful men?--men who seem not to

have found their niche, but are always on somebody's hands for

settlement, or, if settled, never at rest? If they are poor, their

neighbors say, Why does he not learn a trade? or, Why does he not stick

to his trade? He might be well off, if he were not so flighty. He has

a good head-piece, but he potters rhymes; he tricks out toy-engines and

knick-knacks; he roams about the woods gathering snakes and toads; and

meanwhile he is out at the elbows. If he is rich, they say, Why does

he not make a career? He has great resources. His brain is

inexhaustible. He is equipped for any emergency. There is nothing

which he might not attain, if he would only apply himself, but he

fritters himself away. He sticks to nothing. He touches on this, that,

and the other, and falls off.

True, O Philosophers, he does stick to nothing, but condemn him not too

harshly. It is the old difficulty of the square man in the round hole,

and the round man in the square hole. They never did rest easy there

since time began, and never will. Many--perhaps the greater number--of

people have no overmastering inclination for any employment. They are

farmers because their fathers were before them, and that road was

graded for them,--or shoemakers, or lawyers, or ministers, for the same

reason. If circumstances had impelled them in a different direction,

they would have gone in a different direction, and been content. It is

not easy for them to conceive that a man is an indifferent lawyer,

because his raw material should have been worked up into a practical

engineer; or an unthrifty shoemaker, because he is a statesman nipped

in the bud. Yet such things are. Sometimes these men are gay, giddy,

rollicking fellows. Sometimes their faces are known at the

gaming-houses and the gin-palaces. Sometimes they go down quickly to a

dishonored grave, over which Love stands bewildered, and weeps her

unavailing tears. Sometimes, on the other hand, they are gloomy, sad,

silent. Perhaps they are morose. Worse still, they are whining,

fretful, complaining. You would even call them sour. Often they are

cynical and disagreeable. But be not too hasty, too sweeping, too

clear-cut. I have seen such men who were the reverse of the Pharisees.

Their faces were a tombstone. The portals of their soul were guarded

by lions scarcely chained. But though their temple had no Beautiful

Gate, it was none the less a temple, consecrated to the Most High.

Within it, day and night, the sacred fire burned, the sacred Presence

rested. There, honor, justice, devotion, and all heroic virtues dwelt.

Thence falsehood, impurity, profanity, whatsoever loveth and maketh a

lie,--were excluded. They are unsuccessful, because they will not

lower the standard which their youth unfurled. Its folds float high

above them, out of reach, but not out of sight, nor out of desire. With

constant feet they are climbing up to grasp it. You do not see it; no,

and you never will. You need not strain your aching eyes; but they see

it, and comfort their weary hearts withal.

These men may receive sympathy, but they do not need pity. They are a

thousand times more blessed than the vulgarly successful. The shell is

wrinkled, and gray, and ugly; but within, the meat is sweet and

succulent. Perhaps they will never make a figure in the world, but

"True happiness abides with him alone

Who in the silent hour of inward thought

Can still suspect and still revere himself

In lowliness of mind."

And it is even better never to be happy than to be sordidly happy. It

is better to be nobly dissatisfied than meanly content. A splendid

sadness is better than a vile enjoyment.

I hear of people that never failed in anything they undertook. I do not

believe in them. In the first place, however, I do not believe this

testimony is true. It is the honest false-witness, it is the

benevolent slander of their affectionate and admiring friends. But if

it were in any case true, I should not believe in the man of whom it

was affirmed. It is difficult to conceive that a person of elevated

character should not attempt many things too high for him. He finds

himself set down in the midst of life. Earth, air, and water, his own

mind and heart, the whole mental, moral, and physical world, teem with

mysteries. He is surrounded with problems incapable of mortal

solution. He must grasp many of them and he foiled. He must attack

many foes and be repulsed. He may be stupidly blind, or selfish, or

cowardly, and make no endeavor,--in which case he will of course endure

no defeat. If he sets out with small aims, he may accomplish them; but

it is not a thing to boast of. It is better to fall below a high

standard than to come up to a low one,--to try great things and fail,

than to try only small ones and succeed. For he who attempts grandly

will achieve much, while he whose very desires are small will make but

small acquisitions. Of course, I am not speaking now of definite,

measurable matters of fact, in which the reverse is the case. Of

course, it is better to build a small house and pay for it, than to

build a palace and involve yourself in debt. It is wiser to set

yourself a reasonable task and perform it, than a prodigious one and do

nothing. I am endeavoring to present only one side of a truth which is

many-sided,--and that side is, that great deeds are done by those who

aspire greatly. You may not attain perfection, but if you strive to be

perfect, you will be better than if you were content to be as good as

your neighbors. You are not, perhaps, the world's coming man; but if

you aim at the completest possible self-development, you will be a far

greater man than if your only aim is to keep out of the poor-house. "I

have taken all knowledge to be my province," said Lord Bacon. He did

not conquer; he could not even overrun his whole province; but he made

vast inroads,--vaster by far than if he had designed only to occupy a

garden-plot in the Delectable Land. True greatness is a growth, and

not an accident. The bud, brought into light and warmth, may burst

suddenly into flower; but the seed must have been planted, and the

kindly soil must have wrapped it about, and shade and shine and shower

must have wrought down into the darkness, and nursed and nurtured the

tiny germ. The touch of circumstance may reveal, may even quicken, but

cannot create, nobility.

This I reckon to be success in life,--fitness,--perfect adaptation. I

hold him successful, and him only, who has found or conquered a

position in which he can bring himself into full play. Success is

perfect or partial, according as it comes up to, or falls below, this

standard. But entire success is rare in this world. Success in

business, success in ambition, is not success in life, though it may be

comprehended in it. Very few are the symmetrical lives. Very few of

us are working at the top of our bent. One may give scope to his

mechanical invention, but his poetry is cramped. One has his intellect

at high pressure, but the fires are out under his heart. One is the

bond-servant of love, and Pegasus becomes a dray-horse, Apollo must

keep the pot boiling, and Minerva is hurried with the fall sewing. So

we go, and above us the sun shines, and the stars throb; and beneath us

the snows, and the flowers, and the blind, instinctive earth; and over

all, and in all, God blessed forever.

Now, then, success being the best thing, we do well to strive for it;

but success being difficult to attain, if not unattainable, it remains

for us to wring from our failures all the sap and sustenance and succor

that are in them, if so be we may grow thereby to a finer and fuller

richness, and hear one day the rapturous voice bid us come up higher.

And be it remembered, what a man is, not what a man does, is the

measure of success. The deed is but the outflow of the soul. By their

fruits ye shall know THEM. The outward act has its inward

significance, though we may not always interpret it aright, and its

moral aspect depends upon the agent. "In vain," says Sir Thomas

Browne, "we admire the lustre of anything seen; that which is truly

glorious is invisible." Character, not condition, is the trust of life.

A man's own self is God's most valuable deposit with him. This is not

egotism, but the broadest benevolence. A man can do no good to the

world beyond himself. A stream can rise no higher than its fountain.

A corrupt tree cannot bring forth good fruit. If a man's soul is

stunted and gnarled and dwarfed, his actions will be. If his soul is

corrupt and base and petty, so will his actions be. Faith is the basis

of works. Essence underlies influence. If a man beget an hundred

children, and live many years, and his soul be not filled with good, I

say that an untimely birth is better than he.

When I see, as I sometimes do see, those whom the world calls

unsuccessful, furnished with every virtue and adorned with every grace,

made considerate through suffering, sympathetic by isolation,

spiritedly patient, meek, yet defiant, calm and contemptuous, tender

even of the sorrows and tolerant of the joys which they despise,

enduring the sympathy and accepting the companionship of weakness

because it is kindly offered, though it be a burden to be dropped just

inside the door, and not a treasure to be taken into the heart's

chamber, I am ready to say, Blessed are the unsuccessful.

Blessed ARE the unsuccessful, the men who have nobly striven and nobly

failed. He alone is in an evil case who has set his heart on false or

selfish or trivial ends. Whether he secure them or not, he is alike

unsuccessful. But he who "loves high" is king in his own right, though

he "live low." His plans may be abortive, but himself is sure. God

may overrule his desires, and thwart his hopes, and baffle his

purposes, but all things shall work together for his good. Though he

fall, he shall rise again. Every defeat shall be a victory. Every

calamity shall drop down blessing. Inward disappointment shall

minister to enduring joy. From the grapes of sorrow he shall press the

wine of life.

Theodore Winthrop died in the bud of his promise. As I write that

name, hallowed from our olden time, and now baptized anew for the

generations that are to follow, comes back again warm, bright,

midsummer morning, freighted with woe,--that dark, sad summer morning

that wrenched him away from sweet life, and left silence for song,

ashes for beauty,--only cold, impassive clay, where glowing, vigorous

vitality had throbbed and surged.

Scarcely had his fame risen to illumine that early grave, but, one by

one, from his silent desk came those brilliant books, speaking to all

who had ears to hear words of grand resolve and faith,--words of higher

import than their sound,--key-words to a lofty life; for all the

bravery and purity and trust and truth and tenderness that gleam in

golden setting throughout his books must have been matched with bravery

and purity and trust and truth and tenderness in the soul from which

they sprang. Looking at what might have been accomplished with

endowments so rare, culture so careful, and patience so untiring, our

lament for the dead is not untinged with bitterness. A mind so well

poised, so self-confident, so eager in its honorable desire for

honorable fame, that, without the stimulus of publication, it could

produce work after work, compact and finished, studded with gems of wit

and wisdom, white and radiant with inward purity,--could polish away

roughness, and toil on alone, pursuing ideal perfection, and attaining

a rare excellence,--surely, here was promise of great things for the

future; but it seemed otherwise to God. A poor little drummer-boy, not

knowing what he did, sped a bullet straightway to as brave a heart as

ever beat, and quenched a royal life.

I have spoken of Winthrop, but a thousand hearts will supply each its

own name wreathed with cypress and laurel. Were these lives failures?

Is not the grandeur of the sacrifice its offset? The choice of life or

death is in no man's hands. The choice is only and occasionally in the

manner. All must die. To a few, and only a few, is granted the

opportunity of dying martyrs. They rush on to meet the King of

Terrors. They wrest the crown from his awful brow, and set it on their

own triumphant. They die, not from inevitable age or irresistible

disease, but in the full flush of manhood, in the very prime and zenith

of life, in that glorious transition-hour when hope is culminating in

fruition. They die of set purpose, with unflinching will, for God and

the right. O thrice and four times happy these who bulwark liberty

with their own breasts! No common urn enshrines their sacred dust. No

vulgar marble emblazons their hero-deeds. Every place which their life

has touched becomes at once and forever holy ground. A nation's

gratitude embalms their memory. In the generations which are to come,

when we are lying in undistinguished earth, mothers shall lead their

little children by the hand, and say: "Here he was born. This is the

blue sky that bent over his baby head. Here he fell, fighting for his

country. Here his ashes lie";--and the path thither shall be well

worn, and for many and many a year there shall be hushed voices, and

trembling lips, and tear-dimmed eyes. Everywhere there shall be

death,--yours and mine,--but only here and there immortality,--and it

is his.

So the young soldier's passing away is not untimely. The longest life

can accomplish only benefaction and fame, and the life that has

accomplished these has reached life's ultimatum. It is a fair and

decorous fate to devote length of days to humanity, but he who gathers

up his life with all its beauty and happiness and hope, and lays it on

the altar of sacrifice,--he has done all. A century of earthly

existence only scatters its benefits one by one. The martyr binds his

in a single bundle of life, and the offering is complete. To all noble

minds fame is sweet and desirable, and threescore years and ten are all

too few to carve the monument more durable than brass; but when such

men as Winthrop die such death as his, we seize the tools that fall

from their dying grasp, and complete the fragmentary structure, in

shape more graceful, it may be, in height more majestic, in colors more

lovely, than their own hands could have wrought. We attribute to them,

not simply what they did, but all that they might have done. Had

Winthrop lived, failing health, adverse circumstance, might have

blasted his promise in the bud; but now nothing of that can ever mar

his fame. We surround him with his aspirations. We glorify him with

his possibilities. He is not only the knight without fear and without

reproach, but the author immortal as the brightest auspices could have

made his strong and growing powers. A century could not have left him

greater than the love and hope and sorrow of his countrymen, building

on the little that is known of his short and beautiful life, have made

him.

O men and women everywhere who are following on to know the Lord, faint

yet pursuing; men women who are troubled, toiling, doubting, hoping,

watching, struggling; whose attainments "through the long green days,

worn bare of grass and sunshine," lag hopelessly behind your

aspirations; who are haunted evermore by the ghosts of your young

purposes; who see far off the shining hills your feet are fain to

tread; who work your work with dumb, assiduous energy, but with

perpetual protest,--I bid you good luck in the name of the Lord.

HAPPIEST DAYS

Long ago, when you were a little boy or a little girl,--perhaps not so

very long ago, either,--were you never interrupted in your play by

being called in to have your face washed, your hair combed, and your

soiled apron exchanged for a clean one, preparatory to an introduction

to Mrs. Smith, or Dr. Jones, or Aunt Judkins, your mother's early

friend? And after being ushered into that august presence, and made to

face a battery of questions which where either above or below your

capacity, and which you consequently despised as trash or resented as

insult, did you not, as were gleefully vanishing, hear a soft sigh

breathed out upon the air,--"Dear child, he is seeing his happiest

days"? In the concrete, it was Mrs. Smith or Dr. Jones speaking of

you. But going back to general principles, it was Commonplacedom

expressing its opinion of childhood.

There never was a greater piece of absurdity in the world. I thought

so when I was a child, and now I know it; and I desire here to brand it

as at once a platitude and a falsehood. How the idea gained currency,

that childhood is the happiest period of life, I cannot conceive. How,

once started, it kept afloat, is equally incomprehensible. I should

have supposed that the experience of every sane person would have given

the lie to it. I should have supposed that every soul, as it burst into

flower, would have hurled off the imputation. I can only account for

it by recurring to Lady Mary Wortley Montague's statistics, and

concluding that the fools ARE three out of four in every person's

acquaintance.

I for one lift up my voice emphatically against the assertion, and do

affirm that I think childhood is the most undesirable portion of human

life, and I am thankful to be well out of it. I look upon it as no

better than a mitigated form of slavery. There is not a child in the

land that can call his soul, or his body, or his jacket his own. A

little soft lump of clay he comes into the world, and is moulded into a

vessel of honor or a vessel of dishonor long before he can put in a

word about the matter. He has no voice as to his education or his

training, what he shall eat, what he shall drink, or wherewithal he

shall be clothed. He has to wait upon the wisdom, the whims, and often

the wickedness of other people. Imagine, my six-foot friend, how you

would feel, to be obliged to wear your woollen mittens when you desire

to bloom out in straw-colored kids, or to be buttoned into your black

waistcoat when your taste leads you to select your white, or to be

forced under your Kossuth hat when you had set your heart on your black

beaver: yet this is what children are perpetually called on to

undergo. Their wills are just as strong as ours, and their tastes are

stronger, yet they have to bend the one and sacrifice the other; and

they do it under pressure of necessity. Their reason is not convinced;

they are forced to yield to superior power; and, of all disagreeable

things in the world, the most disagreeable is not to have your own way.

When you are grown up, you wear a print frock because you cannot afford

a silk, or because a silk would be out of place,--you wear India-rubber

overshoes because your polished patent-leather would be ruined by the

mud; and your self-denial is amply compensated by the reflection of

superior fitness or economy. But a child has no such reflection to

console him. He puts on his battered, gray old shoes because you make

him; he hangs up his new trousers and goes back into his detestable

girl's-frock because he will be punished if he does not, and it is

intolerable.

It is of no use to say that this is their discipline, and is all

necessary to their welfare. It is a repulsive condition of life in

which such degrading SURVEILLANCE is necessary. You may affirm that an

absolute despotism is the only government fit for Dahomey, and I may

not disallow it; but when you go on and say that Dahomey is the

happiest country in the world, why--I refer you to Dogberry. Now the

parents of a child are, from the nature of the case, absolute despots.

They may be wise, and gentle, and doting despots, and the chain may be

satin-smooth and golden-strong; but if it be of rusty iron, parting

every now and then and letting the poor prisoner violently loose, and

again suddenly caught hold of, bringing him up with a jerk, galling his

tender limbs and irretrievably ruining his temper,--it is all the same;

there is no help for it. And really to look around the world and see

the people that are its fathers and mothers is appalling,--the

narrow-minded, prejudiced, ignorant, ill-tempered, fretful, peevish,

passionate, careworn, harassed men and women. Even we grown people,

independent of them and capable of self-defence, have as much as we can

do to keep the peace. Where is there a city, or a town, or a village,

in which are no bickerings, no jealousies, no angers, no petty or

swollen spites? Then fancy yourself, instead of the neighbor and

occasional visitor of these poor human beings, their children, subject

to their absolute control, with no power of protest against their

folly, no refuge from their injustice, but living on through thick and

thin right under their guns.

"Oh!" but you say, "this is a very one-sided view. You leave out

entirely the natural tenderness that comes in to temper the matter.

Without that, a child's situation would of course be intolerable; but

the love that is born with him makes all things smooth."

No, it does not make all things smooth. It does wonders, to be sure,

but it does not make cross people pleasant, nor violent people calm,

nor fretful people easy, nor obstinate people reasonable, nor foolish

people wise,--that is, it may do so spasmodically, but it does not hold

them to it and keep them at it. A great deal of beautiful moonshine is

written about the sanctities of home and the sacraments of marriage and

birth. I do not mean to say that there is no sanctity and no

sacrament. Moonshine is not nothing. It is light,--real, honest

light,--just as truly as the sunshine. It is sunshine at second-hand.

It illuminates, but indistinctly. It beautifies, but it does not

vivify or fructify. It comes indeed from the sun, but in too

roundabout a way to do the sun's work. So, if a woman is pretty nearly

sanctified before she is married, wifehood and motherhood may

accomplish the work; but there is not one man in ten thousand of the

writers aforesaid who would marry a vixen, trusting to the sanctifying

influences of marriage to tone her down to sweetness. A thoughtful,

gentle, pure, and elevated woman, who has been accustomed to stand face

to face with the eternities, will see in her child a soul. If the

circumstances of her life leave her leisure and adequate repose, that

soul will be to her a solemn trust, a sacred charge, for which she will

give her own soul's life in pledge. But how many such women do you

suppose there are in your village? Heaven forbid that I should even

appear to be depreciating woman! Do I not know too well their

strength, and their virtue which is their strength? But, stepping out

of idyls and novels, and stepping into American kitchens, is it not

true that the larger part of the mothers see in their babies, or act as

if they saw, only babies? And if there are three or four or half a

dozen of them, as there generally are, so much the more do they see

babies whose bodies monopolize the mother's time to the disadvantage of

their souls. She loves them, and she works for them day and night; but

when they are ranting and ramping and quarrelling, and torturing her

over-tense nerves, she forgets the infinite, and applies herself

energetically to the finite, by sending Harry with a round scolding

into one corner, and Susy into another, with no light thrown upon the

point in dispute, no principle settled as a guide in future

difficulties, and little discrimination as to the relative guilt of the

offenders. But there is no court of appeal before which Harry and Susy

can lay their case in these charming "happiest days"!

Then there are parents who love their children like wild beasts. It is

a passionate, blind, instinctive, unreasoning love. They have no more

intelligent discernment, when an outside difficulty arises with respect

to their children, than a she-bear. They wax furious over the most

richly deserved punishment, if inflicted by a teacher's hand; they take

the part of their child against legal authority; but observe, this does

not prevent them from laying their own hands heavily on their children.

The same obstinate ignorance and narrowness that are exhibited without

exist within also. Folly is folly, abroad or at home. A man does not

play the fool outdoors and act the sage in the house. When the poor

child becomes obnoxious, the same unreasoning rage falls upon him. The

object of a ferocious love is the object of an equally ferocious anger.

It is only he who loves wisely that loves well.

The manner in which children's tastes are disregarded, their feelings

ignored, and their instincts violated, is enough to disaffect one with

childhood. They are expected to kiss all flesh that asks them to do

so. They are jerked up into the laps of people whom they abhor. They

say, "Yes, ma'am," under pain of bread and water for a week, when their

unerring nature prompts them to hurl out emphatically, "No." They are

sent out of the room whenever a fascinating bit of scandal is to be

rehearsed, packed off to bed just as everybody is settled down for a

charming evening, bothered about their lessons when their play is but

fairly under way, and hedged and hampered on every side. It is true,

that all this may be for their good, but what of that? So everything

is for the good of grown-up people; but does that make us contented?

It is doubtless for our good in the long run that we lose our

pocket-books, and break our arms, and catch a fever, and have our

brothers defraud a bank, and our houses burn down, and people steal our

umbrellas, and borrow our books and never return them. In fact, we

know that upon certain conditions all things work together for our

good, but, notwithstanding, we find some things very unpleasant; and we

may talk to our children of discipline and health by the hour together,

and it will never be anything but an intolerable nuisance to them to be

swooped off to bed by a dingy old nurse just as the people are

beginning to come, and shining silk, and floating lace, and odorous,

fragrant flowers are taking their ecstatic young souls back into the

golden days of the good Haroun al Raschid.

Even in this very point lies one of the miseries of childhood, that no

philosophy comes to temper their sorrow. We do not know why we are

troubled, but we know there is some good, grand reason for it. The

poor little children do not know even that. They find trouble utterly

inconsequent and unreasonable. The problem of evil is to them

absolutely incapable of solution. We know that beyond our horizon

stretches the infinite universe. We grasp only one link of a chain

whose beginning and end is eternity. So we readily adjust ourselves to

mystery, and are content. We apply to everything inexplicable the test

of partial view, and maintain our tranquillity. We fall into the

ranks, and march on, acquiescent, if not jubilant. We hear the roar of

cannon and the rattle of musketry. Stalwart forms fall by our side,

and brawny arms are stricken. Our own hopes bite the dust, our own

hopes bury their dead; but we know that law is inexorable. Effect must

follow cause, and there is no happening without causation. So, knowing

ourselves to be only one small brigade of the army of the Lord, we

defile through the passes of this narrow world, bearing aloft on our

banner, and writing ever on our hearts, the divine consolation, "What

thou knowest not now thou shalt know hereafter." This is an

unspeakable tranquillizer and comforter, of which, woe is me! the

little ones know nothing. They have no underlying generalities on which

to stand. Law and logic and eternity are nothing to them. They only

know that it rains, and they will have to wait another week before they

go a-fishing; and why couldn't it have rained Friday just as well as

Saturday? and it always does rain or something when I want to go

anywhere,--so, there! And the frantic flood of tears comes up from

outraged justice as well as from disappointed hope. It is the

flimsiest of all possible arguments to say that their sorrows are

trifling, to talk about their little cares and trials. These little

things are great to little men and women. A pine bucket full is just

as full as a hogshead. The ant has to tug just as hard to carry a

grain of corn as the Irishman does to carry a hod of bricks. You can

see the bran running out of Fanny's doll's arm, or the cat putting her

foot through Tom's new kite, without losing your equanimity; but their

hearts feel the pang of hopeless sorrow, or foiled ambition, or bitter

disappointment,--and the emotion is the thing in question, not the

event that caused it.

It is all additional disadvantage to children in their troubles, that

they can never estimate the relations of things. They have no

perspective. All things are at equal distances from the point of

sight. Life presents to them neither foreground nor background,

principal figure nor subordinates, but only a plain spread of canvas,

on which one thing stands out just as big and just as black as another.

You classify your desagrements. This is a mere temporary annoyance,

and receives but a passing thought. This is a life-long sorrow, but it

is superficial; it will drop off from you at the grave, be folded away

with your cerements, and leave no scar on your spirit. This thrusts

its lancet into the secret place where your soul abideth, but you know

that it tortures only to heal; it is recuperative, not destructive, and

you will rise from it to newness of life. But when little ones see a

ripple in the current of their joy, they do not know, they cannot tell,

that it is only a pebble breaking softly in upon the summer flow, to

toss a cool spray up into the white bosom of the lilies, or to bathe

the bending violets upon the green and grateful bank. It seems to them

as if the whole strong tide is thrust fiercely and violently back, and

hurled into a new channel, chasmed in the rough, rent granite. It is

impossible to calculate the waste of grief and pathos which this

incapacity causes. Fanny's doll aforesaid is left too near the fire,

and waxy tears roll down her ruddy cheeks, to the utter ruin of her

pretty face and her gay frock; and anon poor Fanny breaks her little

heart in moans and sobs and sore lamentations. It is Rachel weeping

for her children. I went on a tramp one May morning to buy a

tissue-paper wreath of flowers for a little girl to wear to a

May-party, where all the other little girls were expected to appear

similarly crowned. After a long and weary search, I was forced to

return without it. Scarcely had I pulled the bell, when I heard the

quick pattering of little feet in the entry. Never in all my life

shall I lose the memory of those wistful eyes, that did not so much as

look up to my face, but levelled themselves to my hand, and filmed with

disappointment to find it empty. _I_ could see that the wreath was a

very insignificant matter. I knew that every little beggar in the

street had garlanded herself with sixpenny roses, and I should have

preferred that my darling should be content with her own silky brown

hair; but my taste availed her nothing, and the iron entered into her

soul. Once a little boy, who could just stretch himself up as high as

his papa's knee, climbed surreptitiously into the store-closet and

upset the milk-pitcher. Terrified, he crept behind the flour-barrel,

and there Nemesis found him, and he looked so charming and so guilty

that two or three others were called to come and enjoy the sight. But

he, unhappy midget, did not know that he looked charming; he did not

know that his guilty consciousness only made him the more interesting;

he did not know that he seemed an epitome of humanity, a Liliputian

miniature of the great world; and his large, blue, solemn eyes were

filled with remorse. As he stood there silent, with his grave, utterly

mournful face, he had robbed a bank, he had forged a note, he had

committed a murder, he was guilty of treason. All the horror of

conscience, all the shame of discovery, all the unavailing regret of a

detected, atrocious, but not utterly hardened pirate, tore his poor

little innocent heart. Yet children are seeing their happiest days!

These people--the aforesaid three fourths of our acquaintance--lay

great stress on the fact that children are free from care, as if

freedom from care were one of the beatitudes of Paradise; but I should

like to know if freedom from care is any blessing to beings who don't

know what care is. You who are careful and troubled about many things

may dwell on it with great satisfaction, but children don't find it

delightful by any means. On the contrary, they are never so happy as

when they can get a little care, or cheat themselves into the belief

that they have it. You can make them proud for a day by sending them

on some responsible errand. If you will not place care upon them, they

will make it for themselves. You shall see a whole family of dolls

stricken down simultaneously with malignant measles, or a restive horse

evoked from a passive parlor-chair. They are a great deal more eager

to assume care, than you are to throw it off. To be sure, they may be

quite as eager to be rid of it after a while; but while this does not

prove that care is delightful, it certainly does prove that freedom

from care is not.

Now I should like, Herr Narr, to have you look at the other side for a

moment: for there is a positive and a negative pole. Children not

only have their full share of misery, but they do not have their full

share of happiness; at least, they miss many sources of happiness to

which we have access. They have no consciousness. They have

sensations, but no perceptions. We look longingly upon them, because

they are so graceful, and simple, and natural, and frank, and artless;

but though this may make us happy, it does not make them happy, because

they don't know anything about it. It never occurs to them that they

are graceful. No child is ever artless to himself. The only

difference he sees between you and himself is, that you are grown-up

and he is little. Sometimes I think he does have a dim perception that

when he is ill, it is because he has eaten too much, and he must take

medicine, and feed on heartless dry toast, while, when you are ill, you

have the dyspepsia, and go to Europe. But the beauty and sweetness of

children are entirely wasted on themselves, and their frankness is a

source of infinite annoyance to each other. A man enjoys HIMSELF. If

he is handsome, or wise, or witty, he generally knows it, and takes

great satisfaction in it; but a child does not. He loses half his

happiness because he does not know that he is happy. If he ever has

any consciousness, it is an isolated, momentary thing, with no relation

to anything antecedent or subsequent. It lays hold on nothing. Not

only have they no perception of themselves, but they have no perception

of anything. They never recognize an exigency. They do not salute

greatness. Has not the Autocrat told us of some lady who remembered a

certain momentous event in our Revolutionary War, and remembered it

only by and because of the regret she experienced at leaving her doll

behind when her family was forced to fly from home? What humiliation

is this! What an utter failure to appreciate the issues of life! For

her there was no revolution, no upheaval of world-old theories, no

struggle for freedom, no great combat of the heroisms. All the passion

and pain, the mortal throes of error, the glory of sacrifice, the

victory of an idea, the triumph of right, the dawn of a new era,--all,

all were hidden from her behind a lump of wax. And what was true of

her is true of all her class. Having eyes, they see not; with their

ears they do not hear. The din of arms, the waving of banners, the

gleam of swords, fearful sights and great signs in the heavens, or the

still, small voice that thrills when wind and fire and earthquake have

swept by, may proclaim the coming of the Lord, and they stumble along,

munching bread-and-butter. Out in the solitudes Nature speaks with her

many-toned voices, and they are deaf. They have a blind sensational

enjoyment, such as a squirrel or a chicken may have, but they can in no

wise interpret the Mighty Mother, nor even hear her words. The ocean

moans his secret to unheeding ears. The agony of the underworld finds

no speech in the mountain-peaks, bare and grand. The old oaks stretch

out their arms in vain. Grove whispers to grove, and the robin stops

to listen, but the child plays on. He bruises the happy butter-cups,

he crushes the quivering anemone, and his cruel fingers are stained

with the harebell's purple blood. Rippling waterfall and rolling

river, the majesty of sombre woods, the wild waste of wilderness, the

fairy spirits of sunshine, the sparkling wine of June, and the golden

languor of October, the child passes by, and a dipper of blackberries,

or a pocketful of chestnuts, fills and satisfies his horrible little

soul. And in face of all this people say,--there are people who DARE to

say,--that childhood's are the "happiest days."

I may have been peculiarly unfortunate in my surroundings, but the

children of poetry and novels were very infrequent in my day. The

innocent cherubs never studied in my school-house, nor played

puss-in-the-corner in our backyard. Childhood, when I was young, had

rosy checks and bright eyes, as I remember, but it was also extremely

given to quarrelling. It used frequently to "get mad." It made

nothing of twitching away books and balls. It often pouted. Sometimes

it would bite. If it wore a fine frock, it would strut. It told

lies,--"whoppers" at that. It took the larger half of the apple. It

was not, as a general thing, magnanimous, but "aggravating." It may

have been fun to you who looked on, but it was death to us who were in

the midst.

This whole way of viewing childhood, this regretful retrospect of its

vanished joys, this infatuated apotheosis of doughiness and rank

unfinish, this fearful looking-for of dread old age, is low, gross,

material, utterly unworthy of a sublime manhood, utterly false to

Christian truth. Childhood is pre-eminently the animal stage of

existence. The baby is a beast--a very soft, tender, caressive

beast,--a beast full of promise,--a beast with the germ of an

angel,--but a beast still. A week-old baby gives no more sign of

intelligence, of love, or ambition, or hope, or fear, or passion, or

purpose, than a week-old monkey, and is not half so frisky and funny.

In fact, it is a puling, scowling, wretched, dismal, desperate-looking

animal. It is only as it grows old that the beast gives way and the

angel-wings bud, and all along through infancy and childhood the beast

gives way and gives way and the angel-wings bud and bud; and yet we

entertain our angel so unawares, that we look back regretfully to the

time when the angel was in abeyance and the beast raved regnant.

The only advantage which childhood has over manhood is the absence of

foreboding, and this indeed is much. A large part of our suffering is

anticipatory, much of which children are spared. The present happiness

is clouded for them by no shadowy possibility; but for this small

indemnity shall we offset the glory of our manly years? Because their

narrowness cannot take in the contingencies that threaten peace, are

they blessed above all others? Does not the same narrowness cut them

off from the bright certainty that underlies all doubts and fears? If

ignorance is bliss, man stands at the summit of mortal misery, and the

scale of happiness is a descending one. We must go down into the

ocean-depths, where, for the scintillant soul, a dim, twilight instinct

lights up gelatinous lives. If childhood is indeed the happiest

period, then the mysterious God-breathed breath was no boon, and the

Deity is cruel. Immortality were well exchanged for the blank of

annihilation.

We hear of the dissipated illusions of youth, the paling of bright,

young dreams. Life, it is said, turns out to be different from what

was pictured. The rosy-hued morning fades away into the gray and livid

evening, the black and ghastly night. In especial cases it may be so,

but I do not believe it is the general experience. It surely need not

be. It should not be. I have found things a great deal better than I

expected. I am but one; but with all my oneness, with all that there

is of me, I protest against such generalities. I think they are

slanderous of Him who ordained life, its processes and its

vicissitudes. He never made our dreams to outstrip our realizations.

Every conception, brain-born, has its execution, hand-wrought. Life is

not a paltry tin cup which the child drains dry, leaving the man to go

weary and hopeless, quaffing at it in vain with black, parched lips.

It is a fountain ever springing. It is a great deep, which the wisest

has never bounded, the grandest never fathomed.

It is not only idle, but stupid, to lament the departure of childhood's

joys. It is as if something precious and valued had been forcibly torn

from us, and we go sorrowing for lost treasure. But these things fall

off from us naturally; we do not give them up. We are never called

upon to give them up.

There is no pang, no sorrow, no wrenching away of a part of

our lives. The baby lies in his cradle and plays with his fingers and

toes. There comes an hour when his fingers and toes no longer afford

him amusement. He has attained to the dignity of a rattle, a whip, a

ball. Has he suffered a loss? Has he not rather made a great gain?

When he passed from his toes to his toys, did he do it mournfully?

Does he look at his little feet and hands with a sigh for the joys that

once loitered there but are now forever gone? Does he not rather feel

a little ashamed, when you remind him of those days? Does he not feel

that it trenches somewhat on his dignity? Yet the regret of maturity

for its past joys amounts to nothing less than this. Such regret is

regret that we cannot lie in the sunshine and play with our toes,--that

we are no longer but one remove, or but few removes, from the idiot.

Away with such folly! Every season of life has its distinctive and

appropriate enjoyments, which bud and blossom and ripen and fall off as

the season glides on to its close, to be succeeded by others better and

brighter. There is no consciousness of loss, for there is no loss.

There is only a growing up, and out of; and beyond.

Life does turn out differently from what was anticipated. It is an

infinitely higher and holier and happier thing than our childhood

fancied. The world that lay before us then was but a tinsel toy to the

world which our firm feet tread. We have entered into the undiscovered

land. We have explored its ways of pleasantness, its depths of dole,

its mountains of difficulty, its valleys of delight, and, behold! it is

very good. Storms have swept fiercely, but they swept to purify. We

have heard in its thunders the Voice that woke once the echoes of the

Garden. Its lightnings have riven a path for the Angel of Peace.

Manhood discovers what childhood can never divine,--that the sorrows of

life are superficial, and the happiness of life structural; and this

knowledge alone is enough to give a peace which passeth understanding.

Yes, the dreams of youth were dreams, but the waking was more glorious

than they. They were only dreams,--fitful, flitting, fragmentary

visions of the coming day. The shallow joys, the capricious pleasures,

the wavering sunshine of infancy, have deepened into virtues, graces,

heroisms. We have the bold outlook of calm, self-confident courage,

the strong fortitude of endurance, the imperial magnificence of

self-denial. Our hearts expand with benevolence, our lives broaden

with beneficence. We cease our perpetual skirmishing at the outposts,

and go upward to the citadel. Down into the secret places of life we

descend. Down among the beautiful ones, in the cool and quiet shadows,

on the sunny summer levels, we walk securely, and the hidden fountains

are unsealed.

For those people who do nothing, for those to whom Christianity brings

no revelation, for those who see no eternity in time, no infinity in

life, for those to whom opportunity is but the hand maid of

selfishness, to whom smallness is informed by no greatness, for whom

the lowly is never lifted up by indwelling love to the heights of

divine performance,--for them, indeed, each hurrying year may well be a

King of Terrors. To pass out from the flooding light of the morning,

to feel all the dewiness drunk up by the thirsty, insatiate sun, to see

the shadows slowly and swiftly gathering, and no starlight to break the

gloom, and no home beyond the gloom for the unhoused, startled,

shivering soul,--ah! this indeed is terrible. The "confusions of a

wasted youth" strew thick confusions of a dreary age. Where youth

garners up only such power as beauty or strength may bestow, where

youth is but the revel of physical or frivolous delight, where youth

aspires only with paltry and ignoble ambitions, where youth presses the

wine of life into the cup of variety, there indeed Age comes, a thrice

unwelcome guest. Put him off. Thrust him back. Weep for the early

days: you have found no happiness to replace their joys. Mourn for the

trifles that were innocent, since the trifles of your manhood are heavy

with guilt. Fight to the last. Retreat inch by inch. With every step

you lose. Every day robs you of treasure. Every hour passes you over

to insignificance; and at the end stands Death. The bare and desolate

decline drops suddenly into the hopeless, dreadful grave, the black and

yawning grave, the foul and loathsome grave.

But why those who are Christians and not Pagans, who believe that death

is not an eternal sleep, who wrest from life its uses and gather from

life its beauty,--why they should dally along the road, and cling

frantically to the old landmarks, and shrink fearfully from the

approaching future, I cannot tell. You are getting into years. True.

But you are getting out again. The bowed frame, the tottering step,

the unsteady hand, the failing eye, the heavy ear, the tremulous voice,

they will all be yours. The grasshopper will become a burden, and

desire shall fail. The fire shall be smothered in your heart, and for

passion you shall have only peace. This is not pleasant. It is never

pleasant to feel the inevitable passing away of priceless possessions.

If this were to be the culmination of your fate, you might indeed take

up the wail for your lost youth. But this is only for a moment. The

infirmities of age come gradually. Gently we are led down into the

valley. Slowly, and not without a soft loveliness, the shadows

lengthen. At the worst these weaknesses are but the stepping-stones in

the river, passing over which you shall come to immortal vigor,

immortal fire, immortal beauty. All along the western sky flames and

glows the auroral light of another life. The banner of victory waves

right over your dungeon of defeat. By the golden gateway of the

sunsetting,

"Through the dear might of Him who walked the waves,"

you shall pass into the "cloud-land, gorgeous land," whose splendor is

unveiled only to the eyes of the Immortals. Would you loiter to your

inheritance?

You are "getting into years." Yes, but the years are getting into

you,--the ripe, rich years, the genial, mellow years, the lusty,

luscious years. One by one the crudities of your youth are falling off

from you,--the vanity, the egotism, the isolation, the bewilderment,

the uncertainty. Nearer and nearer you are approaching yourself. You

are consolidating your forces. You are becoming master of the

situation. Every wrong road into which you have wandered has brought

you, by the knowledge of that mistake, so much closer to the truth.

You no longer draw your bow at a venture, but shoot straight at the

mark. Your purposes concentrate, and your path is cleared. On the

ruins of shattered plans you find your vantage-ground. Your broken

hopes, your thwarted schemes, your defeated aspirations, become a staff

of strength with which you mount to sublimer heights. With

self-possession and self-command return the possession and the command

of all things. The title-deed of creation, forfeited, is reclaimed.

The king has come to his own again. Earth and sea and sky pour out

their largess of love. All the past crowds down to lay its treasures

at your feet. Patriotism stands once more in the breach at

Thermopylae,--bears down the serried hosts of Bannockburn,--lays its

calm hand in the fire, still, as if it felt the pressure of a mother's

lips,--gathers to its heart the points of opposing spears, to make a

way for the avenging feet behind. All that the ages have of greatness

and glory your hand may pluck, and every year adds to the purple

vintage. Every year comes laden with the riches of the lives that were

lavished on it. Every year brings to you softness and sweetness and

strength. Every year evokes order from confusion, till all things find

scope and adjustment. Every year sweeps a broader circle for your

horizon, grooves a deeper channel for your experience. Through sun and

shade and shower you ripen to a large and liberal life.

Yours is the deep joy, the unspoken fervor, the sacred fury of the

fight. Yours is the power to redress wrong, to defend the weak, to

succor the needy, to relieve the suffering, to confound the oppressor.

While vigor leaps in great tidal pulses along your veins, you stand in

the thickest of the fray, and broadsword and battle-axe come crashing

down through helmet and visor. When force has spent itself; you

withdraw from the field, your weapons pass into younger hands, you rest

under your laurels, and your works do follow you. Your badges are the

scars of your honorable wounds. Your life finds its vindication in the

deeds which you have wrought. The possible tomorrow has become the

secure yesterday. Above the tumult and the turbulence, above the

struggle and the doubt, you sit in the serene evening, awaiting your

promotion.

Come, then, O dreaded years! Your brows are awful, but not with

frowns. I hear your resonant tramp far off, but it is sweet as the

May-maidens' song. In your grave prophetic eyes I read a golden

promise. I know that you bear in your bosom the fullness of my life.

Veiled monarchs of the future, shining dim and beautiful, you shall

become my vassals, swift-footed to bear my messages, swift-handed to

work my will. Nourished by the nectar which you will pour in passing

from your crystal cups, Death shall have no dominion over me, but I

shall go on from strength to strength and from glory to glory.