I am very anxious that you should allow me to receive your son
Frederic as a pupil, at my parsonage, here in the country. I have not
lived in the city without knowing something about it, despite my
cloth, and I am concerned at the peril to which every young man is
there exposed. There is a proud philosophy in vogue that everything
that _can_ be injured had better be destroyed as rapidly as
possible, and put out of the way at once. But I recall a deeper and
tenderer wisdom which declared, “A bruised reed will he not break.”
The world is not made for the prosperous alone, nor for the strong.
We may wince at the truth, but we must at length believe it,--that the
poor in spirit, and the poor in will, and the poor in success, are
appointed as pensioners upon our care.
In my house your son will miss the luxuries of his home, but he will,
perhaps, find as cordial a sympathy in his little interests, and as
careful a consultation of his desires and aims. He will have pure air,
a tranquil landscape, a pleasant society; my books, variously
selected, my direction and aid in his studies, and a neighborhood to
town that will place its resources within his reach. A city, it seems
to me, is mainly valuable as a gallery of opportunities. But a man
should not live exclusively in his library, nor among his
pictures. Letters and art may well decorate his life. But if they are
not subsidiary to the man, and his character, then he is a sadder
spectacle than a vain book or a poor picture. The eager whirl of a
city tends either to beget a thirst that can only be sated by strong,
yet dangerous excitement, or to deafen a man’s ear, and harden his
heart, to the really noble attractions around him.
It is well to know men. But men are not learned at the billiard table,
nor in the barroom, nor by meeting them in an endless round of
debauch, nor does a man know the world because he has been to Paris.
It is a sad thing for a young man to seek applause by surpassing his
companions in that which makes them contemptible. The best men of our
own time have little leisure, and the best of other days have
committed their better part to books, wherein we may know and love
them.
There is nothing more admirable than good society, as there is nothing
so fine as a noble man, nor so lovely as a beautiful woman. And to the
perfect enjoyment of such society an ease and grace are necessary,
which are hardly to be acquired, but are rather, like beauty and
talent, the gift of Nature. That ease and grace will certainly run
great risk of disappearing, in the embrace of a fashion unchastened by
common sense; and it is observable that the sensitive _gaucherie_
of a countryman is more agreeable than the pert composure of a
citizen.
I do not deny that your son must lose something, if you accede to my
request, but I assuredly believe that he will gain more than he will
lose. My profession makes me more dogmatic, probably, than is strictly
courteous. But I have observed, in my recent visits to town, that
Courtesy, also, is getting puny and unmanly, and that a counterfeit,
called Compliment, is often mistaken for it. You will smile, probably
at my old-fashioned whims, and regret that I am behind my time. But
really, it strikes me, that the ineffectual imitation of an exploded
social organization is, at least, two centuries behind my time. The
youth who, socially speaking, are termed Young America, represent, in
character and conduct, anything but their own time and their own
country.
I will not deny that the secret of my interest in your son, is an
earlier interest in yourself--a wild dream we dreamed together, so
long ago that it seems not to be a part of my life. The companion of
those other days I do not recognize in the glittering lady I sometimes
see. But in her child I trace the likeness of the girl I knew, and it
is to the memory of that girl--whose lovely traits I will still
believe are not destroyed, but are somewhere latent in the woman--that
I consecrate the task I wish to undertake. I am married, and I am
happy. But sometimes through the sweet tranquillity of my life streams
the pensive splendor of that long-vanished summer, and I cannot deny
the heart that will dream of what might have been.
Madame, I can wish you nothing more sincerely than that as your lot is
with the rich in this world, it may be with the poor in the world to
come.
Your obedient servant,