fat things, on which we also luxuriated. Mrs. Crowfield outdid all
household traditions in that feast: the turkey and the chickens, the
jellies and the sauces, the pies and the pudding, behold, are they not
written in the tablets of Memory which remain to this day?
The holidays passed away hilariously, and at New-Year’s I, according to
time-honored custom, went forth to make my calls and see my fair
friends, while my wife and daughters stayed at home to dispense the
hospitalities of the day to their gentlemen friends. All was merry,
cheerful, and it was agreed on all hands that a more joyous holiday
season had never flown over us.
But, somehow, the week after, I began to be sensible of a running-down
in the wheels. I had an article to write for the “Atlantic,” but felt
mopish and could not write. My dinner had not its usual relish, and I
had an indefinite sense everywhere of something going wrong. My coal
bill came in, and I felt sure we were being extravagant, and that our
John Furnace wasted the coal. My grandsons and granddaughters came to
see us, and I discovered that they had high-pitched voices, and burst in
without wiping their shoes, and it suddenly occurred powerfully to my
mind that they were not being well brought up,--evidently, they were
growing up rude and noisy. I discovered several tumblers and plates with
the edges chipped, and made bitter reflections on the carelessness of
Irish servants;--our crockery was going to destruction, along with the
rest. Then, on opening one of my paper-drawers, I found that Jennie’s
one drawer of worsted had overflowed into two or three; Jennie was
growing careless; besides, worsted is dear, and girls knit away small
fortunes, without knowing it, on little duds that do nobody any good.
Moreover, Maggie had three times put my slippers into the hall-closet,
instead of leaving them where I wanted, under my study-table. Mrs.
Crowfield ought to look after things more; every servant, from end to
end of the house, was getting out of the traces, it was strange she did
not see it.
All this I vented, from time to time, in short, crusty sayings and
doings, as freely as if I hadn’t just written an article on “Little
Foxes” in the last “Atlantic,” till at length my eyes were opened on my
own state and condition.
It was evening, and I had just laid up the fire in the most approved
style of architecture, and, projecting my feet into my slippers, sat
spitefully cutting the leaves of a caustic review.
Mrs. Crowfield took the tongs and altered the disposition of a stick.
“My dear,” I said, “I do wish you’d let the fire alone,--you always put
it out.”
“I was merely admitting a little air between the sticks,” said my wife.
“You always make matters worse, when you touch the fire.”
As if in contradiction, a bright tongue of flame darted up between the
sticks, and the fire began chattering and snapping defiance at me. Now,
if there’s anything which would provoke a saint, it is to be jeered and
snapped at in that way by a man’s own fire. It’s an unbearable
impertinence. I threw out my leg impatiently, and hit Rover, who yelped
a yelp that finished the upset of my nerves. I gave him a hearty kick,
that he might have something to yelp for, and in the movement upset
Jennie’s embroidery-basket.
“Oh, papa!”
“Confound your baskets and balls! they are everywhere, so that a man
can’t move; useless, wasteful things, too.”
“Wasteful?” said Jennie, coloring indignantly; for if there’s anything
Jennie piques herself upon, it’s economy.
“Yes, wasteful,--wasting time and money both. Here are hundreds of
shivering poor to be clothed, and Christian females sit and do nothing
but crochet worsted into useless knicknacks. If they would be working
for the poor, there would be some sense in it. But it’s all just alike,
no real Christianity in the world, nothing but organized selfishness and
self-indulgence.”
“My dear,” said Mrs. Crowfield, “you are not well to-night. Things are
not quite so desperate as they appear. You haven’t got over
Christmas-week.”
“I _am_ well. Never was better. But I can see, I hope, what’s before my
eyes; and the fact is, Mrs. Crowfield, things must not go on as they are
going. There must be more care, more attention to details. There’s
Maggie,--that girl never does what she is told. You are too slack with
her, Ma’am. She will light the fire with the last paper, and she won’t
put my slippers in the right place; and I can’t have my study made the
general catch-all and menagerie for Rover and Jennie, and her baskets
and balls, and for all the family litter.”
Just at this moment I overheard a sort of aside from Jennie, who was
swelling with repressed indignation at my attack on her worsted. She sat
with her back to me, knitting energetically, and said, in a low, but
very decisive tone, as she twitched her yarn,--
“Now if _I_ should talk in that way, people would call me _cross_,--and
that’s the whole of it.”
I pretended to be looking into the fire in an absent-minded state; but
Jennie’s words had started a new idea. Was _that_ it? Was that the whole
matter? Was it, then, a fact, that the house, the servants, Jennie and
her worsteds, Rover and Mrs. Crowfield, were all going on pretty much as
usual, and that the only difficulty was that I was _cross_? How many
times had I encouraged Rover to lie just where he was lying when I
kicked him! How many times, in better moods, had I complimented Jennie
on her neat little fancy-works, and declared that I liked the social
companionship of ladies’ work-baskets among my papers! Yes, it was
clear. After all, things were much as they had been; only I was cross.
_Cross._ I put it to myself in that simple, old-fashioned word, instead
of saying that I was out of spirits, or nervous, or using any of the
other smooth phrases with which we good Christians cover up our little
sins of temper. “Here you are, Christopher,” said I to myself, “a
literary man, with a somewhat delicate nervous organization and a
sensitive stomach, and you have been eating like a sailor or a
ploughman; you have been gallivanting and merry-making and playing the
boy for two weeks; up at all sorts of irregular hours, and into all
sorts of boyish performances; and the consequence is, that, like a
thoughtless young scapegrace, you have used up in ten days the capital
of nervous energy that was meant to last you ten weeks. You can’t eat
your cake and have it too, Christopher. When the nervous-fluid, source
of cheerfulness, giver of pleasant sensations and pleasant views, is
all spent, you can’t feel cheerful; things cannot look as they did when
you were full of life and vigor. When the tide is out, there is nothing
but unsightly, ill-smelling tide-mud, and you can’t help it; but you
_can_ keep your senses,--you _can_ know what is the matter with
you,--you can keep from visiting your overdose of Christmas mincepies
and candies and jocularities on the heads of Mrs. Crowfield, Rover, and
Jennie, whether in the form of virulent morality, pungent criticisms, or
a free kick, such as you just gave the poor brute.”
“Come here, Rover, poor dog!” said I, extending my hand to Rover, who
cowered at the farther corner of the room, eying me wistfully,--“come
here, you poor doggie, and make up with your master. There, there! Was
his master cross? Well, he knows it. We must forgive and forget, old
boy, mustn’t we?” And Rover nearly broke his own back and tore me to
pieces with his tumultuous tail-waggings.
“As for you, puss,” I said to Jennie, “I am much obliged to you for your
free suggestion. You must take my cynical moralities for what they are
worth, and put your little traps into as many of my drawers as you
like.”
In short, I made it up handsomely all around,--even apologizing to Mrs.
Crowfield, who, by the by, has summered and wintered me so many years,
and knows all my little seams and crinkles so well, that she took my
irritable, unreasonable spirit as tranquilly as if I had been a baby
cutting a new tooth.
“Of course, Chris, I knew what the matter was; don’t disturb yourself,”
she said, as I began my apology; “we understand each other. But there is
one thing I have to say; and that is, that your article ought to be
ready.”
“Ah, well, then,” said I, “like other great writers, I shall make
capital of my own sins, and treat of the second little family fox; and
his name is--
_IRRITABILITY._
IRRITABILITY is, more than most unlovely states, a sin of the flesh. It
is not, like envy, malice, spite, revenge, a vice which we may suppose
to belong equally to an embodied or a disembodied spirit. In fact, it
comes nearer to being physical depravity than anything I know of. There
are some bodily states, some conditions of the nerves, such that we
could not conceive of even an angelic spirit confined in a body thus
disordered as being able to do any more than simply endure. It is a
state of nervous torture; and the attacks which the wretched victim
makes on others are as much a result of disease as the snapping and
biting of a patient convulsed with hydrophobia.
Then, again, there are other people who go through life loving and
beloved, desired in every circle, held up in the Church as examples of
the power of religion, who, after all, deserve no credit for these
things. Their spirits are lodged in an animal nature so tranquil, so
cheerful, all the sensations which come to them are so fresh and
vigorous and pleasant, that they cannot help viewing the world
charitably and seeing everything through a glorified medium. The
ill-temper of others does not provoke them; perplexing business never
sets their nerves to vibrating; and all their lives long they walk in
the serene sunshine of perfect animal health.
Look at Rover there. He is never nervous, never cross, never snaps or
snarls, and is ready, the moment after the grossest affront, to wag the
tail of forgiveness,--all because kind Nature has put his dog’s body
together so that it always works harmoniously. If every person in the
world were gifted with a stomach and nerves like his, it would be a far
better and happier world, no doubt. The man said a good thing who made
the remark, that the foundation of all intellectual and moral worth must
be laid in a good healthy animal.
Now I think it is undeniable that the peace and happiness of the
home-circle are very generally much invaded by the recurrence in its
members of these states of bodily irritability. Every person, if he
thinks the matter over, will see that his condition in life, the
character of his friends, his estimate of their virtues and failings,
his hopes and expectations, are all very much modified by these things.
Cannot we all remember going to bed as very ill-used, persecuted
individuals, all whose friends were unreasonable, whose life was full of
trials and crosses, and waking up on a bright bird-singing morning to
find all these illusions gone with the fogs of the night? Our friends
are nice people, after all; the little things that annoyed us look
ridiculous by bright sunshine and we are fortunate individuals.
The philosophy of life, then, as far as this matter is concerned, must
consist of two things: first, to keep ourselves out of irritable bodily
states; and, second, to understand and control these states, when we
cannot ward them off.
Of course, the first of these is the most important; and yet, of all
things, it seems to be least looked into and understood. We find
abundant rules for the government of the tongue and temper; it is a
slough into which, John Bunyan hath it, cart-loads of wholesome
instructions have been thrown; but how to get and keep that healthy
state of brain, stomach, and nerves which takes away the temptation to
ill-temper and anger is a subject which moral and religious teachers
seem scarcely to touch upon.
Now, without running into technical, physiological language, it is
evident, as regards us human beings, that there is a power by which we
live and move and have our being,--by which the brain thinks and wills,
the stomach digests, the blood circulates, and all the different
provinces of the little man-kingdom do their work. This something--call
it nervous fluid, nervous power, vital energy, life-force, or anything
else that you will--is a perfectly understood, if not a definable thing.
It is plain, too, that people possess this force in very different
degrees; some generating it as a high pressure engine does steam, and
using it constantly, with an apparently inexhaustible flow and others
who have little, and spend it quickly. We have a common saying, that
this or that person is soon used up. Now most nervous irritable states
of temper are the mere physics’ result of a used-up condition. The
person has overspent his nervous energy,--like a man who should eat up
on Monday the whole food which was to keep him for a week, and go
growling and faint through the other days; or the quantity of nervous
force which was wanted to carry on the whole system in all its parts is
seized on by some one monopolizing portion, and used up to the loss and
detriment of the rest. Thus, with men of letters, an exorbitant brain
expends on its own wreckings what belongs to the other offices of the
body: the stomach has nothing to carry on digestion; the secretions are
badly made; and the imperfectly assimilated nourishment, that is
conveyed to every little nerve and tissue, carries with it an acrid,
irritating quality, producing general restlessness and discomfort. So
men and women go struggling on through their threescore and ten years,
scarcely one in a thousand knowing through life that perfect balance of
parts, that appropriate harmony of energies, that make a healthy, kindly
animal condition, predisposing to cheerfulness and good-will.
We Americans are, in the first place, a nervous, excitable people.
Multitudes of children, probably the great majority in the upper walks
of life, are born into the world with weaknesses of the nervous
organization, or of the brain or stomach, which make them incapable of
any strong excitement or prolonged exertion without some lesion or
derangement; so that they are continually being checked, laid up, and
made invalids in the midst of their days. Life here in America is so
fervid, so fast, our climate is so stimulating, with its clear, bright
skies, its rapid and sudden changes of temperature, that the tendencies
to nervous disease are constantly aggravated.
Under these circumstances, unless men and women make a conscience, a
religion, of saving and sparing something of themselves expressly for
home-life and home-consumption, it must follow that home will often be
merely a sort of refuge for us to creep into when we are used up and
irritable.
Papa is up and off, after a hasty breakfast, and drives all day in his
business, putting into it all there is in him, letting it drink up brain
and nerve and body and soul, and coming home jaded and exhausted, so
that he cannot bear the cry of the baby, and the frolics and pattering
of the nursery seem horrid and needless confusion. The little ones say,
in their plain vernacular, “Papa is cross.”
Mamma goes out to a party that keeps her up till one or two in the
morning, breathes bad air, eats indigestible food, and the next day is
so nervous that every straw and thread in her domestic path is
insufferable.
Papas that pursue business thus day after day, and mammas that go into
company, as it is called, night after night, what is there left in or of
them to make an agreeable fireside with, to brighten their home and
inspire their children?
True, the man says he cannot help himself,--business requires it. But
what is the need of rolling up money at the rate at which he is seeking
to do it? Why not have less, and take some time to enjoy his home, and
cheer up his wife, and form the minds of his children? Why spend himself
down to the last drop on the world, and give to the dearest friends he
has only the bitter dregs?
Much of the preaching which the pulpit and the Church have levelled at
fashionable amusements has failed of any effect at all, because wrongly
put. A cannonade has been opened upon dancing, for example, and all for
reasons that will not, in the least, bear looking into. It is vain to
talk of dancing as a sin because practised in a dying world where souls
are passing into eternity. If dancing is a sin for this reason, so is
playing marbles, or frolicking with one’s children, or enjoying a good
dinner, or doing fifty other things which nobody ever dreamed of
objecting to.
If the preacher were to say that anything is a sin which uses up the
strength we need for daily duties, and leaves us fagged out and
irritable at just those times and in just those places when and where we
need most to be healthy, cheerful, and self-possessed, he would say a
thing that none of his hearers would dispute. If he should add, that
dancing-parties, beginning at ten o’clock at night and ending at four
o’clock in the morning, do use up the strength, weaken the nerves, and
leave a person wholly unfit for any home duty, he would also be saying
what very few people would deny; and then his case would be made out. If
he should say that it is wrong to breathe bad air and fill the stomach
with unwholesome dainties, so as to make one restless, ill-natured, and
irritable for days, he would also say what few would deny, and his
preaching might have some hope of success.
The true manner of judging of the worth of amusements is to try them by
their effects on the nerves and spirits the day after. True amusement
ought to be, as the word indicates, _recreation_,--something that
refreshes, turns us out anew, rests the mind and body by change, and
gives cheerfulness and alacrity to our return to duty.
The true objection to all stimulants, alcoholic and narcotic, consists
simply in this,--that they are a form of overdraft on the nervous
energy, which helps us to use up in one hour the strength of whole
days.
A man uses up all the fair, legal interest of nervous power by too much
business, too much care, or too much amusement. He has now a demand to
meet. He has a complicate account to make up, an essay or a sermon to
write, and he primes himself by a cup of coffee, a cigar, a glass of
spirits. This is exactly the procedure of a man who, having used the
interest of his money, begins to dip into the principal. The strength a
man gets in this way is just so much taken out of his life-blood; it is
borrowing of a merciless creditor, who will exact, in time, the pound of
flesh nearest his heart.
Much of the irritability which spoils home happiness is the letting-down
from the over-excitement of stimulus. Some will drink coffee, when they
own every day that it makes them nervous; some will drug themselves with
tobacco, and some with alcohol, and, for a few hours of extra
brightness, give themselves and their friends many hours when amiability
or agreeableness is quite out of the question. There are people calling
themselves Christians who live in miserable thraldom, forever in debt to
Nature, forever overdrawing on their just resources, and using up their
patrimony, because they have not the moral courage to break away from a
miserable appetite.
The same may be said of numberless indulgences of the palate, which tax
the stomach beyond its power, and bring on all the horrors of
indigestion. It is almost impossible for a confirmed dyspeptic to act
like a good Christian; but a good Christian ought not to become a
confirmed dyspeptic. Reasonable self-control, abstaining from all
unseasonable indulgence, may prevent or put an end to dyspepsia, and
many suffer and make their friends suffer only because they will persist
in eating what they know is hurtful to them.
But it is not merely in worldly business, or fashionable amusements, or
the gratification of appetite, that people are tempted to overdraw and
use up in advance their life-force. It is done in ways more insidious,
because connected with our moral and religious faculties. There are
religious exaltations beyond the regular pulse and beatings of ordinary
nature, that quite as surely gravitate downward into the mire of
irritability. The ascent to the third heaven lets even the Apostle down
to a thorn in the flesh, the messenger of Satan to buffet him.
It is the temptation of natures in which the moral faculties predominate
to overdo in the outward expression and activities of religion till they
are used up and irritable, and have no strength left to set a good
example in domestic life.
The Reverend Mr. X. in the pulpit to-day appears with the face of an
angel; he soars away into those regions of exalted devotion where his
people can but faintly gaze after him; he tells them of the victory that
overcometh the world, of an unmoved faith that fears no evil, of a
serenity of love that no outward event can ruffle; and all look after
him and wonder, and wish they could so soar.
Alas! the exaltation which inspires these sublime conceptions, these
celestial ecstasies, is a double and treble draft on Nature,--and poor
Mrs. X. knows, when she hears him preaching, that days of miserable
reaction are before her. He has been a fortnight driving before a gale
of strong excitement, doing all the time twice or thrice as much as in
his ordinary state he could, and sustaining himself by the stimulus of
strong coffee. He has preached or exhorted every night, and conversed
with religious inquirers every day, seeming to himself to become
stronger and stronger, because every day more and more excitable and
excited. To his hearers, with his flushed sunken cheek and his
glittering eye, he looks like some spiritual being just trembling on his
flight for upper worlds; but to poor Mrs. X., whose husband he is,
things wear a very different aspect. Her woman and mother instincts
tell her that he is drawing on his life-capital with both hands, and
that the hours of a terrible settlement must come, and the days of
darkness will be many. He who spoke so beautifully of the peace of a
soul made perfect will not be able to bear the cry of his baby or the
pattering feet of any of the poor little X.s, who must be sent
“Anywhere, anywhere,
Out of his sight”;
he who discoursed so devoutly of perfect trust in God will be nervous
about the butcher’s bill, sure of going to ruin because both ends of the
salary don’t meet; and he who could so admiringly tell of the silence of
Jesus under provocation will but too often speak unadvisedly with his
lips. Poor Mr. X. will be morally insane for days or weeks, and
absolutely incapable of preaching Christ in the way that is the most
effective, by setting Him forth in his own daily example.
What then? must we not do the work of the Lord?
Yes, certainly; but the first work of the Lord, that for which provision
is to be made in the first place, is to set a good example as a
Christian man. Better labor for years steadily, diligently, doing every
day only what the night’s rest can repair, avoiding those cheating
stimulants that overtax Nature, and illustrating the sayings of the
pulpit by the daily life in the family, than to pass life in exaltations
and depressions, resulting from overstrained labors, supported by
unnatural stimulus.
The same principles apply to hearers as to preachers. Religious services
must be judged of like amusements, by their effect on the life. If an
overdose of prayers, hymns, and sermons leaves us tired, nervous, and
cross, it is only not quite as bad as an overdose of fashionable folly.