calm, sweet, daily services which should morning and evening unite for
a few solemn moments the hearts of all as in one family, and feed with a
constant, unnoticed, daily supply the lamp of faith and love. Such are
some of the daily prayer-meetings which for eight or ten years past have
held their even tenor in some of our New England cities, and such the
morning and evening services which we are glad to see obtaining in the
Episcopal churches. Everything which brings religion into habitual
contact with life, and makes it part of a healthy, cheerful average
living, we hail as a sign of a better day. Nothing is so good for health
as daily devotion. It is the best soother of the nerves, the best
antidote to care; and we trust erelong that all Christian people will be
of one mind in this, and that neighborhoods will be families gathering
daily around one altar, praying not for themselves merely, but for each
other.
The conclusion of the whole matter is this: Set apart some provision to
make merry with _at home_, and guard that reserve as religiously as the
priests guarded the shew-bread in the temple. However great you are,
however good, however wide the general interests that you may control,
you gain nothing by neglecting home-duties. You must leave enough of
yourself to be able to bear and forbear, give and forgive, and be a
source of life and cheerfulness around the hearthstone. The great sign
given by the Prophets of the coming of the Millennium is,--what do you
suppose?--“He shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and
the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the
earth with a curse.”
Thus much on avoiding unhealthy, irritable states.
But it still remains that a large number of people will be subject to
them unavoidably for these reasons.
_First._ The use of tobacco, alcohol, and other kindred stimulants, for
so many generations, has vitiated the brain and nervous system of
modern civilized races so that it is not what it was in former times.
Michelet treats of this subject quite at large in some of his late
works; and we have to face the fact of a generation born with an
impaired nervous organization, who will need constant care and wisdom to
avoid unhealthy, morbid irritation.
There is a temperament called the HYPOCHONDRIAC, to which many persons,
some of them the brightest, the most interesting, the most gifted, are
born heirs,--a want of balance of the nervous powers, which tends
constantly to periods of high excitement and of consequent
depression,--an unfortunate inheritance for the possessor, though
accompanied often with the greatest talents. Sometimes, too, it is the
unfortunate lot of those who have not talents, who bear its burdens and
its anguish without its rewards.
People of this temperament are subject to fits of gloom and despondency,
of nervous irritability and suffering, which darken the aspect of the
whole world to them, which present lying reports of their friends, of
themselves, of the circumstances of their life, and of all with which
they have to do.
Now the highest philosophy for persons thus afflicted is to _understand
themselves_ and their tendencies, to know that these fits of gloom and
depression are just as much a form of disease as a fever or a toothache,
to know that it is the peculiarity of the disease to fill the mind with
wretched illusions, to make them seem miserable and unlovely to
themselves, to make their nearest friends seem unjust and unkind, to
make all events appear to be going wrong and tending to destruction and
ruin.
The evils and burdens of such a temperament are half removed when a man
once knows that he has it and recognizes it for a disease, and when he
does not trust himself to speak and act in those bitter hours as if
there were any truth in what he thinks and feels and sees. He who has
not attained to this wisdom overwhelms his friends and his family with
the waters of bitterness; he stings with unjust accusations, and makes
his fireside dreadful with fancies which are real to him, but false as
the ravings of fever.
A sensible person, thus diseased, who has found out what ails him, will
shut his mouth resolutely, not to give utterance to the dark thoughts
that infest his soul.
A lady of great brilliancy and wit, who was subject to these periods,
once said to me, “My dear sir, there are times when I know I am
possessed of the Devil, and then I never let myself speak.” And so this
wise woman carried her burden about with her in a determined, cheerful
reticence, leaving always the impression of a cheery, kindly temper,
when, if she had spoken out a tithe of what she thought and felt in her
morbid hours, she would have driven all her friends from her, and made
others as miserable as she was herself. She was a sunbeam, a life-giving
presence in every family, by the power of self-knowledge and
self-control. Such victories as this are the victories of real saints.
But if the victim of these glooms is once tempted to lift their heavy
load by the use of _any stimulus whatever_, he or she is a lost man or
woman. It is from this sad class more than any other that the vast army
of drunkards and opium-eaters is recruited. Dr. Johnson, one of the most
brilliant examples of the hypochondriac temperament which literature
affords, has expressed a characteristic of the race, in what he says of
himself, that he could “_practise_ ABSTINENCE _but not_ TEMPERANCE.”
Hypochondriacs who begin to rely on stimulus, almost without exception
find this to be true. They cannot, they will not be moderate. Whatever
stimulant they take for relief will create an uncontrollable appetite, a
burning passion. The temperament itself lies in the direction of
insanity. It needs the most healthful, careful, even regimen and
management to keep it within the bounds of soundness; but the
introduction of stimulants deepens its gloom with the shadows of utter
despair.
All parents, in the education of their children, should look out for and
understand the signs of this temperament. It appears in early childhood;
and a child inclined to fits of depression should be marked as a subject
of the most thoughtful, painstaking physical and moral training. All
over-excitement and stimulus should be carefully avoided, whether in the
way of study, amusement, or diet. Judicious education may do much to
mitigate the unavoidable pains and penalties of this most undesirable
inheritance.
The second class of persons who need wisdom in the control of their
moods is that large class whose unfortunate circumstances make it
impossible for them to avoid constantly overdoing and overdrawing upon
their nervous energies, and who therefore are always exhausted and worn
out. Poor souls, who labor daily under a burden too heavy for them, and
whose fretfulness and impatience are looked upon with sorrow, not anger,
by pitying angels. Poor mothers, with families of little children
clinging round them, and a baby that never lets them sleep; hard-working
men, whose utmost toil, day and night, scarcely keeps the wolf from the
door; and all the hard-laboring, heavy-laden, on whom the burdens of
life press far beyond their strength.
There are but two things we know of for these,--two only remedies for
the irritation that comes of these exhaustions; the habit of silence
towards men, and of speech towards God. The heart must utter itself or
burst; but let it learn to commune constantly and intimately with One
always present and always sympathizing. This is the great, the only
safeguard against fretfulness and complaint. Thus and thus only can
peace spring out of confusion, and the breaking chords of an overtaxed
nature be strung anew to a celestial harmony.
III.
REPRESSION.
I am going now to write on another cause of family unhappiness, more
subtile than either of those before enumerated.
In the General Confession of the Church, we poor mortals all unite in
saying two things: “We have left undone those things which we ought to
have done, and we have done those things which we ought not to have
done.” These two heads exhaust the subject of human frailty.
It is the things left undone which we ought to have done, the things
left unsaid which we ought to have said, that constitute the subject I
am now to treat of.
I remember my school-day speculations over an old “Chemistry” I used to
study as a textbook, which informed me that a substance called Caloric
exists in all bodies. In some it exists in a latent state: it is there,
but it affects neither the senses nor the thermometer. Certain causes
develop it, when it raises the mercury and warms the hands. I remember
the awe and wonder with which, even then, I reflected on the vast amount
of blind, deaf, and dumb comfort which Nature had thus stowed away. How
mysterious it seemed to me that poor families every winter should be
shivering, freezing, and catching cold, when Nature had all this latent
caloric locked up in her store-closet,--when it was all around them, in
everything they touched and handled!
In the spiritual world there is an exact analogy to this. There is a
great life-giving, warming power called Love, which exists in human
hearts dumb and unseen, but which has no real life, no warming power,
till set free by expression.
Did you ever, in a raw, chilly day, just before a snow-storm, sit at
work in a room that was judiciously warmed by an exact thermometer? You
do not freeze, but you shiver; your fingers do not become numb with
cold, but you have all the while an uneasy craving for more positive
warmth. You look at the empty grate, walk mechanically towards it, and,
suddenly awaking, shiver to see that there is nothing there. You long
for a shawl or cloak; you draw yourself within yourself; you consult the
thermometer, and are vexed to find that there is nothing there to be
complained of,--it is standing most provokingly at the exact temperature
that all the good books and good doctors pronounce to be the proper
thing,--the golden mean of health; and yet perversely you shiver, and
feel as if the face of an open fire would be to you as the smile of an
angel.
Such a lifelong chill, such an habitual shiver, is the lot of many
natures, which are not warm, when all ordinary rules tell them they
ought to be warm,--whose life is cold and barren and meagre,--which
never see the blaze of an open fire.
I will illustrate my meaning by a page out of my own experience.
I was twenty-one when I stood as groomsman for my youngest and favorite
sister Emily. I remember her now as she stood at the altar,--a pale,
sweet, flowery face, in a half-shimmer between smiles and tears, looking
out of vapory clouds of gauze and curls and all the vanishing mysteries
of a bridal morning.
Everybody thought the marriage such a fortunate one!--for her husband
was handsome and manly, a man of worth, of principle good as gold and
solid as adamant,--and Emmy had always been such a flossy little kitten
of a pet, so full of all sorts of impulses, so sensitive and nervous, we
thought her kind, strong, composed, stately husband made just on purpose
for her. “It was quite a Providence,” sighed all the elderly ladies, who
sniffed tenderly, and wiped their eyes, according to approved custom,
during the marriage ceremony.
I remember now the bustle of the day,--the confused whirl of white
gloves, kisses, bridemaids, and bride-cakes, the losing of trunk-keys
and breaking of lacings, the tears of mamma--God bless her!--and the
jokes of irreverent Christopher, who could, for the life of him, see
nothing so very dismal in the whole phantasmagoria, and only wished he
were as well off himself.
And so Emmy was whirled away from us on the bridal tour, when her
letters came back to us almost every day, just like herself, merry,
frisky little bits of scratches,--as full of little nonsense-beads as a
glass of Champagne, and all ending with telling us how perfect he was,
and how good, and how well he took care of her, and how happy, etc.,
etc.
Then came letters from her new home. His house was not yet built; but
while it was building, they were to live with his mother, who was “such
a good woman,” and his sisters, who were also “such nice women.”
But somehow, after this, a change came over Emmy’s letters. They grew
shorter; they seemed measured in their words; and in place of sparkling
nonsense and bubbling outbursts of glee, came anxiously worded praises
of her situation and surroundings, evidently written for the sake of
arguing herself into the belief that she was extremely happy.
John, of course, was not as much with her now: he had his business to
attend to, which took him away all day, and at night he was very tired.
Still he was very good and thoughtful of her, and how thankful she ought
to be! And his mother was very good indeed, and did all for her that she
could reasonably expect,--of course she could not be like her own mamma;
and Mary and Jane were very kind,--“in their way,” she wrote, but
scratched it out, and wrote over it, “very kind indeed.” They were the
best people in the world,--a great deal better than she was; and she
should try to learn a great deal from them.
“Poor little Em!” I said to myself, “I am afraid these very nice people
are slowly freezing and starving her.” And so, as I was going up into
the mountains for a summer tour, I thought I would accept some of John’s
many invitations and stop a day or two with them on my way, and see how
matters stood. John had been known among us in college as a taciturn
fellow, but good as gold. I had gained his friendship by a regular
siege, carrying parallel after parallel, till, when I came into the fort
at last, I found the treasures worth taking.
I had little difficulty in finding Squire Evans’s house. It was _the_
house of the village,--a true, model, New England house,--a square,
roomy, old-fashioned mansion, which stood on a hillside, under a group
of great, breezy old elms, whose wide, wind-swung arms arched over it
like a leafy firmament. Under this bower the substantial white house,
with all its window-blinds closed, with its neat white fences all tight
and trim, stood in its faultless green turfy yard, a perfect Pharisee
among houses. It looked like a house all finished, done, completed,
labelled, and set on a shelf for preservation; but, as is usual with
this kind of edifice in our dear New England, it had not the slightest
appearance of being lived in, not a door or window open, not a wink or
blink of life: the only suspicion of human habitation was the thin,
pale-blue smoke from the kitchen-chimney.
And now for the people in the house.
In making a New England visit in winter, was it ever your fortune to be
put to sleep in the glacial spare-chamber, that had been kept from time
immemorial as a refrigerator for guests,--that room which no ray of
daily sunshine and daily living ever warms, whose blinds are closed the
whole year round, whose fireplace knows only the complimentary blaze
which is kindled a few moments before bedtime in an atmosphere where you
can see your breath? Do you remember the process of getting warm in a
bed of most faultless material, with linen sheets and pillow-cases,
slippery and cold as ice? You did get warm at last, but you warmed your
bed by giving out all the heat of your own body.
Such are some families where you visit. They are of the very best
quality, like your sheets, but so cold that it takes all the vitality
you have to get them warmed up to the talking-point. You think, the
first hour after your arrival, that they must have heard some report to
your disadvantage, or that you misunderstood your letter of invitation,
or that you came on the wrong day; but no, you find in due course that
you _were_ invited, you were expected, and they are doing for you the
best they know how, and treating you as they suppose a guest ought to be
treated.
If you are a warm-hearted, jovial fellow, and go on feeling your way
discreetly, you gradually thaw quite a little place round yourself in
the domestic circle, till, by the time you are ready to leave, you
really begin to think it is agreeable to stay, and resolve that you will
come again. They are nice people; they like you; at last you have got
to feeling at home with them.
Three months after, you go to see them again, when, lo! there you are,
back again just where you were at first. The little spot which you had
thawed out is frozen over again, and again you spend all your visit in
thawing it and getting your hosts limbered and in a state for
comfortable converse.
The first evening that I spent in the wide, roomy front-parlor, with
Judge Evans, his wife, and daughters, fully accounted for the change in
Emmy’s letters. Rooms, I verily believe, get saturated with the aroma of
their spiritual atmosphere; and there are some so stately, so correct,
that they would paralyze even the friskiest kitten or the most impudent
Scotch terrier. At a glance, you perceive, on entering, that nothing but
correct deportment, an erect posture, and strictly didactic conversation
is possible there.
The family, in fact, were all eminently didactic, bent on improvement,
laboriously useful. Not a good work or charitable enterprise could put
forth its head in the neighborhood, of which they were not the support
and life. Judge Evans was the stay and staff of the village and township
of ----; he bore up the pillars thereof. Mrs. Evans was known in the
gates for all the properties and deeds of the virtuous woman, as set
forth by Solomon; the heart of her husband did safely trust in her. But
when I saw them, that evening, sitting, in erect propriety, in their
respective corners each side of the great, stately fireplace, with its
tall, glistening brass andirons, its mantel adorned at either end with
plated candlesticks, with the snuffer-tray in the middle,--she so
collectedly measuring her words, talking in all those well-worn grooves
of correct conversation which are designed, as the phrase goes, to
“entertain strangers,” and the Misses Evans, in the best of grammar and
rhetoric, and in most proper time and way possible, showing themselves
for what they were, most high-principled, well-informed, intelligent
women,--I set myself to speculate on the cause of the extraordinary
sensation of stiffness and restraint which pervaded me, as if I had been
dipped in some petrifying spring and was beginning to feel myself
slightly crusting over on the exterior.
This kind of conversation is such as admits quite easily of one’s
carrying on another course of thought within; and so, as I found myself
like a machine, striking in now and then in good time and tune, I looked
at Judge Evans, sitting there so serene, self-poised, and cold, and
began to wonder if he had ever been a boy, a young man,--if Mrs. Evans
ever was a girl,--if he was ever in love with her, and what he did when
he was.
I thought of the lock of Emmy’s hair which I had observed in John’s
writing-desk in days when he was falling in love with her,--of sun dry
little movements in which at awkward moments I had detected my grave and
serious gentleman when I had stumbled accidentally upon the pair in
moonlight strolls or retired corners,--and wondered whether the models
of propriety before me had ever been convicted of any such human
weaknesses. Now, to be sure, I could as soon imagine the stately tongs
to walk up and kiss the shovel as conceive of any such bygone effusion
in those dignified individuals. But how did they get acquainted? how
came they ever to be married?
I looked at John, and thought I saw him gradually stiffening and
subsiding into the very image of his father. As near as a young fellow
of twenty-five can resemble an old one of sixty-two, he was growing to
be exactly like him, with the same upright carriage, the same silence
and reserve. Then I looked at Emmy: she, too, was changed,--she, the
wild little pet, all of whose pretty individualities were dear to
us,--that little unpunctuated scrap of life’s poetry, full of little
exceptions referable to no exact rule, only to be tolerated under the
wide score of poetic license. Now, as she sat between the two Misses
Evans, I thought I could detect a bored, anxious expression on her
little mobile face,--an involuntary watchfulness and self-consciousness,
as if she were trying to be good on some quite new pattern. She seemed
nervous about some of my jokes, and her eye went apprehensively to her
mother-in-law in the corner; she tried hard to laugh and make things go
merrily for me; she seemed sometimes to look an apology for me to them,
and then again for them to me. For myself, I felt that perverse
inclination to shock people which sometimes comes over one in such
situations. I had a great mind to draw Emmy on to my knee and commence a
brotherly romp with her, to give John a thump on his very upright back,
and to propose to one of the Misses Evans to strike up a waltz, and get
the parlor into a general whirl, before the very face and eyes of
propriety in the corner: but “the spirits” were too strong for me; I
couldn’t do it.
I remembered the innocent, saucy freedom with which Emmy used to treat
her John in the days of their engagement,--the little ways, half loving,
half mischievous, in which she alternately petted and domineered over
him. _Now_ she called him “Mr. Evans,” with an anxious affectation of
matronly gravity. Had they been lecturing her into these conjugal
proprieties? Probably not. I felt sure, by what I now experienced in
myself, that, were I to live in that family one week, all deviations
from the one accepted pattern of propriety would fall off, like
many-colored sumach-leaves after the first hard frost. I began to feel
myself slowly stiffening, my courage getting gently chilly. I tried to
tell a story, but had to mangle it greatly, because I felt in the air
around me that parts of it were too vernacular and emphatic; and then,
as a man who is freezing makes desperate efforts to throw off the
spell, and finds his brain beginning to turn, so I was beginning to be
slightly insane, and was haunted with a desire to say some horribly
improper or wicked thing which should start them all out of their
chairs. Though never given to profane expressions, I perfectly hankered
to let out a certain round, unvarnished, wicked word, which I knew would
create a tremendous commotion on the surface of this enchanted
mill-pond,--in fact, I was so afraid that I should make some such mad
demonstration, that I rose at an early hour and begged leave to retire.
Emmy sprang up with apparent relief, and offered to get my candle and
marshal me to my room.
When she had ushered me into the chilly hospitality of that stately
apartment, she seemed suddenly disenchanted. She set down the candle,
ran to me, fell on my neck, nestled her little head under my coat,
laughing and crying, and calling me her dear old boy; she pulled my
whiskers, pinched my ear, rummaged my pockets, danced round me in a sort
of wild joy, stunning me with a volley of questions, without stopping to
hear the answer to one of them; in short, the wild little elf of old
days seemed suddenly to come back to me, as I sat down and drew her on
to my knee.
“It does look so like home to see you, Chris!--dear, dear home!--and the
dear old folks! There never, never was such a home!--everybody there did
just what they wanted to, didn’t they, Chris?--and we love each other,
don’t we?”
“Emmy,” said I, suddenly, and very improperly, “you aren’t happy here.”
“Not happy?” she said, with a half-frightened look,--“what makes you say
so? O, you are mistaken. I have everything to make me happy. I should be
very unreasonable and wicked, if I were not. I am very, very happy, I
assure you. Of course, you know, everybody can’t be like our folks at
home. _That_ I should not expect, you know,--people’s ways are
different,--but then, when you know people are so good, and all that,
why, of course you must be thankful, be happy. It’s better for me to
learn to control my feelings, you know, and not give way to impulses.
They are all so good here, they never give way to their feelings,--they
always do right. O, they are quite wonderful!”
“And agreeable?” said I.
“O Chris, we mustn’t think so much of that. They certainly aren’t
pleasant and easy, as people at home are; but they are never cross, they
never scold, they always are good. And we oughtn’t to think so much of
living to be happy; we ought to think more of doing right, doing our
duty, don’t you think so?”
“All undeniable truth, Emmy; but, for all that, John seems stiff as a
ramrod, and their front-parlor is like a tomb. You mustn’t let them
petrify him.”
Her face clouded over a little.