A LAYER OF WAFFLES.
Several months had passed along since we had enjoyed the society of
Governor Wiseman, Doctor Heavyasbricks and Fred Quizzle. At our especial
call they had come again.
The evening air was redolent with waffles baked in irons that had given
them the square imprint which has come down through the ages as the only
orthodox pattern.
No sooner had our friends seated themselves at the tea-table than--
Quizzle began: I see, Governor Wiseman, that the races have just come off
in England. What do you think of horse-racing?
Wiseman.--That has become a very important question for every moralist to
answer. I see that last week England took carriage and horses and went out
to Epsom Downs to see the Derby races. The race was won by Sir George
Frederick; that is the name of the successful horse. All the particulars
come by telegraph. There is much now being done for the turf in this
country as well as in England, and these horses are improved year by year.
I wonder if the race of men who frequent these entertainments are as much
improved as the horses? I like horses very much, but I like men better. So
far as we can judge, the horses are getting the best part of these
exercises, for they never bet, and always come home sober. If the horses
continue to come up as much as they have, and our sporting friends continue
to go down in the same ratio, by an inevitable law of progression we shall
after a while have two men going round the course neck and neck, while
Dexter and Sir George Frederick are on the judges' stand deciding which
man is the winner.
Quizzle.--But do you not, Governor Wiseman, believe in out-door sports and
recreations?
Yes, said the governor, but it ought to be something that helps a man as
well as the brute. I prefer those recreations that are good both for a
man's body and soul. We want our entire nature developed.
Two thousand people one morning waited at the depot in Albany for the
arrival of the remains of the great pugilist, Heenan. Then they covered the
coffin with immortelles. No wonder they felt badly. The poor fellow's work
was done. He had broken the last nose. He had knocked out the last tooth.
He had bunged up the last eye. He had at last himself thrown up the sponge.
The dead hero belonged to the aristocracy of hard-hitters. If I remember
rightly, he drew the first blood in the conflict with one who afterward
became one of the rulers of the nation--the Honorable John Morrissey,
member of Congress of the United States and chief gambler at Saratoga.
There is just now an attempt at the glorification of muscle. The man who
can row the swiftest, or strike a ball the farthest, or drop the strongest
wrestler is coming to be of more importance. Strong muscle is a grand thing
to have, but everything depends on how you use it. If Heenan had become a
Christian, he would have made a capital professor in Polemic Theology. If
the Harvard or Yale student shall come in from the boat-race and apply his
athletic strength to rowing the world out of the breakers, we say "All
hail!" to him. The more physical force a man has, the better; but if Samson
finds nothing more useful to do than carrying of gate-posts, his strong
muscle is only a nuisance.
By all means let us culture physical energy. Let there be more gymnasiums
in our colleges and theological seminaries. Let the student know how to
wield oar and bat, and in good boyish wrestle see who is the strongest. The
health of mental and spiritual work often depends on physical health. If I
were not opposed to betting, I would lay a wager that I can tell from the
book column in any of the newspapers or magazines of the land the condition
of each critic's liver and spleen at the time of his writing.
A very prominent literary man apologized to me the other day for his
merciless attack on one of my books, saying that he felt miserable that
morning and must pitch into something; and my book being the first one on
the table, he pitched into that. Our health decides our style of work. If
this world is to be taken for God, we want more sanctified muscle. The man
who comes to his Christian work having had sound sleep the night before,
and the result of roast beef rare in his organism, can do almost anything.
Luther was not obliged to nurse his appetite with any plantation bitters,
but was ready for the coarsest diet, even the "Diet of Worms."
But while I advocate all sports, and exercises, and modes of life that
improve the physical organism, I have no respect for bone, and nerve, and
muscle in the abstract. Health is a fine harp, but I want to know what tune
you are going to play on it. I have not one daisy to put on the grave of a
dead pugilist or mere boat-racer, but all the garlands I can twist for the
tomb of the man who serves God, though he be as physically weak as Richard
Baxter, whose ailments were almost as many as his books, and they numbered
forty.
At this last sentence the company at the table, forgetful of the presence
of Doctor Heavyasbricks, showed some disposition at good humor, when the
doctor's brows lifted in surprise, and he observed that he thought a man
with forty ailments was a painful spectacle, and ought to be calculated to
depress a tea-table rather than exhilarate it.
"But, Governor Wiseman," said Quizzle, "do you not think that it is
possible to combine physical, mental and spiritual recreations?"
Oh yes, replied the governor; I like this new mode of mingling religion
with summer pleasures. Soon the Methodists will be shaking out their tents
and packing their lunch-baskets and buying their railroad and steamboat
tickets for the camp-meeting grounds. Martha's Vineyard, Round Lake, Ocean
Grove and Sea Cliff will soon mingle psalms and prayers with the voice of
surf and forest. Rev. Doctor J.H. Vincent, the silver trumpet of
Sabbath-schoolism, is marshaling a meeting for the banks of Chautauqua Lake
which will probably be the grandest religious picnic ever held since the
five thousand sat down on the grass and had a surplus of provision to take
home to those who were too stupid to go. From the arrangement being made
for that meeting in August, I judge there will be so much consecrated
enthusiasm that there may be danger that some morning, as the sun strikes
gloriously through the ascending mist of Chautauqua Lake, our friends may
all go up in a chariot of fire, leaving our Sunday-schools in a bereft
condition. If they do go up in that way, may their mantle or their straw
hat fall this way!
Why not have all our churches and denominations take a summer airing? The
breath of the pine woods or a wrestle with the waters would put an end to
everything like morbid religion. One reason why the apostles had such
healthy theology is that they went-a-fishing. We would like to see the day
when we will have Presbyterian camp-meetings, and Episcopalian
camp-meetings, and Baptist camp-meetings, and Congregational camp-meetings,
or, what would be still better, when, forgetful of all minor distinctions,
we could have a church universal camp-meeting. I would like to help plant
the tent-pole for such a convocation.
Quizzle.--Do you not think, governor, that there are inexpensive modes of
recreation which are quite as good as those that absorb large means?
Yes, said the governor; we need to cut the coat according to our cloth.
When I see that the Prince of Wales is three hundred thousand dollars in
debt, notwithstanding his enormous income, I am forcibly reminded that it
is not the amount of money a man gets that makes him well off, but the
margin between the income and the outgo. The young man who while he makes a
dollar spends a dollar and one cent is on the sure road either to
bankruptcy or the penitentiary.
Next to the evil of living beyond one's means is that of spending all one's
income. There are multitudes who are sailing so near shore that a slight
wind in the wrong direction founders them. They get on well while the times
are usual and the wages promptly paid; but a panic or a short period of
sickness, and they drop helpless. Many a father has gone with his family in
a fine carriage drawn by a spanking team till he came up to his grave; then
he lay down, and his children have got out of the carriage, and not only
been compelled to walk, but to go barefoot. Against parsimony and
niggardliness I proclaim war; but with the same sentence I condemn those
who make a grand splash while they live, leaving their families in
destitution when they die.
Quizzle.--Where, governor, do you expect to recreate this coming summer?
Wiseman.--Have not yet made up my mind. The question is coming up in all
our households as to the best mode of vacation. We shall all need rest. The
first thing to do is to measure the length of your purse; you cannot make a
short purse reach around Saratoga and the White Mountains. There may be as
much health, good cheer and recuperation in a country farmhouse where the
cows come up every night and yield milk without any chalk in it.
What the people of our cities need is quiet. What the people of the country
need is sightseeing. Let the mountains come to New York and New York go to
the mountains. The nearest I ever get to heaven in this world is lying flat
down on my back under a tree, looking up through the branches, five miles
off from a post-office or a telegraph station. But this would be torture to
others.
Independent of what others do or say, let us in the selection of summer
recreations study our own temperament and finances. It does not pay to
spend so much money in July and August that you have to go pinched and half
mad the rest of the year. The healthiest recreations do not cost much. In
boyhood, with a string and a crooked pin attached to it, I fished up more
fun from the mill-pond than last summer with a five-dollar apparatus I
caught among the Franconia Mountains.
There is a great area of enjoyment within the circumference of one dollar
if you only know how to make the circuit. More depends upon ourselves than
upon the affluence of our surroundings. If you are compelled to stay home
all summer, you may be as happy as though you went away. The enjoyment of
the first of July, when I go off, is surpassed by nothing but the first of
September, when I come home.
There being a slight pause in the conversation, Doctor Heavyasbricks woke
gradually up and began to move his lips and to show strong symptoms of
intention to ask for himself a question. He said: I have been attending the
anniversaries in New York, and find that they are about dead. Wiseman, can
you tell me what killed them?
Governor Wiseman replied: It is a great pity that the anniversaries are
dead. They once lived a robust life, but began some fifteen years ago to
languish, and have finally expired. To the appropriate question, What
killed them? I answer, Peregrination was one of the causes. There never has
been any such place for the anniversaries as the Broadway Tabernacle. It
was large and social and central. When that place was torn down, the
anniversaries began their travels. Going some morning out of the warm
sunshine into some cathedral-looking place, they got the chills, and under
the dark stained glass everything looked blue. In the afternoon they would
enter some great square hall where everything was formal.
It is almost impossible to have a genial and successful meeting in a square
hall. When in former days the country pastor said to his congregation,
"Meet me at the New York anniversaries," they all knew where to go; but
after the old Broadway Tabernacle went down, the aforesaid congregation
might have looked in five or six places and not found their minister. The
New York anniversaries died on the street between the old Tabernacle and
St. Paul's Methodist Cathedral.
Prolix reports also helped to kill the patient. Nothing which was not in
its nature immortal could have survived these. The secretary would read
till he got out of wind, and would then say that the remainder of the
report would be found in the printed copies in the pews. The speakers
following had the burden of galvanizing an exhausted meeting, and the
Christian man who attended the anniversary on retiring that evening had the
nightmare in the shape of a portly secretary sitting astride his chest
reading from a huge scroll of documents.
Diluted Christian oratory also helped to kill the anniversaries. The men
whom we heard in our boyhood on the Broadway platform believed in a whole
Bible, and felt that if the gospel did not save the world nothing ever
would; consequently, they spoke in blood-red earnestness and made the place
quake with their enthusiasm. There came afterward a weak-kneed stock of
ministers who thought that part of the Bible was true, if they were not
very much mistaken, and that, on the whole, religion was a good thing for
most people, certainly if they had weak constitutions, and that man could
be easily saved if we could get the phrenologist to fix up his head, and
the gymnasium to develop his muscle, and the minister to coax him out of
his indiscretions. Well, the anniversaries could not live on pap and
confectionery, and so they died for lack of strong meat.
But the day of resurrection will come. Mark that! The tide of Bible
evangelism will come up again. We may be dead, but our children will see
it. New York will be thronged with men and women who will come up once a
year to count the sheaves of harvest, and in some great building thronged
from the platform to the vestibule an aroused Christian audience will
applaud the news, just received by telegraph, of a nation born in a day,
and sing with more power than when Thomas Hastings used to act as
precentor:
"The year of jubilee has come;
Return, ye ransom'd sinners, home."
Quizzle.--You speak, governor, of the ruinous effect of prolixity in
religious service. How long ought a public service continue?
Wiseman.--There is much discussion in the papers as to how long or short
sermons and prayers ought to be. Some say a discourse ought to last thirty
minutes, and others forty, and others an hour, and prayers should be three
minutes long, or five, or fifteen. You might as well discuss how long a
frock-coat ought to be, or how many ounces of food a man ought to eat. In
the one case, everything depends upon the man's size; in the other,
everything on the capacity of his stomach. A sermon or a prayer ought to go
on as long as it is of any profit. If it is doing no good, the sermon is
half an hour too long, though it take only thirty minutes. If the audience
cough, or fidget, or shuffle their feet, you had better stop praying. There
is no excuse, for a man's talking or praying too long if he have good
eyesight and hearing.
But suppose a man have his sermon written and before him. You say he must
go through with it? Oh no. Let him skip a few leaves. Better sacrifice
three or four sheets of sermon-paper than sacrifice the interest of your
hearers. But it is a silly thing for a man in a prayer-meeting or pulpit to
stop merely because a certain number of minutes have expired while the
interest is deepening--absurd as a hunter on the track of a roebuck, and
within two minutes of bringing down its antlers, stopping because his wife
said that at six o'clock precisely he must be home to supper. Keep on
hunting till your ammunition gives out.
Still, we must all admit that the danger is on the side of prolixity. The
most interesting prayers we ever hear are by new converts, who say
everything they have to say and break down in one minute. There are men
who, from the way they begin their supplications, indicate a long siege.
They first pray you into a good frame, and then pray you out. They take
literally what Paul meant to be figurative: "Pray without ceasing."
Quizzle.--I see there was no lack of interest when the brewers' convention
met the other day in Boston, and that in their longest session the
attention did not flag.
Wiseman.--Yes; I see that speeches were made on the beneficial use of
fermented liquors. The announcement was made that during the year 8,910,823
barrels of the precious stuff had been manufactured. I suppose that while
the convention was there Boston must have smelt like one great ale-pitcher.
The delegates were invited to visit the suburbs of the city. Strange that
nobody thought of inviting them to visit the cemeteries and graveyards,
especially the potter's field, where thousands of their victims are buried.
Perhaps you are in sympathy with these brewers, and say that if people
would take beer instead of alcohol drunkenness would cease. But for the
vast majority who drink, beer is only introductory to something stronger.
It is only one carriage in the same funeral. Do not spell it b-e-e-r, but
spell it b-i-e-r. May the lightnings of heaven strike and consume all the
breweries from river Penobscot to the Golden Horn!
Quizzle.--I see, governor, that you were last week in Washington. How do
things look there?
Wiseman.--Very well. The general appearance of our national capital never
changes. It is always just as far from the Senate-chamber to the White
House; indeed, so far that many of our great men have never been able to
travel it. There are the usual number of petitioners for governmental
patronage hanging around the hotels and the congressional lobbies. They are
willing to take almost anything they can get, from minister to Spain to
village postmaster. They come in with the same kind of carpet-bags, look
stupid and anxious for several days, and having borrowed money enough from
the member from their district to pay their fare, take the cars for home,
denouncing the administration and the ungratefulness of republics.
I think that the two houses of Congress are the best and most capable of
any almost ever assembled. Of course there is a dearth of great men. Only
here and there a Senator or Representative you ever before heard of.
Indeed, the nuisances of our national council in other days were the great
men who took, in making great speeches, the time that ought to have been
spent in attending to business. We all know that it was eight or ten
"honorable" bloats of the last thirty years who made our chief
international troubles.
Our Congress is made up mostly of practical every-day men. They have no
speeches to make, and no past political reputation to nurse, and no
national fame to achieve. I like the new crop of statesmen better than the
old, although it is a shorter crop. They do not drink so much rum, and not
so large a proportion of them will die of delirium tremens. They may not
have such resounding names as some of their predecessors, but I prefer a
Congress of ordinary men to a group of Senators and Representatives
overawed and led about by five or six overgrown, political Brobdingnagians.
While in Washington we had a startling occurrence. A young man in high
society shot another young man, who fell dead instantly.
I wonder that there is not more havoc with human life in this day, when it
is getting so popular to carry firearms. Most of our young men, and many of
our boys, do not feel themselves in tune unless they have a pistol
accompaniment. Men are locked up or fined if found with daggers or
slung-shot upon their persons, but revolvers go free. There is not half so
much danger from knife as pistol. The former may let the victim escape
minus a good large slice, but the latter is apt to drop him dead. On the
frontiers, or engaged in police duty, firearms may be necessary; but in the
ordinary walk of life pistols are, to say the least, a superfluity. Better
empty your pockets of these dangerous weapons, and see that your sons do
not carry them. In all the ordinary walks of life an honest countenance and
orderly behavior are sufficient defence. You had better stop going into
society where you must always be ready to shoot somebody.
But do not think, my dear Fred, that I am opposed to everything because I
have this evening spoken against so many different things. I cannot take
the part of those who pride themselves in hurling a stout No against
everything.
A friend called my attention to the fact that Sanballat wanted to hold
consultation with Nehemiah in the plain of O-no. That is the place where
more people stay, to-day, than in any other. They are always protesting,
throwing doubt on grand undertakings; and while you are in the mountain of
O-yes, they spend their time on the plain of O-no. In the harness of
society they are breeching-straps, good for nothing but to hold back.
You propose to call a minister. All the indications are that he is the
right man. Nine-tenths of the congregation are united in his favor. The
matter is put to vote. The vast majority say "Ay!" the handful of opponents
responded "O no!"
You propose to build a new church. About the site, the choice of architect,
the upholstery, the plumbing and the day of dedication there is almost a
unanimity. You hope that the crooked sticks will all lie still, and that
the congregation will move in solid phalanx. But not so. Sanballat sends
for Nehemiah, proposing to meet him in the plain of O-no.
Some men were born backward, and have been going that way ever since.
Opposition to everything has become chronic. The only way they feel
comfortable is when harnessed with the face toward the whiffletree and
their back to the end of the shafts. They may set down their name in the
hotel register as living in Boston, Chicago, Savannah or Brooklyn, but they
really have been spending all their lives on the plain of O-no. There let
them be buried with their face toward the west, for in that way they will
lie more comfortably, as other people are buried with their face to the
east. Do not impose upon them by putting them in the majority. O-no!
We rejoice that there seems more liberality among good men, and that they
have made up their minds to let each one work in his own way. The
scalping-knives are being dulled.
The cheerfulness and good humor which have this year characterized our
church courts is remarkable and in strong contrast with the old-time
ecclesiastical fights which shook synods and conferences. Religious
controversies always have been the most bitter of all controversies; and
when ministers do fight, they fight like vengeance. Once a church court
visiting a place would not only spend much of their own time in sharp
contention, but would leave the religious community to continue the quarrel
after adjournment. Now they have a time of good cheer while in convention,
and leave only one dispute behind them among the families, and that arising
from the fact that each one claims it had the best ministers and elders at
their house. Contention is a child of the darkness, peace the daughter of
the light. The only help for a cow's hollow horn is a gimlet-hole bored
through it, and the best way to cure religious combatants is to let more
gospel light through their antlers.
As we sat at the head of the table interested in all that was going on, and
saw Governor Wiseman with his honorable name, and Quizzle and Heavyasbricks
with their unattractive titles, we thought of the affliction of an awkward
or ill-omened name.
When there are so many pleasant names by which children may be called, what
right has a parent to place on his child's head a disadvantage at the
start? Worse than the gauntlet of measles and whooping-cough and mumps
which the little ones have to run is this parental outrage.
What a struggle in life that child will have who has been baptized Jedekiah
or Mehitabel! If a child is "called after" some one living, let that one be
past mid-life and of such temperament that there shall be no danger of his
becoming an absconder and a cheat. As far as possible let the name given be
short, so that in the course of a lifetime there be not too many weeks or
months taken up in the mere act of signature. The burdens of life are heavy
enough without putting upon any one the extra weight of too much
nomenclature. It is a sad thing when an infant has two bachelor uncles,
both rich and with outrageous names, for the baby will have to take both
titles, and that is enough to make a case of infant mortality.
Quizzle.--You seem to me, governor, to be more sprightly at every
interview.
Well, that is so, but I do not know how long it will last; stout people
like myself often go the quickest.
There is a constant sympathy expressed by robust people for those of
slight physical constitution. I think the sympathy ought to turn in the
opposite direction. It is the delicate people who escape the most fearful
disorders, and in three cases out of four live the longest. These gigantic
structures are almost always reckless of health. They say, "Nothing hurts
me," and so they stand in draughts, and go out into the night air to cool
off, and eat crabs at midnight, and doff their flannels in April, and
carelessly get their feet wet.
But the delicate people are shy of peril. They know that disease has been
fishing for them for twenty years, and they keep away from the hook. No
trout can be caught if he sees the shadow of the sportsman on the brook.
These people whom everybody expects to die, live on most tenaciously.
I know of a young lady who evidently married a very wealthy man of
eighty-five years on the ground he was very delicate, and with reference to
her one-third. But the aged invalid is so careful of his health, and the
young wife so reckless of hers, that it is now uncertain whether she will
inherit his store-houses or he inherit her wedding-rings.
Health and longevity depend more upon caution and intelligent management of
one's self than upon original physical outfit. Paul's advice to the sheriff
is appropriate to people in all occupations: "Do thyself no harm!"
Besides that, said the governor, I have moved and settled in very
comfortable quarters since I was at this table before. The house I have
moved in is not a better house, but somehow I feel more contented.
Most of our households are quieted after the great annual upsetting. The
last carpet is tacked down. The strings that were scattered along the
floor have been rolled up in a ball. We begin to know the turns in the
stairway. Things are settling down, and we shall soon feel at home in our
new residence. If it is a better house than we had, do not let us be too
proud of the door-plate, nor worship too ardently the fine cornice, nor
have any idea that superb surroundings are going to make us any happier
than we were in the old house.
Set not your affections on luxurious upholstery and spacious drawing-room.
Be grateful and be humble.
If the house is not as large nor in as good neighborhood as the one you
formerly occupied, make the best of it. It is astonishing what a good time
you may have in a small room. Your present neighbors are just as kind as
those you left, if you only knew them. Do not go around your house sticking
up your nose at the small pantry, and the ugly mantel-pieces, and the low
ceiling. It is a better place than your divine Master occupied, and to say
the least you are no better than He. If you are a Christian, you are on
your way to a King's mansion, and you are now only stopping a little in the
porter's lodge at the gate. Go down in the dark lanes of the city and see
how much poorer off many of your fellow-citizens are. If the heart be
right, the home will be right.