Life is what we make it. The same scenes wear a very different
appearance to an ingenuous youth "in the bright morning of his virtues,
in the full spring blossom of his hopes," and to the disappointed wretch
who gazes on them "with the eyes of sour misanthropy." The horse that
was turned by his benevolent owner into a carpenter's shop, with a pair
of green spectacles prefixed to his nose, and mistook the dry pine
shavings for his legitimate fodder, was very much in the condition of a
youth looking upon life and yielding to the natural enthusiasm of his
unwarped spirit. Like the noble brute, however, the young man is
undeceived as soon as he tries to sustain himself with the vanities
which look so tempting and nutritious. He may, like a Wolsey, a Charles
V., or a Napoleon, attain to the heights of power before the delusive
glasses drop off; but even though the moment be delayed until he lies
gasping in the clutch of that monarch to whom the most absolute of
sovereigns and the most radical of republicans alike must yield
allegiance, it is sure to come, and show him the ashes that lay hid
beneath the fair, ripe-looking rind of the fruit he climbed so high to
obtain. Life passes before us like a vast panorama, day by day and year
by year unrolling and disclosing new scenes to charm us into
self-forgetfulness. At one time, we breathe the bracing air of the
mountains; at another, our eyes are gladdened by the sight of sunshiny
meadows, or of fertile and far-reaching prairies; and then the towered
city, with its grove of masts and its busy wharves, makes all mere
natural beauty seem insignificant in comparison with the enterprise and
ambition of man; until, at last, the canvas is rolled away, the music
ceases, the lights are put out, and we are left to realize that all in
which we delighted was but an illusion and a "fleeting show."
Nevertheless, in spite of the vanities that surround us,--in spite of
the sublime world-sickness of Solomon and the Preacher, and the fierce
satire of Juvenal, (who was as anxious to ascertain the precise weight
of Hannibal as if that illustrious _dux_ had been a
prize-fighter,)--there is considerable reality in life. The existence of
so much sham and make-believe implies the existence of the real and
true. Sir Thomas Browne tells us that "in seventy or eighty years a man
may have a deep gust of the world"; and it were indeed melancholy if any
one with hair as gray as mine should look despairingly over the field of
human existence and effort, and cry, "All is barren."
Life, as I have before said, is whatever we choose to make it. Its true
philosophy is that divine art which enables us to transmute its every
moment into the pure gold of heroic and changeless immortality. Without
that philosophy, it is impossible for the world not to seem at times as
it did to the desponding Danish prince, "a sterile promontory," and a
"foul and pestilent congregation of vapours." Without it, life is like
an elaborate piece of embroidery, looked at from the wrong side; we
cannot but acknowledge the brilliancy of some of its threads, and the
delicate texture of the work, but its lack of system, and of any
appearance of utility, fatigues the mind that hungers after perfection,
and tempts it to doubt the divine wisdom and goodness from which it
originated. With it, however, we gaze with admiration and awe upon the
front of the same marvellous work. Our sense is no longer puzzled by any
straggling threads, or loose ends; the exquisite colours, the contrast
of light and shade, and the perfect symmetry and harmony of the design,
fill the heart of the beholder with wonder and delight, and draw him
nearer to the source of those ineffable perfections which are but
imperfectly symbolized in the marvels of the visible universe.
The philosophy which can do all this is _sincerity_. "I think sincerity
is better than grace," says Mr. T. Carlyle; and the Scotch savage is
right. All the amenities of life that spring from any other source than
a true heart, are but gratuitous hypocrisy. The kind-hearted knight whom
I have already quoted showed how highly he esteemed this virtue when he
said, "Swim smoothly in the stream of nature, _and live but one man_."
This double existence, that most of us support,--that is, what we really
are, and what we wish to be considered,--is the source of many of our
faults, and most of our vexation and wretchedness. He is the truly happy
man who forgets that "appearances must be kept up," and remembers only
that "each of us is as great as he appears in the sight of his Creator,
and no greater." A great French philosopher has truly said, "How many
controversies would be terminated, if the disputants were obliged to
speak out exactly what they thought!" And surely he might have gone
farther in the same line of thought; for how much heartburning, domestic
unhappiness, dishonesty, and shameful poverty might be prevented, if my
neighbour Jinkins and his wife were content to pass in the world for
what they are, instead of assuming a princely style of living that only
makes their want of true refinement more apparent, and if Johnson and
his wife could be induced not to imitate the vulgar follies of the
Jinkinses! Believe me, incredulous reader, there is more wisdom in old
Sir Thomas's exhortation to "live but one man" than appears at first
sight.
But to leave this great primary virtue, which policy teaches most men to
practise, though they love it not,--there are two or three principles of
action which I have found very useful in my career, and which form a
part of my philosophy of life. The first is, never to anticipate
troubles. Many years ago, I was travelling in a part of our common
country not very thickly settled, and, coming to a place where two roads
met, I applied, in my doubt as to which one I ought to take, to an old
fellow (with a pair of shoulders like those of Hercules, and a face on
which half a century of sunshine, and storm, and toddies had made an
indelible record) who was repairing a rickety fence by the wayside. He
scanned me with a look that seemed to take in not only my personal
appearance, but the genealogy of my brave ancestor, who might have
fallen in a duel if he had not learned how "to distinguish between the
man and the act," and then directed me to turn to the left, as that road
saved some three or four miles of the distance to the farm-house to
which I was journeying. As it was spring-time, I manifested some anxiety
to know whether the freshets, which had been having quite a run of
business in some parts of the country, had done any damage to a bridge
which I knew I must cross if I took the shorter road. He sneered at my
forethought, and said he supposed that the bridge was all right, and
that I had better "go ahead, and see." I was acting upon his advice,
when a shout from his hoarse, nasal voice caused me to look back. "I
say, young man," he bawled out to me, "never cross a bridge till you
come to it!" There was wisdom in the old man's rough-spoken
sentence--"solid chunks of wisdom," as Captain Ed'ard Cuttle would fain
express it--and it sank deep into my memory. There are very few of us
who have not a strong propensity to diminish our present strength by
entertaining fears of future weakness. If we could content ourselves to
"act in the living present,"--if we could keep these telescopic evils
out of sight, and use all our energies in grappling with the
difficulties that actually beset our path,--how much more we should
achieve, and how greatly would our sum of happiness be increased!
Another most salutary principle in my philosophy is, never to allow
myself to be frightened until I have examined and fairly established the
necessity of such a humiliation. I adopted this principle in my
childhood, being led to it in the following manner: I was visiting my
grandfather, who lived in a fine old mansion-house in the country, with
high wainscotings, capacious fireplaces, heavy beams in the ceilings,
and wide-arching elms overshadowing the snug porch where two or three
generations had made love. Sixty years and more have elapsed since that
happy time, yet it seems fresher in my memory than the events of only
quarter of a century back. My grandfather was a lover of books, and
possessed a good deal of general information. He thought it as advisable
to keep up with the history of his own times as to be skilled in that of
empires long since passed away. It is not to be wondered at that he
should have treasured every newspaper--especially every foreign
journal--that he could lay his hands upon. It was under his auspices
that I first read the dreadful story of the Reign of Terror, and
acquired my anti-revolutionary principles.
I shall never forget the bright autumnal afternoon when the mail coach
from Boston brought a package of books and papers to my grandfather. It
was the last friendly favour, in fact the last communication, that he
ever received from his old Tory friend, Mr. Barmesyde, whom I mentioned
with respect in a former essay; for that genial old gentleman died in
London not long after. The parcel had made a quick transit for those
days, Mr. Barmesyde's letter being dated only forty-six days before it
was opened by my grandsire, and we enjoyed the strong fragrance of its
uncut contents together. The old gentleman seized upon a copy of Burke's
splendid Essay on the French Revolution, which the package contained,
and left me to revel in the newspapers, which were full of the dreadful
details of that bloody Saturnalia. I got leave from my grandfather (who
was so deep in Burke that he answered me at random) to sit up an hour
later than usual. Terrible as all the things of which I read seemed to
my young mind, there was a fascination about the details of that
sanguinary orgie that completely enchanted me. My imagination was full
of horrible shapes when I was obliged to leave the warm, cheerful
parlour, and Robespierre, Danton, and Marat were the infernal
chamberlains that attended me as I went up the broad, creaking staircase
unwillingly to bed. A fresh north-west breeze was blowing outside, and
the sere woodbines and honeysuckles that filled the house with
fragrance, and gave it such a rural look in summer, startled me with
their struggles to escape from bondage. Had it been spring, my young
imagination was so excited that I should have feared that they might
imitate the insurgents of whom I had been reading and begin to shoot! In
the night my troubled slumbers were disturbed by a noise that seemed to
me louder than the discharge of a heavy cannon. I sat up in the high,
old-fashioned bed, and glared around the room, which was somewhat
lighted by the beams of the setting moon. There was no mistake about my
personal identity--I was neither royalist nor jacobin; there was no
doubt that I was in the best "spare chamber" of my grandfather's house,
and not in the Bastile, and that the dark-looking thing in the corner
was a solid mahogany chest of drawers, and not a guillotine; but all
these things only served to increase my terror when I noticed a dark
form standing near the foot of the bed and staring at me with pale,
fiery eyes. I rubbed my own eyes hard, and pinched myself severely, to
make sure that I was awake. The room was as still as the great chamber
in the pyramid of Cheops. I could hear the old clock tick at the foot of
the stairs as plainly as if I had been shut up in its capacious case. In
the midst of my perturbation it made every fibre of my frame tremble by
striking _one_ with a solemn clangour that I thought must have waked
every sleeper in the house. The stillness that followed was deeper and
more terrifying than before. I heard distinctly the breathing of the
monster at the foot of the bed. I tried to whistle at the immovable
shape, but I had lost the power to pucker. At last, I formed a desperate
resolution. I knew that, if the being whose big, fierce eyes filled me
with terror were a genuine supernatural fiend, it was all over with me,
and I might as well give up at once. But, if perchance a human form were
hid beneath that dreadful disguise, there was some room for hope of
ultimate escape. To settle this point, therefore, became necessary to my
peace of mind, and I determined that it should be done. Bending up "each
corporal agent to the terrible feat," I slid quietly out of bed. The
monster was as motionless as before, but I noticed that his head was
covered with a white cloth, which made his head seem ghastlier than
ever. Setting my teeth firmly together, and clinching my little fists to
persuade myself that I was not afraid, I made the last, decisive effort.
I walked across the room, and stood face to face with that formidable
shape. My grandfather's best coat hung there against the wall, its
velvet collar protected from the dust by a white cloth, and the two gilt
buttons on its back glittering in the moonlight. This was the tremendous
presence that had appalled me. The weakness in the knees, the chattering
of my teeth, and the profuse perspiration which followed my recognition
of that harmless garment, bore witness to the severity of my fright.
Before I crawled back into the warm bed, I resolved never in future to
yield to fear, until I had ascertained that there was no escape from it;
and I have had many occasions since to act upon that principle.
Speaking of fear, a friend of mine has a favourite maxim, "Always do
what you are afraid to do;" to which (in a limited sense, so far as it
relates to bodily fear) I subscribed even in my boyhood. I was returning
one evening to my grandfather's house, during one of my vacation visits,
and yielded to the base sentiment of timidity so far as to choose the
long way thither by the open road, rather than to take the short cut,
through the graveyard and a little piece of woodland, which was the
ordinary path in the daytime. I pursued my way, thinking of what I had
done, until I got within sight of the old mansion and its guardian elms,
when shame for my own cowardice compelled me to retrace my steps a
quarter of a mile or more, and take the pathway I had so foolishly
dreaded. The victory then achieved has lasted to this hour. Dead people
and their habitations have not affrighted me since; indeed, some grave
men whom I have met have excited my mirth rather than my fears.
But overcome our fears and our propensity to borrow trouble, as we
may,--in spite of all our philosophy, life is a severe task. I have
heard of a worthy Connecticut parson of the old school, who enlarged
upon the goodness of that Providence which dealt out time to a man,
divided into minutes, and hours, and days, and months, and years,
instead of giving it to him, as it were, in a lump, or in so large a
quantity that he could not conveniently use it! Laugh as much as you
please, gentle reader, at the seeming absurdity of the venerable divine,
but do not neglect the great truth which inspired his thought. Do not
forget what a great mercy it is that we are obliged to live but one day
at a time. Do not overlook the loving kindness which softens the memory
of past sorrows, and conceals from us those which are to come. I have no
respect for that newest heresy of our age, which pretends to read the
secrets of the unseen world, nor any sympathy with those morbid minds
that yearn to tear away the veil which infinite wisdom and mercy hangs
between us and the future. With all our boasted learning we know little
enough; but that little is far too much for our happiness. How many of
our trials and afflictions could we have borne, if we had been able to
foresee their full extent and to anticipate their combined poignancy?
Truly we might say with Shakespeare,--
"O, if this were seen,
The happiest youth--viewing his progress through,
What perils past, what crosses to ensue--
Would shut the book, and sit him down and die."
He only is the true philosopher who uses life as the usurer does his
gold, and employs each shining hour so as to insure an ever-increasing
rate of interest. He does not bury his gift, nor waste it in frivolity.
Like the old Doge of Venice, he grows old but does not wear out:
_Senescit, non segnescit_. And he truly lives twice, as an old classical
poet expresses it, inasmuch as he renews his enjoyment of the past in
the recollection of his good actions and of pleasures "such as leave no
sting behind."