Of course the reading of the poem at the end of the last paper has left
a deep impression. I strongly suspect that something very much like
love-making is going on at our table. A peep under the lid of the
sugar-bowl has shown me that there is another poem ready for the
company. That receptacle is looked upon with an almost tremulous
excitement by more than one of The Teacups. The two Annexes turn towards
the mystic urn as if the lots which were to determine their destiny were
shut up in it. Number Five, quieter, and not betraying more curiosity
than belongs to the sex at all ages, glances at the sugarbowl now
and then; looking so like a clairvoyant, that sometimes I cannot help
thinking she must be one. There is a sly look about that young Doctor's
eyes, which might imply that he knows something about what the silver
vessel holds, or is going to hold. The Tutor naturally falls under
suspicion, as he is known to have written and published poems. I
suppose the Professor and myself have hardly been suspected of writing
love-poems; but there is no telling,--there is no telling. Why may not
some one of the lady Teacups have played the part of a masculine lover?
George Sand, George Eliot, Charles Egbert Craddock, made pretty good
men in print. The authoress of “Jane Eyre” was taken for a man by many
persons. Can Number Five be masquerading in verse? Or is one of the
two Annexes the make believe lover? Or did these girls lay their heads
together, and send the poem we had at our last sitting to puzzle the
company? It is certain that the Mistress did not write the poem. It
is evident that Number Seven, who is so severe in his talk about
rhymesters, would not, if he could, make such a fool of himself as to
set up for a “poet.” Why should not the Counsellor fall in love and
write verses? A good many lawyers have been “poets.”
Perhaps the next poem, which may be looked for in its proper place, may
help us to form a judgment. We may have several verse-writers among us,
and if so there will be a good opportunity for the exercise of judgment
in distributing their productions among the legitimate claimants. In
the mean time, we must not let the love-making and the song-writing
interfere with the more serious matters which these papers are expected
to contain.
Number Seven's compendious and comprehensive symbolism proved
suggestive, as his whimsical notions often do. It always pleases me to
take some hint from anything he says when I can, and carry it out in a
direction not unlike that of his own remark. I reminded the company of
his enigmatical symbol.
You can divide mankind in the same way, I said. Two words, each of
two letters, will serve to distinguish two classes of human beings who
constitute the principal divisions of mankind. Can any of you tell what
those two words are?
“Give me five letters,” cried Number Seven, “and I can solve your
problem! F-o-o-l-s,--those five letters will give you the first and
largest half. For the other fraction”--
Oh, but, said I, I restrict you absolutely to two letters. If you are
going to take five, you may as well take twenty or a hundred.
After a few attempts, the company gave it up. The nearest approach to
the correct answer was Number Five's guess of Oh and Ah: Oh signifying
eternal striving after an ideal, which belongs to one kind of nature;
and Ah the satisfaction of the other kind of nature, which rests at ease
in what it has attained.
Good! I said to Number Five, but not the answer I am after. The great
division between human beings is into the Ifs and the Ases.
“Is the last word to be spelt with one or two s's?” asked the young
Doctor.
The company laughed feebly at this question. I answered it soberly. With
one s. There are more foolish people among the Ifs than there are among
the Ases.
The company looked puzzled, and asked for an explanation.
This is the meaning of those two words as I interpret them: If it
were,--if it might be,--if it could be,--if it had been. One portion
of mankind go through life always regretting, always whining, always
imagining. These are the people whose backbones remain cartilaginous all
their lives long, as do those of certain other vertebrate animals,--the
sturgeons, for instance. A good many poets must be classed with this
group of vertebrates.
As it is,--this is the way in which the other class of people look at
the conditions in which they find themselves. They may be optimists or
pessimists, they are very largely optimists,--but, taking things just as
they find them, they adjust the facts to their wishes if they can; and
if they cannot, then they adjust themselves to the facts. I venture to
say that if one should count the Ifs and the Ases in the conversation
of his acquaintances, he would find the more able and important persons
among them--statesmen, generals, men of business--among the Ases, and
the majority of the conspicuous failures among the Ifs. I don't know but
this would be as good a test as that of Gideon,--lapping the water or
taking it up in the hand. I have a poetical friend whose conversation
is starred as thick with ifs as a boiled ham is with cloves. But another
friend of mine, a business man, whom I trust in making my investments,
would not let me meddle with a certain stock which I fancied, because,
as he said, “there are too many ifs in it. As it looks now, I would n't
touch it.”
I noticed, the other evening, that some private conversation was going
on between the Counsellor and the two Annexes. There was a mischievous
look about the little group, and I thought they were hatching some plot
among them. I did not hear what the English Annex said, but the American
girl's voice was sharper, and I overheard what sounded to me like,
“It is time to stir up that young Doctor.” The Counsellor looked very
knowing, and said that he would find a chance before long. I was rather
amused to see how readily he entered into the project of the young
people. The fact is, the Counsellor is young for his time of life; for
he already betrays some signs of the change referred to in that once
familiar street song, which my friend, the great American surgeon,
inquired for at the music-shops under the title, as he got it from the
Italian minstrel,
“Silva tredi mondi goo.”
I saw, soon after this, that the Counsellor was watching his chance to
“stir up the young Doctor.”
It does not follow, because our young Doctor's bald spot is slower in
coming than he could have wished, that he has not had time to form
many sound conclusions in the calling to which he has devoted himself
Vesalius, the father of modern descriptive anatomy, published his great
work on that subject before he was thirty. Bichat, the great anatomist
and physiologist, who died near the beginning of this century, published
his treatise, which made a revolution in anatomy and pathology, at about
the same age; dying soon after he had reached the age of thirty. So,
possibly the Counsellor may find that he has “stirred up” a young man
who, can take care of his own head, in case of aggressive movements in
its direction.
“Well, Doctor,” the Counsellor began, “how are stocks in the measles
market about these times? Any corner in bronchitis? Any syndicate in the
vaccination business?” All this playfully.
“I can't say how it is with other people's patients; most of my families
are doing very well without my help, at this time.”
“Do tell me, Doctor, how many families you own. I have heard it said
that some of our fellow-citizens have two distinct families, but you
speak as if you had a dozen.”
“I have, but not so large a number as I should like. I could take care
of fifteen or twenty more without: having to work too hard.”
“Why, Doctor, you are as bad as a Mormon. What do you mean by calling
certain families yours?”
“Don't you speak about my client? Don't your clients call you their
lawyer? Does n't your baker, does n't your butcher, speak of the
families he supplies as his families?”
“To be sure, yes, of course they do; but I had a notion that a man had as
many doctors as he had organs to be doctored.”
“Well, there is some truth in that; but did you think the old-fashioned
family doctor was extinct, a fossil like the megatherium?”
“Why, yes, after the recent experience of a friend of mine, I did begin
to think that there would soon be no such personage left as that same
old-fashioned family doctor. Shall I tell you what that experience was?”
The young Doctor said he should be mightily pleased to hear it. He was
going to be one of those old-fogy practitioners himself.
“I don't know,” the Counsellor said, “whether my friend got all the
professional terms of his story correctly, nor whether I have got them
from him without making any mistakes; but if I do make blunders in some
of the queer names, you can correct me. This is my friend's story:
“My family doctor,” he said, “was a very sensible man, educated at
a school where they professed to teach all the specialties, but not
confining himself to any one branch of medical practice. Surgical
practice he did not profess to meddle with, and there were some classes
of patients whom he was willing to leave to the female physician. But
throughout the range of diseases not requiring exceptionally skilled
manual interference, his education had authorized him to consider
himself, and he did consider himself, qualified to undertake the
treatment of all ordinary cases--It so happened that my young wife was
one of those uneasy persons who are never long contented with their
habitual comforts and blessings, but always trying to find something a
little better, something newer, at any rate. I was getting to be near
fifty years old, and it happened to me, as it not rarely does to people
at about that time of life, that my hair began to fall out. I spoke
of it to my doctor, who smiled, said it was a part of the process
of reversed evolution, but might be retarded a little, and gave me a
prescription. I did not find any great effect from it, and my wife
would have me go to a noted dermatologist. The distinguished specialist
examined my denuded scalp with great care. He looked at it through a
strong magnifier. He examined the bulb of a fallen hair in a powerful
microscope. He deliberated for a while, and then said, 'This is a case
of alopecia. It may perhaps be partially remedied. I will give you a
prescription.' Which he did, and told me to call again in a fortnight.
At the end of three months I had called six times, and each time got a
new recipe, and detected no difference in the course of my 'alopecia.'
After I had got through my treatment, I showed my recipes to my family
physician; and we found that three of them were the same he had used,
familiar, old-fashioned remedies, and the others were taken from a
list of new and little-tried prescriptions mentioned in one of the last
medical journals, which was lying on the old doctor's table. I might as
well have got no better under his charge, and should have got off much
cheaper.
“The next trouble I had was a little redness of the eyes, for which
my doctor gave me a wash; but my wife would have it that I must see an
oculist. So I made four visits to an oculist, and at the last visit the
redness was nearly gone,--as it ought to have been by that time. The
specialist called my complaint conjunctivitis, but that did not make it
feel any better nor get well any quicker. If I had had a cataract or any
grave disease of the eye, requiring a nice operation on that delicate
organ, of course I should have properly sought the aid of an expert,
whose eye, hand, and judgment were trained to that special business; but
in this case I don't doubt that my family doctor would have done just
as well as the expert. However, I had to obey orders, and my wife
would have it that I should entrust my precious person only to the most
skilful specialist in each department of medical practice.
“In the course of the year I experienced a variety of slight
indispositions. For these I was auriscoped by an aurist, laryngoscoped
by a laryngologist, ausculted by a stethoscopist, and so on, until a
complete inventory of my organs was made out, and I found that if I
believed all these searching inquirers professed to have detected in my
unfortunate person, I could repeat with too literal truth the words of
the General Confession, 'And there is no health in us.' I never heard
so many hard names in all my life. I proved to be the subject of a long
catalogue of diseases, and what maladies I was not manifestly guilty of
I was at least suspected of harboring. I was handed along all the way
from alopecia, which used to be called baldness, to zoster, which
used to be known as shingles. I was the patient of more than a dozen
specialists. Very pleasant persons, many of them, but what a fuss they
made about my trifling incommodities! 'Please look at that photograph.
See if there is a minute elevation under one eye.'
“'On which side?' I asked him, for I could not be sure there was
anything different on one side from what I saw on the other.
“'Under the left eye. I called it a pimple; the specialist called it
acne. Now look at this photograph. It was taken after my acne had been
three months under treatment. It shows a little more distinctly than in
the first photograph, does n't it?'
“'I think it does,' I answered. 'It does n't seem to me that you gained
a great deal by leaving your customary adviser for the specialist.'
“'Well,' my friend continued, 'following my wife's urgent counsel, I
kept on, as I told you, for a whole year with my specialists, going
from head to foot, and tapering off with a chiropodist. I got a deal
of amusement out of their contrivances and experiments. Some of them
lighted up my internal surfaces with electrical or other illuminating
apparatus. Thermometers, dynamometers, exploring-tubes, little mirrors
that went half-way down to my stomach, tuning-forks, ophthalmoscopes,
percussion-hammers, single and double stethoscopes, speculums,
sphygmometers,--such a battery of detective instruments I had never
imagined. All useful, I don't doubt; but at the end of the year I began
to question whether I should n't have done about as well to stick to my
long tried practitioner. When the bills for 'professional services' came
in, and the new carpet had to be given up, and the old bonnet trimmed
over again, and the sealskin sack remained a vision, we both agreed,
my wife and I, that we would try to get along without consulting
specialists, except in such cases as our family physician considered to
be beyond his skill.'”
The Counsellor's story of his friend's experiences seemed to please the
young Doctor very much. It “stirred him up,” but in an agreeable way;
for, as he said, he meant to devote himself to family practice, and not
to adopt any limited class of cases as a specialty. I liked his views so
well that I should have been ready to adopt them as my own, if they had
been challenged.
The young Doctor discourses.
“I am very glad,” he said, “that we have a number of practitioners
among us who confine themselves to the care of single organs and their
functions. I want to be able to consult an oculist who has done nothing
but attend to eyes long enough to know all that is known about their
diseases and their treatment,--skilful enough to be trusted with the
manipulation of that delicate and most precious organ. I want an aurist
who knows all about the ear and what can be done for its disorders. The
maladies of the larynx are very ticklish things to handle, and nobody
should be trusted to go behind the epiglottis who has not the tactus
eruditus. And so of certain other particular classes of complaints.
A great city must have a limited number of experts, each a final
authority, to be appealed to in cases where the family physician finds
himself in doubt. There are operations which no surgeon should be
willing to undertake unless he has paid a particular, if not an
exclusive, attention to the cases demanding such operations. All this I
willingly grant.
“But it must not be supposed that we can return to the methods of the
old Egyptians--who, if my memory serves me correctly, had a special
physician for every part of the body--without falling into certain
errors and incurring certain liabilities.
“The specialist is much like other people engaged in lucrative business.
He is apt to magnify his calling, to make much of any symptom which will
bring a patient within range of his battery of remedies. I found a case
in one of our medical journals, a couple of years ago, which illustrates
what I mean. Dr. __________ of Philadelphia, had a female patient with a
crooked nose,--deviated septum, if our young scholars like that better.
She was suffering from what the doctor called reflex headache. She had
been to an oculist, who found that the trouble was in her eyes. She
went from him to a gynecologist, who considered her headache as owing
to causes for which his specialty had the remedies. How many more
specialists would have appropriated her, if she had gone the rounds of
them all, I dare not guess; but you remember the old story of the siege,
in which each artisan proposed means of defence which he himself was
ready to furnish. Then a shoemaker said, 'Hang your walls with new
boots.'
“Human nature is the same with medical specialists as it was with
ancient cordwainers, and it is too possible that a hungry practitioner
may be warped by his interest in fastening on a patient who, as he
persuades himself, comes under his medical jurisdiction. The specialist
has but one fang with which to seize and bold his prey, but that fang is
a fearfully long and sharp canine. Being confined to a narrow field of
observation and practice, he is apt to give much of his time to curious
study, which may be magnifique, but is not exactly la guerre against the
patient's malady. He divides and subdivides, and gets many varieties of
diseases, in most respects similar. These he equips with new names, and
thus we have those terrific nomenclatures which are enough to frighten
the medical student, to say nothing of the sufferers staggering under
this long catalogue of local infirmities. The 'old-fogy' doctor,
who knows the family tendencies of his patient, who 'understands his
constitution,' will often treat him better than the famous specialist,
who sees him for the first time, and has to guess at many things 'the
old doctor' knows from his previous experience with the same patient and
the family to which he belongs.
“It is a great luxury to practise as a specialist in almost any class
of diseases. The special practitioner has his own hours, hardly needs a
night-bell, can have his residence out of the town in which he exercises
his calling, in short, lives like a gentleman; while the hard-worked
general practitioner submits to a servitude more exacting than that of
the man who is employed in his stable or in his kitchen. That is the
kind of life I have made up my mind to.”
The teaspoons tinkled all round the table. This was the usual sign of
approbation, instead of the clapping of hands.
The young Doctor paused, and looked round among The Teacups. “I beg your
pardon,” he said, “for taking up so much of your time with medicine.
It is a subject that a good many persons, especially ladies, take an
interest in and have a curiosity about, but I have no right to turn this
tea-table into a lecture platform.”
“We should like to hear you talk longer about it,” said the English
Annex. “One of us has thought of devoting herself to the practice of
medicine. Would you lecture to us; if you were a professor in one of the
great medical schools?”
“Lecture to students of your sex? Why not, I should like to know? I
don't think it is the calling for which the average woman is especially
adapted, but my teacher got a part of his medical education from a lady,
Madame Lachapelle; and I don't see why, if one can learn from a woman,
he may not teach a woman, if he knows enough.”
“We all like a little medical talk now and then,” said Number Five, “and
we are much obliged to you for your discourse. You are specialist enough
to take care of a sprained ankle, I suppose, are you not?”
“I hope I should be equal to that emergency,” answered the young Doctor;
“but I trust you are not suffering from any such accident?”
“No,” said Number Five, “but there is no telling what may happen. I
might slip, and get a sprain or break a sinew, or something, and I
should like to know that there is a practitioner at hand to take care of
my injury. I think I would risk myself in your bands, although you are
not a specialist. Would you venture to take charge of the case?”
“Ah, my dear lady,” he answered gallantly, “the risk would be in the
other direction. I am afraid it would be safer for your doctor if he
were an older man than I am.”
This is the first clearly, indisputably sentimental outbreak which has
happened in conversation at our table. I tremble to think what will come
of it; for we have several inflammable elements in our circle, and a
spark like this is liable to light on any one or two of them.
I was not sorry that this medical episode came in to vary the usual
course of talk at our table. I like to have one--of an intelligent
company, who knows anything thoroughly, hold the floor for a time, and
discourse upon the subject which chiefly engages his daily thoughts
and furnishes his habitual occupation. It is a privilege to meet such a
person now and then, and let him have his full swing. But because there
are “professionals” to whom we are willing to listen as oracles, I
do not want to see everybody who is not a “professional” silenced or
snubbed, if he ventures into any field of knowledge which he has not
made especially his own. I like to read Montaigne's remarks about
doctors, though he never took a medical degree. I can even enjoy the
truth in the sharp satire of Voltaire on the medical profession. I
frequently prefer the remarks I hear from the pew after the sermon to
those I have just been hearing from the pulpit. There are a great many
things which I never expect to comprehend, but which I desire very
much to apprehend. Suppose that our circle of Teacups were made up of
specialists,--experts in various departments. I should be very willing
that each one should have his innings at the proper time, when the
company were ready for him. But the time is coming when everybody will
know something about every thing. How can one have the illustrated
magazines, the “Popular Science Monthly,” the Psychological journals,
the theological periodicals, books on all subjects, forced on his
attention, in their own persons, so to speak, or in the reviews which
analyze and pass judgment upon them, without getting some ideas which
belong to many provinces of human intelligence? The air we breathe is
made up of four elements, at least: oxygen, nitrogen, carbonic acid gas,
and knowledge. There is something quite delightful to witness in the
absorption and devotion of a genuine specialist. There is a certain
sublimity in that picture of the dying scholar in Browning's “A
Grammarian's Funeral:”--
“So with the throttling hands of death at strife,
Ground he at grammar;
Still, through the rattle, parts of speech were rife;
While he could stammer
He settled Hoti's business--let it be--
Properly based Oun
Gave us the doctrine of the enclitic De,
Dead from the waist down.”
A genuine enthusiasm, which will never be satisfied until it has pumped
the well dry at the bottom of which truth is lying, always excites our
interest, if not our admiration.
One of the pleasantest of our American writers, whom we all remember
as Ik Marvel, and greet in his more recent appearance as Donald Grant
Mitchell, speaks of the awkwardness which he feels in offering to
the public a “panoramic view of British writers in these days of
specialists,--when students devote half a lifetime to the analysis
of the works of a single author, and to the proper study of a single
period.”
He need not have feared that his connected sketches of “English Lands,
Letters and Kings” would be any less welcome because they do not pretend
to fill up all the details or cover all the incidents they hint in
vivid outline. How many of us ever read or ever will read Drayton's
“Poly-Olbion?” Twenty thousand long Alexandrines are filled with
admirable descriptions of scenery, natural productions, and historical
events, but how many of us in these days have time to read and inwardly
digest twenty thousand Alexandrine verses? I fear that the specialist is
apt to hold his intelligent reader or hearer too cheap. So far as I
have observed in medical specialties, what he knows in addition to
the knowledge of the well-taught general practitioner is very largely
curious rather than important. Having exhausted all that is practical,
the specialist is naturally tempted to amuse himself with the
natural history of the organ or function he deals with; to feel as
a writing-master does when he sets a copy,--not content to shape the
letters properly, but he must add flourishes and fancy figures, to let
off his spare energy.
I am beginning to be frightened. When I began these papers, my idea was
a very simple and innocent one. Here was a mixed company, of various
conditions, as I have already told my readers, who came together
regularly, and before they were aware of it formed something like a club
or association. As I was the patriarch among them, they gave me the
name some of you may need to be reminded of; for as these reports are
published at intervals, you may not remember the fact that I am what The
Teacups have seen fit to call The Dictator.
Now, what did I expect when I began these papers, and what is it that
has begun to frighten me?
I expected to report grave conversations and light colloquial passages
of arms among the members of the circle. I expected to hear, perhaps
to read, a paper now and then. I expected to have, from time to time, a
poem from some one of The Teacups, for I felt sure there must be among
them one or more poets,--Teacups of the finer and rarer translucent kind
of porcelain, to speak metaphorically.
Out of these conversations and written contributions I thought I might
make up a readable series of papers; a not wholly unwelcome string
of recollections, anticipations, suggestions, too often perhaps
repetitions, that would be to the twilight what my earlier series had
been to the morning.
I hoped also that I should come into personal relations with my old
constituency, if I may call my nearer friends, and those more distant
ones who belong to my reading parish, by that name. It is time that
I should. I received this blessed morning--I am telling the literal
truth--a highly flattering obituary of myself in the shape of an extract
from “Le National” of the 10th of February last. This is a bi-weekly
newspaper, published in French, in the city of Plattsburg, Clinton
County, New York. I am occasionally reminded by my unknown friends that
I must hurry up their autograph, or make haste to copy that poem they
wish to have in the author's own handwriting, or it will be too late;
but I have never before been huddled out of the world in this way. I
take this rather premature obituary as a hint that, unless I come to
some arrangement with my well-meaning but insatiable correspondents, it
would be as well to leave it in type, for I cannot bear much longer the
load they lay upon me. I will explain myself on this point after I have
told my readers what has frightened me.
I am beginning to think this room where we take our tea is more like a
tinder-box than a quiet and safe place for “a party in a parlor.” It is
true that there are at least two or three incombustibles at our table,
but it looks to me as if the company might pair off before the season
is over, like the crew of Her Majesty's ship the Mantelpiece,--three
or four weddings clear our whole table of all but one or two of the
impregnables. The poem we found in the sugar-bowl last week first opened
my eyes to the probable state of things. Now, the idea of having to tell
a love-story,--perhaps two or three love-stories,--when I set out
with the intention of repeating instructive, useful, or entertaining
discussions, naturally alarms me. It is quite true that many things
which look to me suspicious may be simply playful. Young people (and we
have several such among The Teacups) are fond of make-believe courting
when they cannot have the real thing,--“flirting,” as it used to be
practised in the days of Arcadian innocence, not the more modern and
more questionable recreation which has reached us from the home of the
cicisbeo. Whatever comes of it, I shall tell what I see, and take the
consequences.
But I am at this moment going to talk in my own proper person to my
own particular public, which, as I find by my correspondence, is a very
considerable one, and with which I consider myself in exceptionally
pleasant relations.
I have read recently that Mr. Gladstone receives six hundred letters a
day. Perhaps he does not receive six hundred letters every day, but if
he gets anything like half that number daily, what can he do with them?
There was a time when he was said to answer all his correspondents. It
is understood, I think, that he has given up doing so in these later
days.
I do not pretend that I receive six hundred or even sixty letters a day,
but I do receive a good many, and have told the public of the fact
from time to time, under the pressure of their constantly increasing
exertions. As it is extremely onerous, and is soon going to be
impossible, for me to keep up the wide range of correspondence which has
become a large part of my occupation, and tends to absorb all the vital
force which is left me, I wish to enter into a final explanation with
the well-meaning but merciless taskmasters who have now for many years
been levying their daily tax upon me. I have preserved thousands of
their letters, and destroyed a very large number, after answering most
of them. A few interesting chapters might be made out of the letters
I have kept,--not only such as are signed by the names of well-known
personages, but many from unknown friends, of whom I had never heard
before and have never heard since. A great deal of the best writing the
languages of the world have ever known has been committed to leaves that
withered out of sight before a second sunlight had fallen upon them. I
have had many letters I should have liked to give the public, had their
nature admitted of their being offered to the world. What straggles
of young ambition, finding no place for its energies, or feeling its
incapacity to reach the ideal towards which it was striving! What
longings of disappointed, defeated fellow-mortals, trying to find a
new home for themselves in the heart of one whom they have amiably
idealized! And oh, what hopeless efforts of mediocrities and
inferiorities, believing in themselves as superiorities, and stumbling
on through limping disappointments to prostrate failure! Poverty comes
pleading, not for charity, for the most part, but imploring us to find a
purchaser for its unmarketable wares. The unreadable author particularly
requests us to make a critical examination of his book, and report
to him whatever may be our verdict,--as if he wanted anything but
our praise, and that very often to be used in his publisher's
advertisements.
But what does not one have to submit to who has become the martyr--the
Saint Sebastian--of a literary correspondence! I will not dwell on the
possible impression produced on a sensitive nature by reading one's own
premature obituary, as I have told you has been my recent experience.
I will not stop to think whether the urgent request for an autograph by
return post, in view of the possible contingencies which might render
it the last one was ever to write, is pleasing or not. At threescore and
twenty one must expect such hints of what is like to happen before long.
I suppose, if some near friend were to watch one who was looking over
such a pressing letter, he might possibly see a slight shadow flit
over the reader's features, and some such dialogue might follow as that
between Othello and Iago, after “this honest creature” has been giving
breath to his suspicions about Desdemona:
“I see this hath a little dash'd your spirits.
Not a jot, not a jot.
.............
“My lord, I see you're moved.”
And a little later the reader might, like Othello, complain,
“I have a pain upon my forehead here.”
Nothing more likely. But, for myself, I have grown callous to all such
allusions. The repetition of the Scriptural phrase for the natural term
of life is so frequent that it wears out one's sensibilities.
But how many charming and refreshing letters I have received! How often
I have felt their encouragement in moments of doubt and depression, such
as the happiest temperaments must sometimes experience!
If the time comes when to answer all my kind unknown friends, even by
dictation, is impossible, or more than I feel equal to, I wish to refer
any of those who may feel disappointed at not receiving an answer to the
following general acknowledgments:
I. I am always grateful for any attention which shows me that I am
kindly remembered.--II. Your pleasant message has been read to me, and
has been thankfully listened to.--III. Your book (your essay) (your
poem) has reached me safely, and has received all the respectful
attention to which it seemed entitled. It would take more than all the
time I have at my disposal to read all the printed matter and all the
manuscripts which are sent to me, and you would not ask me to attempt
the impossible. You will not, therefore, expect me to express a critical
opinion of your work.--IV. I am deeply sensible to your expressions of
personal attachment to me as the author of certain writings which have
brought me very near to you, in virtue of some affinity in our ways of
thought and moods of feeling. Although I cannot keep up correspondences
with many of my readers who seem to be thoroughly congenial with myself,
let them be assured that their letters have been read or heard with
peculiar gratification, and are preserved as precious treasures.
I trust that after this notice no correspondent will be surprised to
find his or her letter thus answered by anticipation; and that if one
of the above formulae is the only answer he receives, the unknown friend
will remember that he or she is one of a great many whose incessant
demands have entirely outrun my power of answering them as fully as the
applicants might wish and perhaps expect.
I could make a very interesting volume of the letters I have received
from correspondents unknown to the world of authorship, but writing from
an instinctive impulse, which many of them say they have long felt
and resisted. One must not allow himself to be flattered into an
overestimate of his powers because he gets many letters expressing a
peculiar attraction towards his books, and a preference of them to those
with which he would not have dared to compare his own. Still, if the
homo unius libri--the man of one book--choose to select one of our own
writing as his favorite volume, it means something,--not much, perhaps;
but if one has unlocked the door to the secret entrance of one heart, it
is not unlikely that his key may fit the locks of others. What if nature
has lent him a master key? He has found the wards and slid back the
bolt of one lock; perhaps he may have learned the secret of others.
One success is an encouragement to try again. Let the writer of a truly
loving letter, such as greets one from time to time, remember that,
though he never hears a word from it, it may prove one of the best
rewards of an anxious and laborious past, and the stimulus of a still
aspiring future.
Among the letters I have recently received, none is more interesting
than the following. The story of Helen Keller, who wrote it, is told
in the well-known illustrated magazine called “The Wide Awake,” in the
number for July, 1888. For the account of this little girl, now between
nine and ten years old, and other letters of her writing, I must refer
to the article I have mentioned. It is enough to say that she is deaf
and dumb and totally blind. She was seven years old when her teacher,
Miss Sullivan, under the direction of Mr. Anagnos, at the Blind Asylum
at South Boston, began her education. A child fuller of life and
happiness it would be hard to find. It seems as if her soul was flooded
with light and filled with music that had found entrance to it through
avenues closed to other mortals. It is hard to understand how she has
learned to deal with abstract ideas, and so far to supplement the blanks
left by the senses of sight and hearing that one would hardly think of
her as wanting in any human faculty. Remember Milton's pathetic picture
of himself, suffering from only one of poor little Helen's deprivations:
“Not to me returns
Day, or the sweet approach of even or morn,
Or sight of vernal bloom, or summer's rose,
Or flocks, or herds, or human face divine;
But cloud instead, and ever-during dark
Surrounds me, from the cheerful ways of men
Cut off, and for the book of knowledge fair
Presented with a universal blank
Of Nature's works, to me expunged and rased,
And wisdom at one entrance quite shut out.”