There was a great tinkling of teaspoons the other evening, when I took
my seat at the table, where all The Teacups were gathered before my
entrance. The whole company arose, and the Mistress, speaking for them,
expressed the usual sentiment appropriate to such occasions. “Many happy
returns” is the customary formula. No matter if the object of this kind
wish is a centenarian, it is quite safe to assume that he is ready and
very willing to accept as many more years as the disposing powers may
see fit to allow him.
The meaning of it all was that this was my birthday. My friends, near
and distant, had seen fit to remember it, and to let me know in various
pleasant ways that they had not forgotten it. The tables were adorned
with flowers. Gifts of pretty and pleasing objects were displayed on a
side table. A great green wreath, which must have cost the parent oak
a large fraction of its foliage, was an object of special admiration.
Baskets of flowers which had half unpeopled greenhouses, large bouquets
of roses, fragrant bunches of pinks, and many beautiful blossoms I am
not botanist enough to name had been coming in upon me all day long.
Many of these offerings were brought by the givers in person; many came
with notes as fragrant with good wishes as the flowers they accompanied
with their natural perfumes.
How old was I, The Dictator, once known by another equally audacious
title,--I, the recipient of all these favors and honors? I had cleared
the eight-barred gate, which few come in sight of, and fewer, far fewer,
go over, a year before. I was a trespasser on the domain belonging to
another generation. The children of my coevals were fast getting
gray and bald, and their children beginning to look upon the world as
belonging to them, and not to their sires and grandsires. After that
leap over the tall barrier, it looks like a kind of impropriety to keep
on as if one were still of a reasonable age. Sometimes it seems to
me almost of the nature of a misdemeanor to be wandering about in the
preserve which the fleshless gamekeeper guards so jealously. But, on
the other hand, I remember that men of science have maintained that the
natural life of man is nearer fivescore than threescore years and ten.
I always think of a familiar experience which I bring from the French
cafes, well known to me in my early manhood. One of the illustrated
papers of my Parisian days tells it pleasantly enough.
A guest of the establishment is sitting at his little table. He has just
had his coffee, and the waiter is serving him with his petit verre. Most
of my readers know very well what a petit verre is, but there may be
here and there a virtuous abstainer from alcoholic fluids, living among
the bayberries and the sweet ferns, who is not aware that the words,
as commonly used, signify a small glass--a very small glass--of spirit,
commonly brandy, taken as a chasse-cafe, or coffee-chaser. This drinking
of brandy, “neat,” I may remark by the way, is not quite so bad as it
looks. Whiskey or rum taken unmixed from a tumbler is a knock-down blow
to temperance, but the little thimbleful of brandy, or Chartreuse, or
Maraschino, is only, as it were, tweaking the nose of teetotalism.
Well,--to go back behind our brackets,--the guest is calling to the
waiter, “Garcon! et le bain de pieds!” Waiter! and the foot-bath!--The
little glass stands in a small tin saucer or shallow dish, and the
custom is to more than fill the glass, so that some extra brandy rung
over into this tin saucer or cup-plate, to the manifest gain of the
consumer.
Life is a petit verre of a very peculiar kind of spirit. At seventy
years it used to be said that the little glass was full. We should be
more apt to put it at eighty in our day, while Gladstone and Tennyson
and our own Whittier are breathing, moving, thinking, writing, speaking,
in the green preserve belonging to their children and grandchildren,
and Bancroft is keeping watch of the gamekeeper in the distance. But,
returning resolutely to the petit verre, I am willing to concede that
all after fourscore is the bain de pieds,--the slopping over, so to
speak, of the full measure of life. I remember that one who was
very near and dear to me, and who lived to a great age, so that
the ten-barred gate of the century did not look very far off, would
sometimes apologize in a very sweet, natural way for lingering so long
to be a care and perhaps a burden to her children, themselves getting
well into years. It is not hard to understand the feeling, never less
called for than it was in the case of that beloved nonagenarian. I have
known few persons, young or old, more sincerely and justly regretted
than the gentle lady whose memory comes up before me as I write.
Oh, if we could all go out of flower as gracefully, as pleasingly, as we
come into blossom! I always think of the morning-glory as the loveliest
example of a graceful yielding to the inevitable. It is beautiful before
its twisted corolla opens; it is comely as it folds its petals inward,
when its brief hours of perfection are over. Women find it easier
than men to grow old in a becoming way. A very old lady who has kept
something, it may be a great deal, of her youthful feelings, who is
daintily cared for, who is grateful for the attentions bestowed upon
her, and enters into the spirit of the young lives that surround her,
is as precious to those who love her as a gem in an antique setting, the
fashion of which has long gone by, but which leaves the jewel the color
and brightness which are its inalienable qualities. With old men it is
too often different. They do not belong so much indoors as women do.
They have no pretty little manual occupations. The old lady knits or
stitches so long as her eyes and fingers will let her. The old man
smokes his pipe, but does not know what to do with his fingers, unless
he plays upon some instrument, or has a mechanical turn which finds
business for them.
But the old writer, I said to The Teacups, as I say to you, my readers,
labors under one special difficulty, which I am thinking of and
exemplifying at this moment. He is constantly tending to reflect upon
and discourse about his own particular stage of life. He feels that
he must apologize for his intrusion upon the time and thoughts of a
generation which he naturally supposes must be tired of him, if they
ever had any considerable regard for him. Now, if the world of readers
hates anything it sees in print, it is apology. If what one has to say
is worth saying, he need not beg pardon fur saying it. If it is not
worth saying I will not finish the sentence. But it is so hard to
resist the temptation, notwithstanding that the terrible line beginning
“Superfluous lags the veteran” is always repeating itself in his dull
ear!
What kind of audience or reading parish is a man who secured his
constituency in middle life, or before that period, to expect when he
has reached the age of threescore and twenty? His coevals have dropped
away by scores and tens, and he sees only a few units scattered about
here and there, like the few beads above the water after a ship has gone
to pieces. Does he write and publish for those of his own time of life?
He need not print a large edition. Does he hope to secure a hearing from
those who have come into the reading world since his coevals? They have
found fresher fields and greener pastures. Their interests are in the
out-door, active world. Some of them are circumnavigating the planet
while he is hitching his rocking chair about his hearth-rug. Some are
gazing upon the pyramids while he is staring at his andirons. Some are
settling the tariff and fixing the laws of suffrage and taxation while
he is dozing over the weather bulletin, and going to sleep over the
obituaries in his morning or evening paper.
Nature is wiser than we give her credit for being; never wiser than in
her dealings with the old. She has no idea of mortifying them by sudden
and wholly unexpected failure of the chief servants of consciousness.
The sight, for instance, begins to lose something of its perfection long
before its deficiency calls the owner's special attention to it. Very
probably, the first hint we have of the change is that a friend makes
the pleasing remark that we are “playing the trombone,” as he calls it;
that is, moving a book we are holding backward and forward, to get the
right focal distance. Or it may be we find fault with the lamp or
the gas-burner for not giving so much light as it used to. At last,
somewhere between forty and fifty, we begin to dangle a jaunty pair of
eye-glasses, half plaything and half necessity. In due time a pair of
sober, business-like spectacles bestrides the nose. Old age leaps upon
it as his saddle, and rides triumphant, unchallenged, until the darkness
comes which no glasses can penetrate. Nature is pitiless in carrying out
the universal sentence, but very pitiful in her mode of dealing with
the condemned on his way to the final scene. The man who is to be hanged
always has a good breakfast provided for him.
Do not think that the old look upon themselves as the helpless,
hopeless, forlorn creatures which they seem to young people. Do these
young folks suppose that all vanity dies out of the natures of old men
and old women? A dentist of olden time told me that a good-looking young
man once said to him, “Keep that incisor presentable, if you can, till
I am fifty, and then I sha'n't care how I look.” I venture to say that
that gentleman was as particular about his personal appearance and as
proud of his good looks at fifty, and many years after fifty, as he was
in the twenties, when he made that speech to the dentist.
My dear friends around the teacups, and at that wider board where I am
now entertaining, or trying to entertain, my company, is it not as plain
to you as it is to me that I had better leave such tasks as that which I
am just finishing to those who live in a more interesting period of life
than one which, in the order of nature, is next door to decrepitude?
Ought I not to regret having undertaken to report the doings and sayings
of the members of the circle which you have known as The Teacups?
Dear, faithful reader, whose patient eyes have followed my reports
through these long months, you and I are about parting company. Perhaps
you are one of those who have known me under another name, in those
far-off days separated from these by the red sea of the great national
conflict. When you first heard the tinkle of the teaspoons, as the
table was being made ready for its guests, you trembled for me, in the
kindness of your hearts. I do not wonder that you did,--I trembled for
myself. But I remembered the story of Sir Cloudesley Shovel, who was
seen all of a tremor just as he was going into action. “How is this?”
said a brother officer to him. “Surely you are not afraid?” “No,” he
answered, “but my flesh trembles at the thought of the dangers into
which my intrepid spirit will carry me.” I knew the risk of undertaking
to carry through a series of connected papers. And yet I thought it was
better to run that risk, more manly, more sensible, than to give way to
the fears which made my flesh tremble as did Sir Cloudesley Shovel's.
For myself the labor has been a distraction, and one which came at a
time when it was needed. Sometimes, as in one of those poems recently
published,--the reader will easily guess which,--the youthful spirit has
come over me with such a rush that it made me feel just as I did when I
wrote the history of the “One-hoss Shay” thirty years ago. To repeat one
of my comparisons, it was as if an early fruit had ripened on a
graft upon an old, steady-going tree, to the astonishment of all its
later-maturing products. I should hardly dare to say so much as this if
I had not heard a similar opinion expressed by others.
Once committed to my undertaking, there was no turning back. It is true
that I had said I might stop at any moment, but after one or two numbers
it seemed as if there were an informal pledge to carry the series on, as
in former cases, until I had completed my dozen instalments.
Writers and speakers have their idiosyncrasies, their habits, their
tricks, if you had rather call them so, as to their ways of writing
and speaking. There is a very old and familiar story, accompanied by a
feeble jest, which most of my readers may probably enough have met with
in Joe Miller or elsewhere. It is that of a lawyer who could never
make an argument without having a piece of thread to work upon with his
fingers while he was pleading. Some one stole it from him one day, and
he could not get on at all with his speech,--he had lost the thread of
his discourse, as the story had it. Now this is what I myself once
saw. It was at a meeting where certain grave matters were debated in an
assembly of professional men. A speaker, whom I never heard before or
since, got up and made a long and forcible argument. I do not think he
was a lawyer, but he spoke as if he had been trained to talk to juries.
He held a long string in one hand, which he drew through the other band
incessantly, as he spoke, just as a shoe maker performs the motion
of waxing his thread. He appeared to be dependent on this motion. The
physiological significance of the fact I suppose to be that the flow of
what we call the nervous current from the thinking centre to the organs
of speech was rendered freer and easier by the establishment of a
simultaneous collateral nervous current to the set of muscles concerned
in the action I have described.
I do not use a string to help me write or speak, but I must have its
equivalent. I must have my paper and pen or pencil before me to set my
thoughts flowing in such form that they can be written continuously.
There have been lawyers who could think out their whole argument in
connected order without a single note. There are authors,--and I think
there are many,--who can compose and finish off a poem or a story
without writing a word of it until, when the proper time comes, they
copy what they carry in their heads. I have been told that Sir Edwin
Arnold thought out his beautiful “Light of Asia” in this way.
I find the great charm of writing consists in its surprises. When one
is in the receptive attitude of mind, the thoughts which are sprung upon
him, the images which flash through his--consciousness, are a delight
and an excitement. I am impatient of every hindrance in setting down my
thoughts,--of a pen that will not write, of ink that will not flow, of
paper that will not receive the ink. And here let me pay the tribute
which I owe to one of the humblest but most serviceable of my
assistants, especially in poetical composition. Nothing seems more
prosaic than the stylographic pen. It deprives the handwriting of its
beauty, and to some extent of its individual character. The brutal
communism of the letters it forms covers the page it fills with the most
uniformly uninteresting characters. But, abuse it as much as you choose,
there is nothing like it for the poet, for the imaginative writer. Many
a fine flow of thought has been checked, perhaps arrested, by the ill
behavior of a goose-quill. Many an idea has escaped while the author was
dipping his pen in the inkstand. But with the stylographic pen, in the
hands of one who knows how to care for it and how to use it, unbroken
rhythms and harmonious cadences are the natural products of the
unimpeded flow of the fluid which is the vehicle of the author's
thoughts and fancies. So much for my debt of gratitude to the humble
stylographic pen. It does not furnish the proper medium for the
correspondence of intimates, who wish to see as much of their friends'
personality as their handwriting can hold,--still less for the
impassioned interchange of sentiments between lovers; but in writing for
the press its use is open to no objection. Its movement over the paper
is like the flight of a swallow, while the quill pen and the steel pen
and the gold pen are all taking short, laborious journeys, and stopping
to drink every few minutes.
A chief pleasure which the author of novels and stories experiences
is that of becoming acquainted with the characters be draws. It is
perfectly true that his characters must, in the nature of things,
have more or less of himself in their composition. If I should seek an
exemplification of this in the person of any of my Teacups, I should
find it most readily in the one whom I have called Number Seven, the one
with the squinting brain. I think that not only I, the writer, but many
of my readers, recognize in our own mental constitution an occasional
obliquity of perception, not always detected at the time, but plain
enough when looked back upon. What extravagant fancies you and I have
seriously entertained at one time or another! What superstitious notions
have got into our heads and taken possession of its empty chambers,--or,
in the language of science, seized on the groups of nerve-cells in some
of the idle cerebral convolutions!
The writer, I say, becomes acquainted with his characters as he goes on.
They are at first mere embryos, outlines of distinct personalities.
By and by, if they have any organic cohesion, they begin to assert
themselves. They can say and do such and such things; such and such
other things they cannot and must not say or do. The story-writer's and
play-writer's danger is that they will get their characters mixed,
and make A say what B ought to have said. The stronger his imaginative
faculty, the less liable will the writer be to this fault; but not even
Shakespeare's power of throwing himself into his characters prevents
many of his different personages from talking philosophy in the same
strain and in a style common to them all.
You will often observe that authors fall in love with the imaginary
persons they describe, and that they bestow affectionate epithets upon
them which it may happen the reader does not consider in any way called
for. This is a pleasure to which they have a right. Every author of a
story is surrounded by a little family of ideal children, as dear to
him, it may be, as are flesh-and-blood children to their parents. You
may forget all about the circle of Teacups to which I have introduced
you,--on the supposition that you have followed me with some degree of
interest; but do you suppose that Number Five does not continue as a
presence with me, and that my pretty Delilah has left me forever because
she is going to be married?
No, my dear friend, our circle will break apart, and its different
members will soon be to you as if they had never been. But do you think
that I can forget them? Do you suppose that I shall cease to follow the
love (or the loves; which do you think is the true word, the singular
or the plural?) of Number Five and the young Tutor who is so constantly
found in her company? Do you suppose that I do not continue my relations
with the “Cracked Teacup,”--the poor old fellow with whom I have so much
in common, whose counterpart, perhaps, you may find in your own complex
personality?
I take from the top shelf of the hospital department of my library--the
section devoted to literary cripples, imbeciles, failures, foolish
rhymesters, and silly eccentrics--one of the least conspicuous and most
hopelessly feeble of the weak-minded population of that intellectual
almshouse. I open it and look through its pages. It is a story. I have
looked into it once before,--on its first reception as a gift from the
author. I try to recall some of the names I see there: they mean nothing
to me, but I venture to say the author cherishes them all, and cries
over them as he did when he was writing their history. I put the book
back among its dusty companions, and, sitting down in my reflective
rocking-chair, think how others must forget, and how I shall remember,
the company that gathered about this table.
Shall I ever meet any one of them again, in these pages or in any other?
Will the cracked Teacup hold together, or will he go to pieces, and
find himself in that retreat where the owner of the terrible clock which
drove him crazy is walking under the shelter of the high walls? Has the
young Doctor's crown yet received the seal which is Nature's warrant
of wisdom and proof of professional competency? And Number Five and her
young friend the Tutor,--have they kept on in their dangerous intimacy?
Did they get through the tutto tremante passage, reading from the same
old large edition of Dante which the Tutor recommended as the best, and
in reading from which their heads were necessarily brought perilously
near to each other?
It would be very pleasant if I could, consistently with the present
state of affairs, bring these two young people together. I say two young
people, for the one who counts most years seems to me to be really the
younger of the pair. That Number Five foresaw from the first that any
tenderer feeling than that of friendship would intrude itself between
them I do not believe. As for the Tutor, he soon found where he was
drifting. It was his first experience in matters concerning the heart,
and absorbed his whole nature as a thing of course. Did he tell her he
loved her? Perhaps he did, fifty times; perhaps he never had the courage
to say so outright. But sometimes they looked each other straight in the
eyes, and strange messages seemed to pass from one consciousness to the
other. Will the Tutor ask Number Five to be his wife; and if he does,
will she yield to the dictates of nature, and lower the flag of that
fortress so long thought impregnable? Will he go on writing such poems
to her as “The Rose and the Fern” or “I Like You and I Love You,” and be
content with the pursuit of that which he never can attain? That is all
very well, on the “Grecian Urn” of Keats,--beautiful, but not love such
as mortals demand. Still, that may be all, for aught that we have yet
seen.
“Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave
Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;
Bold lover, never, never, canst thou kiss,
Though winning near the goal,--yet do not grieve;
She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,
Forever wilt thou love, and she be fair!
.........................
“More happy love! more happy, happy love!
Forever warm, and still to be enjoyed,
Forever panting and forever young!”
And so, good-bye, young people, whom we part with here. Shadows you have
been and are to my readers; very real you have been and are to me,--as
real as the memories of many friends whom I shall see no more.
As I am not in the habit of indulging in late suppers, the reader need
not think that I shall spread another board and invite him to listen to
the conversations which take place around it. If, from time to time, he
finds a slight refection awaiting him on the sideboard, I hope he may
welcome it as pleasantly as he has accepted what I have offered him from
the board now just being cleared.
..........................
It is a good rule for the actor who manages the popular street drama
of Punch not to let the audience or spectators see his legs. It is very
hard for the writer of papers like these, which are now coming to
their conclusion, to keep his personality from showing itself too
conspicuously through the thin disguises of his various characters. As
the show is now over, as the curtain has fallen, I appear before it
in my proper person, to address a few words to the friends who have
assisted, as the French say, by their presence, and as we use the
word, by the kind way in which they have received my attempts at their
entertainment.
This series of papers is the fourth of its kind which I have offered to
my readers. I may be allowed to look back upon the succession of serial
articles which was commenced more than thirty years ago, in 1857. “The
Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table” was the first of the series. It was
begun without the least idea what was to be its course and its outcome.
Its characters shaped themselves gradually as the manuscript grew under
my hand. I jotted down on the sheet of blotting paper before me the
thoughts and fancies which came into my head. A very odd-looking object
was this page of memoranda. Many of the hints were worked up into formal
shape, many were rejected. Sometimes I recorded a story, a jest, or a
pun for consideration, and made use of it or let it alone as my second
thought decided. I remember a curious coincidence, which, if I have ever
told in print,--I am not sure whether I have or not,--I will tell over
again. I mention it, not for the pun, which I rejected as not very
edifying and perhaps not new, though I did not recollect having seen it.
Mulier, Latin for woman; why apply that name to one of the gentle but
occasionally obstinate sex? The answer was that a woman is (sometimes)
more mulish than a mule. Please observe that I did not like the poor pun
very well, and thought it rather rude and inelegant. So I left it on the
blotter, where it was standing when one of the next numbers of “Punch”
came out and contained that very same pun, which must have been hit upon
by some English contributor at just about the same time I fell upon it
on this side of the Atlantic. This fact may be added to the chapter of
coincidences which belongs to the first number of this series of papers.
The “Autocrat” had the attraction of novelty, which of course was
wanting in the succeeding papers of similar character. The criticisms
upon the successive numbers as they came out were various, but generally
encouraging. Some were more than encouraging; very high-colored in their
phrases of commendation. When the papers were brought together in a
volume their success was beyond my expectations. Up to the present time
the “Autocrat” has maintained its position. An immortality of a whole
generation is more than most writers are entitled to expect. I venture
to think, from the letters I receive from the children and grandchildren
of my first set of readers, that for some little time longer, at least,
it will continue to be read, and even to be a favorite with some of its
readers. Non omnis moriar is a pleasant thought to one who has loved his
poor little planet, and will, I trust, retain kindly recollections of it
through whatever wilderness of worlds he may be called to wander in his
future pilgrimages. I say “poor little planet.” Ever since I had a
ten cent look at the transit of Venus, a few years ago, through the
telescope in the Mall, the earth has been wholly different to me
from what it used to be. I knew from books what a speck it is in the
universe, but nothing ever brought the fact home like the sight of the
sister planet sailing across the sun's disk, about large enough for
a buckshot, not large enough for a full-sized bullet. Yes, I love the
little globule where I have spent more than fourscore years, and I
like to think that some of my thoughts and some of my emotions may live
themselves over again when I am sleeping. I cannot thank all the
kind readers of the “Autocrat” who are constantly sending me their
acknowledgments. If they see this printed page, let them be assured that
a writer is always rendered happier by being told that he has made
a fellow-being wiser or better, or even contributed to his harmless
entertainment. This a correspondent may take for granted, even if his
letter of grateful recognition receives no reply. It becomes more and
more difficult for me to keep up with my correspondents, and I must soon
give it up as impossible.
“The Professor at the Breakfast Table” followed immediately on the
heels of the “Autocrat.” The Professor was the alter ego of the first
personage. In the earlier series he had played a secondary part, and in
this second series no great effort was made to create a character
wholly unlike the first. The Professor was more outspoken, however, on
religious subjects, and brought down a good deal of hard language on
himself and the author to whom he owed his existence. I suppose he
may have used some irritating expressions, unconsciously, but not
unconscientiously, I am sure. There is nothing harder to forgive than
the sting of an epigram. Some of the old doctors, I fear, never pardoned
me for saying that if a ship, loaded with an assorted cargo of the drugs
which used to be considered the natural food of sick people, went to the
bottom of the sea, it would be “all the better for mankind and all the
worse for the fishes.” If I had not put that snapper on the end of
my whip-lash, I might have got off without the ill temper which my
antithesis provoked. Thirty years set that all right, and the same
thirty years have so changed the theological atmosphere that such
abusive words as “heretic” and “infidel,” applied to persons who differ
from the old standards of faith, are chiefly interesting as a test of
breeding, being seldom used by any people above the social half-caste
line. I am speaking of Protestants; how it may be among Roman Catholics
I do not know, but I suspect that with them also it is a good deal a
matter of breeding. There were not wanting some who liked the Professor
better than the Autocrat. I confess that I prefer my champagne in its
first burst of gaseous enthusiasm; but if my guest likes it better after
it has stood awhile, I am pleased to accommodate him. The first of my
series came from my mind almost with an explosion, like the champagne
cork; it startled me a little to see what I had written, and to hear
what people said about it. After that first explosion the flow was
more sober, and I looked upon the product of my wine-press more coolly.
Continuations almost always sag a little. I will not say that of my own
second effort, but if others said it, I should not be disposed to wonder
at or to dispute them.
“The Poet at the Breakfast Table” came some years later. This series of
papers was not so much a continuation as a resurrection. It was a doubly
hazardous attempt, made without any extravagant expectations, and was
received as well as I had any right to anticipate. It differed from the
other two series in containing a poem of considerable length, published
in successive portions. This poem holds a good deal of self-communing,
and gave me the opportunity of expressing some thoughts and feelings not
to be found elsewhere in my writings. I had occasion to read the whole
volume, not long since, in preparation for a new edition, and was
rather more pleased with it than I had expected to be. An old author
is constantly rediscovering himself in the more or less fossilized
productions of his earlier years. It is a long time since I have read
the “Autocrat,” but I take it up now and then and read in it for a few
minutes, not always without some degree of edification.
These three series of papers, “Autocrat,” “Professor,” “Poet,” are all
studies of life from somewhat different points of view. They are largely
made up of sober reflections, and appeared to me to require some lively
human interest to save them from wearisome didactic dulness. What could
be more natural than that love should find its way among the young
people who helped to make up the circle gathered around the table?
Nothing is older than the story of young love. Nothing is newer than
that same old story. A bit of gilding here and there has a wonderful
effect in enlivening a landscape or an apartment. Napoleon consoled the
Parisians in their year of defeat by gilding the dome of the Invalides.
Boston has glorified her State House and herself at the expense of a
few sheets of gold leaf laid on the dome, which shines like a sun in
the eyes of her citizens, and like a star in those of the approaching
traveller. I think the gilding of a love-story helped all three of
these earlier papers. The same need I felt in the series of papers just
closed. The slight incident of Delilah's appearance and disappearance
served my purpose to some extent. But what should I do with Number Five?
The reader must follow out her career for himself. For myself, I think
that she and the Tutor have both utterly forgotten the difference of
their years in the fascination of intimate intercourse. I do not believe
that a nature so large, so rich in affection, as Number Five's is going
to fall defeated of its best inheritance of life, like a vine which
finds no support for its tendrils to twine around, and so creeps along
the ground from which nature meant that love should lift it. I feel as
if I ought to follow these two personages of my sermonizing story until
they come together or separate, to fade, to wither,--perhaps to die, at
last, of something like what the doctors call heart-failure, but which
might more truly be called heart-starvation. When I say die, I do not
mean necessarily the death that goes into the obituary column. It
may come to that, in one or both; but I think that, if they are
never united, Number Five will outlive the Tutor, who will fall into
melancholy ways, and pine and waste, while she lives along, feeling all
the time that she has cheated herself of happiness. I hope that is
not going to be their fortune, or misfortune. Vieille fille fait jeune
mariee. What a youthful bride Number Five would be, if she could only
make up her mind to matrimony! In the mean time she must be left with
her lambs all around her. May heaven temper the winds to them, for they
have been shorn very close, every one of them, of their golden fleece of
aspirations and anticipations.
I must avail myself of this opportunity to say a few words to my distant
friends who take interest enough in my writings, early or recent, to
wish to enter into communication with me by letter, or to keep up a
communication already begun. I have given notice in print that the
letters, books, and manuscripts which I receive by mail are so numerous
that if I undertook to read and answer them all I should have little
time for anything else. I have for some years depended on the assistance
of a secretary, but our joint efforts have proved unable, of late, to
keep down the accumulations which come in with every mail. So many of
the letters I receive are of a pleasant character that it is hard to let
them go unacknowledged. The extreme friendliness which pervades many of
them gives them a value which I rate very highly. When large numbers of
strangers insist on claiming one as a friend, on the strength of what he
has written, it tends to make him think of himself somewhat indulgently.
It is the most natural thing in the world to want to give expression
to the feeling the loving messages from far-off unknown friends must
excite. Many a day has had its best working hours broken into, spoiled
for all literary work, by the labor of answering correspondents whose
good opinion it is gratifying to have called forth, but who were
unconsciously laying a new burden on shoulders already aching. I know
too well that what I say will not reach the eyes of many who might
possibly take a hint from it. Still I must keep repeating it before
breaking off suddenly and leaving whole piles of letters unanswered. I
have been very heavily handicapped for many years. It is partly my own
fault. From what my correspondents tell me, I must infer that I have
established a dangerous reputation for willingness to answer all sorts
of letters. They come with such insinuating humility,--they cannot bear
to intrude upon my time, they know that I have a great many calls upon
it,--and incontinently proceed to lay their additional weight on the
load which is breaking my back.
The hypocrisy of kind-hearted people is one of the most painful
exhibitions of human weakness. It has occurred to me that it might be
profitable to reproduce some of my unwritten answers to correspondents.
If those which were actually written and sent were to be printed
in parallel columns with those mentally formed but not written out
responses and comments, the reader would get some idea of the internal
conflicts an honest and not unamiable person has to go through, when he
finds himself driven to the wall by a correspondence which is draining
his vocabulary to find expressions that sound as agreeably, and signify
as little, as the phrases used by a diplomatist in closing an official
communication.
No. 1. Want my autograph, do you? And don't know how to spell my name.
An a for an e in my middle name. Leave out the l in my last name. Do you
know how people hate to have their names misspelled? What do you suppose
are the sentiments entertained by the Thompsons with a p towards those
who address them in writing as Thomson?
No. 2. Think the lines you mention are by far the best I ever wrote,
hey? Well, I didn't write those lines. What is more, I think they are
as detestable a string of rhymes as I could wish my worst enemy had
written. A very pleasant frame of mind I am in for writing a letter,
after reading yours!
No. 3. I am glad to hear that my namesake, whom I never saw and never
expect to see, has cut another tooth; but why write four pages on the
strength of that domestic occurrence?
No. 4. You wish to correct an error in my Broomstick poem, do you? You
give me to understand that Wilmington is not in Essex County, but in
Middlesex. Very well; but are they separated by running water? Because
if they are not, what could hinder a witch from crossing the line that
separates Wilmington from Andover, I should like to know? I never meant
to imply that the witches made no excursions beyond the district which
was more especially their seat of operations.
As I come towards the end of this task which I had set myself, I wish,
of course, that I could have performed it more to my own satisfaction
and that of my readers. This is a feeling which almost every one must
have at the conclusion of any work he has undertaken. A common and very
simple reason for this disappointment is that most of us overrate our
capacity. We expect more of ourselves than we have any right to, in
virtue of our endowments. The figurative descriptions of the last Grand
Assize must no more be taken literally than the golden crowns, which we
do not expect or want to wear on our heads, or the golden harps, which
we do not want or expect to hold in our hands. Is it not too true that
many religious sectaries think of the last tribunal complacently, as
the scene in which they are to have the satisfaction of saying to the
believers of a creed different from their own, “I told you so”? Are not
others oppressed with the thought of the great returns which will be
expected of them as the product of their great gifts, the very limited
amount of which they do not suspect, and will be very glad to learn,
even at the expense of their self-love, when they are called to
their account? If the ways of the Supreme Being are ever really to be
“justified to men,” to use Milton's expression, every human being may
expect an exhaustive explanation of himself. No man is capable of
being his own counsel, and I cannot help hoping that the ablest of the
archangels will be retained for the defence of the worst of sinners.
He himself is unconscious of the agencies which made him what he is.
Self-determining he may be, if you will, but who determines the self
which is the proximate source of the determination? Why was the A self
like his good uncle in bodily aspect and mental and moral qualities,
and the B self like the bad uncle in look and character? Has not a man
a right to ask this question in the here or in the hereafter,--in this
world or in any world in which he may find himself? If the All-wise
wishes to satisfy his reasonable and reasoning creatures, it will not
be by a display of elemental convulsions, but by the still small voice,
which treats with him as a dependent entitled to know the meaning of
his existence, and if there was anything wrong in his adjustment to
the moral and spiritual conditions of the world around him to have full
allowance made for it. No melodramatic display of warring elements, such
as the white-robed Second Adventist imagines, can meet the need of
the human heart. The thunders and lightnings of Sinai terrified and
impressed the more timid souls of the idolatrous and rebellious caravan
which the great leader was conducting, but a far nobler manifestation of
divinity was that when “the Lord spake unto Moses face to face, as a man
speaketh unto his friend.”
I find the burden and restrictions of rhyme more and more troublesome
as I grow older. There are times when it seems natural enough to employ
that form of expression, but it is only occasionally; and the use of it
as the vehicle of the commonplace is so prevalent that one is not much
tempted to select it as the medium for his thoughts and emotions. The
art of rhyming has almost become a part of a high-school education, and
its practice is far from being an evidence of intellectual distinction.
Mediocrity is as much forbidden to the poet in our days as it was in
those of Horace, and the immense majority of the verses written are
stamped with hopeless mediocrity.
When one of the ancient poets found he was trying to grind out verses
which came unwillingly, he said he was writing--