On a gentle knoll, a few hundred yards from the negro quarters, and in
the midst of a grove of pines, whose soft brown tassels covered the
ground all around it, stood the negro meetinghouse. It was built of
unhewn logs, its crevices chinked with clay, and was large enough to
seat about two hundred persons. Though its exterior resembled a
backwoods barn, its interior had a neat and tasteful appearance.
Evergreen boughs hid its rough beams and bare shingled roof, and long
wreaths of pine leaves hung in graceful festoons from its naked walls
and narrow windows. On the two sides of a wide aisle, which served to
separate the sheep on the right hand from the goats on the left, were
long rows of benches, with hard board bottoms, and rough open backs, and
beyond them, divided from the rest of the interior by a rustic railing,
was the 'family pew,' an enclosure about twelve feet square, neatly
carpeted, and furnished with half a dozen arm chairs. Opposite to this
was a platform elevated three steps from the floor, and on it stood a
rustic settee, a large easy chair, and a modest desk covered with green
baize, and decorated with small sprigs of evergreen. On this desk rested
a large Bible.
The enormous seashell which served as a bell to this 'house of prayer,'
was sending its last blast in long echoes through the old trees, when,
with Mrs. Preston and the children, I elbowed an opening through the
thick group of grinning Africans that blocked the doorway, and 'worked a
passage' down the crowded aisle to the family enclosure. Seating myself
in one of its cane-bottomed seats, I glanced around on the assemblage.
Such a gathering of woolly heads I had never seen. Every plantation
within a circuit of five miles had sent in a representation, till the
benches, the aisle, the small area around the pulpit, and the open space
near the doorway, were all densely packed. On the left, the men, in
gaudy cravats and many-colored waistcoats, were chatting merrily
together, and enjoying themselves as heartily as a parcel of Yankees at
a clambake; and on the right, the women, in red and yellow turbans, and
flaming shawls and neckerchiefs, were bobbing about and flaunting their
colors, like so many dolphins sporting in the sunshine. Preston was
seated in the lone chair at the back of the pulpit, and Boss Joe and
Black Jack occupied the settee near him. The latter shortly rose to open
the services, and, in a moment, a deep silence fell on the noisy
multitude. The old preacher had carefully combed his thin wool into a
pyramid on the top of his head, and he looked, dressed in glossy black
pants, longtailed blue coat, ruffled shirt, and high shirt collar, like
a stuffed specimen at an exhibition of wax figures. Stepping rather
unsteadily to the front of the platform, he flourished his red cotton
bandanna, and spreading his huge claws over the large Bible, said:
'Dear bred'rin, leff us begin de worship ob de Lord by singin':
'From all dat dwell below de skies
Leff de Creator's praise arise.''
A half dozen darky fiddlers at the left of the pulpit tuned their
strings, and then the whole assemblage rose and burst into that grand
old hymn. As its last echoes were dying away, Joe got up, and opening
the large Bible, read, in a clear, mellow voice, a portion of the one
hundred and nineteenth Psalm. When he had concluded, the old darky again
came forward.
Gazing complacently around on the audience for a moment, he drawled out:
'My bred'rin, leff us raise our hearts to de Lord.' The whole
congregation then kneeled, and Jack, closing his eyes, clenching his
hands together, and throwing his head back, until his nose came nearly
on a line with the roof of the building, 'lifted up his voice' and
prayed.
After the fashion of very many white preachers, he began by telling the
Lord all about Himself; all He had ever done, and all He is going to do;
how long He had lived, and how long He is going to live; how great He
is--'taller dan de mountin's, and bigger dan de seas.' How He made the
world in six days, and then, 'gittin' tired, rested on de sevenfh;' How
He formed man out of the dust of the ground, and then out of his rib
formed woman; how the woman tempted the man, and he fell, and how woman
has 'raised Cain' on the earth ever since. How He sent the flood, and
how Noah builded the ark; how Noah axed all the wild 'critters' into it,
and how they all came in two by two, and how Noah and the wild beasts
lay down lovingly together, till the 'wet spell' was over. How He chose
the Jews--a meaner race than the 'pore whites'--to be his peculiar
people; and how that proves His boundless love and unlimited goodness;
'fur no oder man in all creashun would hab taken _dem_ folks up, no
how.' How Moses, when he came down from the Mount, 'stumbled and broke
de law; and how 'ebery one of us dat hab come inter de worle sense, hab
stumbled and broke de law, 'case he did,' How Noah, though he was a
white man, and had a white wife, begat a black son; and how that black
son was a great sinner, and how all his descendants have taken after
him, and been mighty big sinners ever since.
Then he described the sinners, particularly the black sinners present;
and if half of what he said was true, every one of them deserved to be
sold 'down Soufh,' and kept on cold hominy and hoecake all the rest of
his days.
The prayer was a strange mixture of absurdity, presumption, and
profanity, and I felt relieved to hear his long 'amen,' and to see Joe
rise and again approach the pulpit.
Requesting some one present to raise a few of the windows (I took
occasion, afterward, to thank him for that very considerate thought),
Joe opened the Bible, and said: 'My friends, I am gwine to talk ter you
from de tex, 'An' dey drew an' lifted up Joseph out ob de pit, an' sold
Joseph to the Ishmaelites fur twenty pieces ob silver, an' dey brought
Joseph inter Egypt.'
'You all knows,' he continued, 'de story ob Joseph an' his bred'rin; how
dey wus raised up by dar fader Jacob in a wile country, whar dar warn't
no schools, an' no 'telligence, an' no larnin'; and how his fader lub'd
Joseph more dan all ob his bred'rin, an' make fur him a coat ob many
colors. But p'raps you don't know dat de Lord lub Joseph a great sight
better'n his fader did, an' 'case He lub him so, dat He hardened de
hearts ob his bred'rin agin him, till dey sole him to de Ishmaelites--de
slavetraders ob dem days, to be taken down inter Egypt. An' p'raps you
don't know dat Egypt wus a great country, whar dar wus schools, an'
churches, an' great libraries ob books, an' all manner ob sciences; an'
dat Joseph wus made de lord ob all dat country, an' dat finarly he got
his fader, an' his bred'rin, an' dar wifes, an' all dar little ones, to
come down dar, an' stay; whar, dough de tasks war sometimes hard, an'
dey hed to 'arn dar bred by de sweat ob dar brow, dey could git
knowledge an' larnin'. An' p'raps, too, you don't know dat de chil'ren
ob Israel, who war de chil'ren ob Joseph an' his bred'rin, when dey'd
staid down dar in Egypt de 'pointed time, war taken by de Lord inter de
lan' ob Canaan, which was a lan' 'flowin' wid milk and honey;' and dat
dey war gib'n dat lan' far dar possession. Now, my friends,' and he
paused and looked around on the congregation, 'de story ob Joseph am de
story ob de brack man; _he_ hab been taken out ob de pit; _he_ hab been
sole fur twenty pieces ob silver; _he_ hab been brought inter Egypt,
an', bless de Lord, _he_ am bound fur de lan' ob Canaan.
'He hab been taken out ob de pit. A pit, my friends, am a dark place,
whar de sun neber shine, an' de light neber come; an' Africa, de country
whar our faders an' our gran'faders come from--am a pit; fur de darkness
cobers dat lan', an' gross darkness de people dareof. Dey hab no
cloes--dey lib in cabins made ob clay, an' in holes in de groun'--dey
kill an' eat one anoder, an' dey'm allers at war wid one anoder. But de
white man he gwoe dar, an' he buy 'em fur twenty pieces ob
silver--dat's' zactly de price--twenty silver dollars--dey pay dat fur
'em up ter dis day--dem pore, ign'rant folks won't take nuffin' but
silver. Well, de white man buy 'em, and he fotch 'em to dis country,
which am like de lan' ob Egypt, full ob schools, ob churches, ob
larnin,' an' ob all manner ob good tings. Shore, we hab to wuck hard
har; some ob us hab to bear heaby burdens, an' to make bricks w'en dey
gib us no straw to make 'em wid; but we am in de lan' ob Egypt, whar we
hab knowledge ob de Lord; whar de gospil am preach to us, an' whar we
kin fine out de rode to de lan' ob Canaan. (To be shore, we karn't all
larn out ob de books; but book larnin' neber make a man, no how.) Yas,
my friends, yere we kin fine out de road to de lan' ob Canaan; an' do ye
know what dat lan' ob Canaan, dat'm waitin' fur de brack man, am? Do ye
'spose it am a lan' whar de days am hot, an' de nights am cole; whar
we'll hoe de cotton, an' gader de turpentine, an' cut de shingles in de
swamp? whar we'll wuck till we drop down; whar we'll hunger an' furst?
whar de fever will burn in our veins, an' de nager will rattle our bones
as de corn am rattled in de hopper? No, my friends, 'tain't no lan' like
dat! It am de habitation on high, de city builded ob de Lord, de
eberlasting kingdom founded by de Eternal God, who made heaben an'
'arth, de sea, an' all dat in dem is! Oh, tink ob dat, my friends, an'
hab courage! Tink ob dat when you'm a faint an' a weary, an' leff you'
hearts be glad, an' you' souls rejoice in hope. Fur dat lan' ain't
'spressly fur de white man--it am fur de brack man, too; an' ebery one
ob us, eben de brackest, kin git to it ef we'll jess foller der road--ef
we'll jess do our duty, bear meekly our burdens, an' lean humbly on de
arm ob de Lord. I knows it am so, my friends. I _knows_ it am so, fur de
oder night, when de deep sleep fell upon me, I dreamed a dream. I fought
dar come to my cabin, an' stood aside ob my bed, a great white angel,
wid feet dat touch de 'arth, but wid head dat reach unto de heabens. He
wore raiment shinin' like silver, an' on his head wus a girdle ob stars.
His face wus dazzlin' as de sun, an' his eyes war like flamin' fire. He
look at me, an' he say: 'Joseph, come up hither!' He reach out his hand
an' he lift me up--above de 'arth--above de clouds--above de stars--'way
up to de high heabens, whar am de sperrits ob just men made perfect, who
hab been redeemed from among men, who hab gone fru great tribulation,
whose garments hab been washed clean in de blood ob de Lamb! 'Dis,' he
say, 'am de city ob de livin' God, de heabenly Jerusalem, whose
foundations am saffomires, whose walls am silver, whose streets am gold,
whose houses am jewels an' all precious stones! Here de sun neber sets.
Here de storm an' de hurricane neber come, an' here, Joseph, am a
dwellin' prepared fur you--'here, ef you'm faithful an' 'bedient, you
shill come when you' wuck on de 'arth am ober!'
The speaker had been gradually warming with his subject till he uttered
this last sentence, when his voice trembled, his face glowed, and his
upturned eye seemed gazing on the ineffable glories of the land he was
describing. A stillness like that of death fell on the assemblage, and
the simple blacks, hanging breathlessly on his words, looked up to where
Joe's hand was pointing, as if they too had caught the vision on which
his eyes were feasting. In a moment, he continued:
'I looked round, an' I saw dat beautiful city; I breafed its air; I
walked its streets; I hard its music--de neber endin' song which its
countless people send up to de throne ob de Great Father; an' I say to
de angel: 'Do brack folks lib yere? Kin _dey_ come to dis beautiful
country?' an' he say: You shill see.' Den he lead me fru dose shinin'
streets, out inter de open fiel's whar war pleasant pastures, greener
dan any on de 'arth, an' still waters, dat sparkle in de sun, jess like
missus' diamonds in de light ob de fire.' (I did not know that Mrs.
Preston wore diamonds--she certainly had not worn them in my presence.)
'He lead me out till we come to a great woods, whar fount'ins war
playin', an' birds war singin', an' flowers war growin', an' de air wus
full of fragrance; an' dar I seed a great crowd ob people gadered
togeder, a listenin' to one dat wus a talkin' to 'em. Dar wus Ab'ram,
an' Isaac, an' Jacob,--dar wus Moses, an' Joseph, au' Samuel--dar wus
David, an' Solomon, an' de prophets--dar wus Paul, an' John, an'
Peter,--dar wus 'most all de great an' good men who hab libed in de
worle; an' dar too, right aside ob de one dat wus speakin', wus de
blessed Saviour, wid de woun' in his side, an' de print ob de nails in
his hands. An' who do you tink wus a talkin' dar, to all dem great
people? Who do you tink wus fought good 'nuff to stan' by de side ob de
blessed Saviour? It wus a brack man! It wus a brack man, who, down yere
had been ole, an' lame, an' blind, an' ob no account--so no account he
wouldn't sell fur nuffin'. He wus tellin' dem great folks ob de great
lub ob de Lord to him, an' dar tears rolled down as dey hard him. He
tole 'em how he use to lib in Car'lina--how he wus a slave; how he'd
'most nuffin' to eat; how he wus wucked in de swamp; how, 'fore de sun
rose, an' 'way inter de night, he use to stan' in de mud an' de water,
till his bones war sore, his heart wus weary, his soul wus faint. How
his massa flog him, 'cause he couldn't wuck no more, till de blood run
down his back, an' it wus a ridged like de ploughed groun'. How his wife
wus whipped to death afore his bery eyes; how his chil'ren--all 'cept
one--war sole 'way from him; how dat one 'bused him, an' flogged him,
an' tormented him, till he wus jess ready to die. How, when his hair wus
white, his body wus bent, his strength wus gone, an' he was ole, an'
lame, an' blind, his massa drove him 'way, and make him shirk fur
himseff. How he beg in de roads; how he sleep in de woods; in de cole
an' de rain, till a good gemman take him in, gib him a bed, tend to his
wants, an' pray ober him when he die. He tole 'em all dat; but he say
dat fru it all, he hab peace; fru it all, de Lord wus good to him; fru
it all, he felt His lub in his heart; fru it all, de blessed Redeemer
wus wid him; fru it all, he knowed dat mercy an' salvation am in de
heabens! An' DEY AM DAR! Dey took him 'way, 'way from de 'arth; 'way
from his suffrin's an' his sorrers down yere, to joy, an' peace, an'
rest up dar. Up dar, whar all great an' good men call him brudder--whar
de Lord Jehobah call him son, an' whar de blessed Saviour will leff him
stan' at his right hand, foreber and eber. An' he, my friends, wus a
BRACK MAN! An' who do you 'spose he wus? Who do you 'spose he wus?'
He paused for a moment as he repeated the question, and then, in a slow,
impressive manner, continued:
'It wus ole Cale--Cunnel Dawsey's Cale; an' dat good gemman dat take him
in and pray ober him when he die--wus _my_ master--yas, bless de Lord,
he wus MY master!'
As Joe uttered these last words, Preston bowed his head, his wife sobbed
aloud, and the black people gave out a low cry, as sad as the wail which
their own mourners breathe over the dead. Fixing his eyes on a tall,
stalwart negro in the audience, the preacher continued:
'An' he wus _you_' fader, Jake! You fader, who, when he wus down yere,
you 'bused, an' persecuted, an' treated like a dog, but who up dar am
fought worthy to stand at de Saviour's right hand! I _knows_ it wus him,
fur I seed him, I talked wid him, an' he gabe me suffin' to tell you.
Stand up now, an' yere what he hab to say.'
The black man's face assumed a dogged expression; he moved uneasily on
his seat, but showed no inclination to rise. In a firm, imperious tone,
Joe again called out to him:
'Stand up, I say! Folks like you' fader am now, don't talk to sech as
you when dey'm sittin' down: stand up, or I'll gib you what Cunnel
Dawsey neber gabe you in all you' life.'
The negro reluctantly rose. Every eye was fixed upon him as Joe
continued:
'He ax me to say to you, Jake, dat he lubs you--lubs you bery much--dat
he fully an' freely furgibs you fur all de wrong you eber done him; fur
all de tears an' de sorrer you eber cause him. And he say to me: 'Tell
Jake dat I'se been down dar an' seed him. I'se seed how he shirk his
wuck; how he 'buse his wife an' chil'ren; how he hate his massa, an'
mean to kill him--(dough his massa am hard on him, 'tain't no 'scuse fur
dat). How he swar, an' lie, an' steal, an' teach all de oder brack folks
to do de same. How he'm no fought ob his soul; no fought ob dyin'; no
fought ob whar he'm gwine when de Lord's patience am clean worn out wid
him. Tell him dat ef he gwo on dis way, he'll neber see his ole fader no
more; neber see his ole mudder, an' his little brudders, who am up yere,
too, no more; neber come to dis fine country, but be shet out inter
outer darkness, whar am weepin' an' wailin' an' knashin' ob teeth. Oh!
tell him dis, an 'treat him, by all his fader's keer fur him when he wus
a chile; by all his lub fur him now; by all de goodness ob de Lord, who
hab borne wid him fru all dese long years, to turn round--to turn round,
NOW, an' sot his face towards dis blessed country, whar he kin hab joy
foreber! Tell him, too, dat ef he'll do dis, dat his ole fader'll leab
his happy home an' come down dar an' holp him; holp him at his wuck;
holp him to bar ebery load; gib him strength when he'm weak; hole up his
feet when he'm weary; watch ober him day and night, all de time, till
he'm ready to come up yere, an' lib wid de Saviour foreber! Tell him--'
Joe paused, for a wild cry echoed through the building, and the negro
fell in strong convulsions to the floor.
A scene of indescribable excitement and confusion followed, during which
the black was carried out, and, more dead than alive, laid upon the
ground. When quiet was somewhat restored, Preston made a short and
feeling prayer, and then, after giving out a hymn, he dismissed the
congregation with the usual benediction.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 1: 'Scrape' is the turpentine gathered from the face of the
pine. On old trees, the yearly incision is made high above the boxes,
and the sap, in flowing down, passes over and adheres to the previously
scarified surface. It is thus exposed to the sun, which evaporates the
more volatile and valuable portion, and leaves only the hard, which,
when manufactured, is mostly rosin. 'Scrape' turpentine is only about
half as valuable as 'dip.']
[Footnote 2: "Virgin" Turpentine is twice as valuable as "Dip."]
THE CONSEQUENCES OF THE REBELLION.
II.
The sturdy oak which is not prostrated by the storm that assails it is
made thereby to take deeper hold, and to draw the sustenance for a
larger growth from the torn and loosened soil into which it has
opportunity to thrust new roots and tendrils. Reinvigorated by the
resisted violence, its branches shoot upward to the skies and extend
themselves laterally with majestic breadth. It gradually gains strength
and becomes so firmly rooted in its place that it bids defiance to the
repeated tempests vainly striving to overthrow it, and stands for
centuries, sublime in its unconquerable might and proud endurance. Our
noble Union, fiercely assailed in its early maturity, before its
strength has been fully developed, now bends before the hurricane of
civil war, swaying to and fro with fearful and threatening movements at
every paroxysm of the tremendous blast. We look on with intense agony of
suspense, to see whether it will stand the terrible ordeal, and outlive
the unexampled convulsion of social elements in which its strength and
endurance have been so sorely tested. Instinctively we know that if it
survive the present momentous crisis, successfully resisting the attack
of the enemy which assails it so furiously, its foundations will be
immensely strengthened, and its power of resistance in future dangers
will be indefinitely augmented. Prolonged and permanent existence, with
assured security and repose, will be the best and most indisputable
result of its triumph. Though shaken and torn by the deadly assault, and
to a certain extent deprived of its usual resources, in the very effort
of resistance it will have put forth new connections, which returning
peace will multiply and strengthen. The immense demand on its energy and
enterprise will have aroused all its slumbering capacities and
stimulated them to the highest point of exertion. Under the necessity of
self-preservation, the nation will have been fully awakened to a sense
of its gigantic power, which, when employed in the benign pursuits of
peace, will be sufficient speedily to restore its prosperity to even
more than former splendor. The resources of our broad domain are so
unbounded, and the courage and persistence of our people so indomitable,
that even the sacrifices and losses of so great a war will make no
serious impression on the destined career of this youthful and growing
nation. So long as the vigor and elasticity of the popular force is not
absolutely overpowered and suppressed, the reaction will only be so much
the stronger for all the mighty pressure which has been placed upon it.
Returning strength, so invigorated and redoubled by repose, will enable
the people to bear the burden patiently, and within a comparatively
brief period to throw it off entirely; and then they will bound forward
with renewed energy in that race of unexampled progress which has been
sadly interrupted, but not by any means wholly arrested.
If peace had continued, and especially if no civil war had occurred to
desolate our country, the labors of the population would have been
directed chiefly to the increase of wealth, and to the improvement which
always accompanies material prosperity. It would be a monstrous error to
say that the interruption of these occupations has not been a calamity
of the most serious character. Yet is it not altogether unmixed with
good. Indeed, it is by no means certain that, in the circumstances
which gave rise to the war, there was not an actual necessity, of a
moral nature, which made it on the whole advantageous to arouse the
nation to this gigantic strife, and thus to exchange its ordinary
struggle for wealth into a combat for a momentous principle. Is it
questionable whether, in every case, the establishment of such a
principle is not the most important of all objects, and whether every
other pursuit and occupation ought not to be made secondary to it? In
the sacrifices and sufferings which a nation undergoes for the sake of
asserting an important moral or political truth, there is always a
wholesome virtue that in some measure redeems the brutality and violence
which are the inseparable accompaniments of all wars, and which
peculiarly characterize the history of civil wars, in every age and
country. It is not merely the elevated and unselfish sentiment of
patriotism, as known in former ages, and expressed in the noble
sentiment, _dulce et decorum est pro patria mori_, which, engenders
lofty impulses and nourishes the rugged virtues of the soldier in the
heart; but the still higher sentiment of love for humanity and universal
freedom--a sentiment wholly unknown in what are called the heroic
ages--sanctifies the labors, the wounds, and the glorious death of the
martyrs who struggle and fall in such a contest. Men have often fought
and willingly died in the cause of their country, regardless of the
merits of the controversy between the opposing parties. There is a
certain manliness and devotion to others in this species of patriotism,
which commands respect and admiration; and this feeling of approbation
rises still higher when the cause of the nation is undeniably just, and
the self-sacrificing patriot is giving his life for the purchase of
liberty to his country. But the highest and noblest of all exhibitions
is that in which the sacrifice is made for the good of the race--for
principles in which all men are alike interested, and in which the
martyr can claim no peculiar advantage to himself or to his own branch
of the human family. The nation which accepts war for such a cause, and
wages it with all her means and energies, exhibits a moral grandeur
which, in spite of misfortune, has a saving power, capable of overcoming
and compensating all calamities, of whatever nature and extent. That
nation cannot be overthrown--not unless the laws of the Most High
himself can be subverted, and the right be made permanently to succumb
to the wrong. Let it be understood, however, that this assertion is made
only with reference to wars which are essentially defensive; for no
nation has the right to propagate even the best and noblest principles
by the power of the sword. In our case, it is true, other motives concur
in moving the nation to this tremendous struggle. Not merely the rights
and interests of an inferior, degraded, and suffering race appeal to our
humanity; but the unity and greatness of our country, its influence
abroad, and its success and prosperity at home, are all involved. It is
one of many instances in which the best and highest impulses of our
nature are reenforced by the dictates of the noblest and most elevated
of human interests--the interests of a nation, of a continent, yea, of
the world itself; for our gates are still open to the ingress of our
brothers from abroad, and our immense and fertile domain, as well as our
priceless institutions, are freely offered to their participation.
But, aside from the principles involved in the war, there are results of
an interesting character springing from it, which are well worthy the
attention of the statesman and the patriot. Two very opposite effects
are produced on the minds of the men engaged in such a contest as this,
or, indeed, in any contest of arms whatever, when it assumes the
proportions of a regular war. The volunteering of our young men of all
classes, in numbers so immense, is an extraordinary phenomenon. These
soldiers by choice, many of them educated and intelligent, and impelled
by deliberate considerations of principle, willingly undergo the hard
labor of military training, of marches and campaigns, and the still more
trying inactivity of life in camps and fortresses, in new and unfriendly
regions and climates. They fearlessly face death in every ghastly form,
on the battle field, by exposure in all seasons, by physical exhaustion,
and by the most dreadful contagious diseases. They devote themselves
unreservedly to the great cause, and in doing so exhibit the noblest
spirit of self-sacrifice, and that on the grandest scale presented in
history. Fortitude and courage, contempt of the most appalling dangers,
disregard of suffering and privation, wounds, mutilation, and lingering
death--these are the habits of soul which our citizen soldiers
cultivate, and which tend to strengthen and harden the character, and to
give it great moral force. The great qualities thus nurtured in the
bosom of the multitudes destined soon to return to peaceful life will
assuredly make a powerful impression on the whole society, which must be
thoroughly pervaded with the manly virtues thence destined to be infused
into it. Every man who has been conspicuous for his soldierly conduct
and for the faithful performance of duty will be an object of general
respect, though he may have passed unscathed through the fiery ordeal;
while every maimed and wounded citizen will be regarded as bearing on
his person, in his honorable scars and deficient limbs, the decorations
which exalt and ennoble him in the eyes of his countrymen. Many a
chivalrous deed will be recounted with pride and satisfaction, and
handed down to immortality by the pen of history and poetry, and by the
pencil and chisel of art. Even the undistinguished services of those who
have fought in the war for the Union, and who have passed unchallenged
through the fiery ordeal, will be cherished by their children, and
transmitted to their remoter posterity with patriotic pride and
pardonable self-satisfaction. Thus the glory of noble deeds in this
memorable war will everywhere shed its lustre on the national character,
and will tend to stimulate the loftiest virtues in the present and
succeeding generations.
But, on the other hand, the unavoidable dissipation of military life,
the vices of the camp, the brutality and want of moral sensibility
engendered by the necessity of slaughter and the horrible ravages of
war, will tend largely to counteract the good results already noted.
Those who may be nobly disdainful of their own sufferings, will
sometimes be even more regardless of the sufferings of others; and
perhaps sometimes, with the natural perversion of human passion effected
by civil war, will seek to avenge their own misfortunes by ungenerous
rigor and cruelty toward all within their power, suspected of favoring
the enemy only in thought or sentiment. Even this imperfect
discrimination is too often altogether omitted, and innocent loyalty is
made to suffer losses and severities which ought never to be visited on
non-combatants, even though they be of the enemy. The fearful disregard
of human life, and of the accumulations of human labor in the shape of
property, which marks the movements of our armies in almost all
quarters, and even distinguishes the conduct of some of our high
officials, constitutes one of the most serious evils which attend the
contest, and which will leave their natural consequences as a permanent
injury to the nation. The record of these misdeeds, now disregarded in
the hurry and excitement of the conflict, will hereafter confront us
with terrible effect. The bad acts themselves will long continue to bear
fruit after their kind, and to scatter the seeds of vice over the land.
Such drawbacks, however, accompany more or less all great military
operations, no matter how sacred the cause in which armies are engaged.
Yet, we fear, no such example of generous and unselfish devotion to a
holy cause can be found in our present experience as was exhibited by
the French people in their violent and bloody revolution of 1789. The
mercenary spirit has largely infected the military as well as the civil
agencies of our Government. But a people struggling for great principles
are compelled to use such instruments as may be at its command; and if
the material of armies and their connections in civil life be often of a
character to be degraded rather than elevated by the employments and
experiences of war, it is nevertheless certain that these bad effects do
not always, perhaps not generally, outweigh and overpower the good.
History does not present another example of large armies made up of such
men as those who now constitute the defenders of the Union. For
intelligence and moral worth, they are unsurpassed by the masses of any
population in the civilized world, and certainly they are far superior
in all respects to those usually constituting the armies of other
nations. To our shame and regret, there are certainly some exceptions to
this statement; but these are comparatively few, and mostly confined to
those who have not enjoyed the full advantage of our noble system of
universal education. In many instances, the best young men in the land
have gone into the army as privates; while in the rural districts and
from the Western States, the very bone and sinew of the population--the
sober, steady, intelligent, industrious, and prosperous part of the
people--have taken up arms in the cause of the Union, from a deliberate
approval of the policy of the war on our part, and from the noblest and
most unselfish motives of patriotism. The preponderance of such men in
our armies evidently makes them, on the whole, susceptible to the good,
rather than to the bad influences of war. Reflection, self-respect,
rational views of the causes and objects of the war, and elevated
motives of action, cannot fail to bring those who possess these
qualities all the benefits of self-denial, of patriotic labor willingly
expended, and of sacrifices made and sufferings endured in a good and
noble cause. The mental cultivation and moral training of the American
citizen constitute a shield, from whose solid and polished surface the
missiles of temptation, which easily penetrate other defences, usually
glance or rebound with harmless effect. The carnage of the battle field,
the bombardment and capture of cities, and the ravages of armies,
marching or in camp, which too often harden the hearts and blunt the
sensibilities of the ordinary soldier, have no such effect, or, at
least, a much less effect, in this particular, on the minds of humane
and educated men. Hence we may fairly anticipate that the influence of
this war on the men who compose the army, and who must sooner or later
return to the occupations they have temporarily left, will be of a far
better character than that of any war ever hitherto waged in any part of
the world. No such conditions have ever heretofore existed in reference
to any great national contest. Our immense volunteer army, so largely
composed of intelligent and respectable men--men who are fully capable,
and entitled by their votes, to influence the great measures of war or
peace--presents a spectacle new and wholly unexampled in history; and
the consequences of our contest to the moral and social condition of the
people will be correspondingly unusual and important. We may safely
assume from these considerations that the good will preponderate over
the bad.
There is, however, another species of influence of a more questionable
character, which is worthy of consideration in any attempt to anticipate
the consequences of this extraordinary rebellion. The nature of our
institutions renders them accessible to popular impulses at very brief
intervals of time; and it may well be expected, that, after the
conclusion of the war, especially if it be successful, a sentiment
nearly universal will prevail in favor of the elevation of the men who
have been conspicuous in the military service. There will be a
disposition to reward the successful soldier with civic honors, and to
place the conduct of the Government in the hands of men who have
exhibited only a capacity to lead and handle armies. The power of the
military men will in this way be prolonged. Doubtless, a great soldier
may be expected to show large executive abilities, and with proper
experience may well be intrusted with the management of the highest
offices in our country. There are times and occasions, of which the
present is a most memorable instance, when the peculiar capacities of a
great military leader would be of infinite service to the cause of
freedom and humanity, provided, at the same time, he should possess
undoubted integrity and patriotism, without any mixture of bad ambition.
A Washington, or a Jackson, in the Presidential chair at the
commencement of this rebellion, would have been of inestimable value to
our country, outweighing the importance of mighty armies and countless
treasure; for the value both of men and money, in such emergencies,
depends wholly on the skill and wisdom with which they are used and
directed. If God had vouchsafed us one grand will to control the human
tempest now raging around us, our noble country would have been saved
from many calamities and much disgrace, such as will require hard labor
and heavy sacrifices to overcome.
It is not, therefore, the probability that military men may frequently
be elevated to high office that need give any apprehension to the lover
of his country. But it is the almost certain prevalence of a blind and
undistinguishing sentiment of caste, which will seek to control the
elections in favor of the soldier under all circumstances, whether fit
or unfit for the position sought. We are likely to have soldiers in all
the executive offices, soldiers in the diplomatic service, in the
legislative halls, and even on the bench. The danger is that the popular
enthusiasm in favor of those who have served in the war will go to the
extent of substituting gallantry and good conduct in the field for those
very different qualifications demanded in responsible civil stations. A
wound received, or a limb lost, will, in many instances, constitute a
stronger recommendation for political preferment than long experience,
coupled with ability and high character. This disposition to reward
those who have faithfully served the country in time of war is an
amiable characteristic of the American people, and proves that, in this
particular at least, republics are not ungrateful. But it is clear, at
the same time, that the public gratitude, thus turned into political
channels, may be productive of great evil, by lowering the character of
the men employed in performing public functions of importance. Already
the results of our elective system have become the subject of intense
anxiety in the minds of reflecting men. Notwithstanding the extensive
provision made for the education of our people, of the universality and
efficiency of which we justly boast, an almost equal extension of the
elective franchise has not tended to improve the wisdom of the popular
choice, or the character and qualifications of the men selected in
latter times to fill high public offices. So seriously is this truth
felt, that it is now a political problem of the first importance to
devise some means by which the frequent elections in our country may be
made to work more certainly and uniformly to the elevation of good and
able men, who now too often shun rather than seek employment in the
national service. If this indispensable improvement cannot be
accomplished, our institutions are in danger of falling into contempt,
as exhibiting no very great advance on the old modes of hereditary
designation of political functionaries. The party machinery of the
present day, adapted chiefly to the purpose of availability and the
means of securing success at all hazards, is mostly responsible for the
degeneracy which unquestionably characterizes the public men of this
day, in comparison with those who in former times filled the same high
stations. In view of these facts, it may be that the military regime
about to be ushered in as a consequence of the great existing war, will
of itself be an improvement, since it must be acknowledged there is some
merit in the devotion and sacrifices of those who fight the battles of
the Union, while it is notorious that corrupt political parties too
frequently select and reward their leaders without regard to merit at
all.
It may be said that there is inconsistency and contradiction in the
views presented, inasmuch as the claim for remarkable intelligence and
superiority in the rank and file of the army would imply too much
patriotism and self-sacrifice to admit of the consequences suggested.
But we must remember the immense numbers of our army, its large
proportion to the whole population, the _esprit de corps_ so naturally
engendered in such a body, and the powerful influence it may wield by
turning the scale in our inveterate and often nicely balanced partisan
contests. We must also take into consideration that well known principle
of human nature, as old as government itself, which seems to impel all
men possessing irresponsible power to abuse it, and employ it for their
own selfish advantage. This is peculiarly the case with _classes_ which
gain ascendency, as such, over the other parts of the community.
Political parties in our country will surely not fail to seek alliance
with the citizen soldiers at the close of the war, and to secure success
by all the arts and devices which can be made available to that end. But
let us hope the good sense and patriotism of our young men, their
moderation and self-control, will be as conspicuous in future political
campaigns, as in those more glorious ones which are yet destined to
overthrow our enemies and restore our inestimable Union to its former
greatness.
But it is not our purpose to confine these remarks to the loyal States
and the Union armies; nor is it at all paradoxical to extend them to the
region and the population controlled by the rebel government. Every good
citizen, having confidence in the supremacy of right and the destiny of
our country, anticipates the reunion of the States at the conclusion of
the war. The bulk of the Southern army must likewise return to society,
and carry with it such influence as it may derive from the peculiar
character of its cause, the motives by which it is animated, and the
acts, good or bad, noble or mean, which it may perform. It cannot be
denied that the soldiers of the rebel army have exhibited the highest
personal qualities, of daring courage, skilful enterprise, patient
endurance, and the most indomitable perseverance, under difficulties
apparently insuperable. Their cause is bad. The impartial judgment of
mankind will pronounce it so, when the passions of the hour shall have
completely subsided. But the masses of the Southern people evidently do
not take this view of the war they are waging against the Government
which has so long protected them, and under which they have acquired all
the strength they are now ungratefully using to overthrow it. They have
been artfully misled into the belief that they are engaged in a war
altogether defensive--that they are fighting _pro aris et focis_--in
short, that they have given themselves up to the holiest work which any
people can ever be called on to undertake. Doubtless, in frequent
instances, and sometimes among considerable populations, different
sentiments prevail and have been entertained from the beginning. A
glimmering of the truth may occasionally dawn on the minds of those who
went into the contest with entire confidence in the justice of their
cause. But on the whole it is vain to deny the sincerity and the deep
convictions of the Southern people. Nothing less than these could have
sustained them in the appalling difficulties of their position. No
people ever conducted a more brilliant and successful defensive war
against the vast odds, on land and sea, with which they have had to
contend. Let us be sufficiently magnanimous to confess the truth,
unpleasant though it be, and acknowledge that they have hitherto
outmanaged us in the general conduct of the war. They have exhibited an
earnestness and determination, a gallantry and devotion, worthy of the
highest purposes that ever call forth the energy of struggling nations.
It is vain to say they are compelled by a military despotism; for,
however strong and arbitrary their government may be, it evidently rests
upon the support of the people, and it could never continue the present
contest against popular disaffection at home joined with the mighty
invading armies of the Union.
What then are to be the results of great efforts and sacrifices in a
cause which, though we believe it to be bad, they consider holy? Are
their chivalrous deeds to be less ennobling to the character of Southern
men, than similar ones, springing from like motives, on the part of our
armies? It is the motive which gives character to all actions, and
mistake or error of the most perverse kind, when arising from honest
conviction, cannot alter the merit of what is done or suffered. If it be
said that the assumed convictions of the Southern people are incredible,
it is only necessary to look back a few centuries, in order to see the
whole Christian world entertaining sentiments equally abhorrent to the
enlightened conscience of the present day. The universal participation
in the slave trade, and the horrible persecutions for religious heresy,
which everywhere prevailed, are sad evidences of the possibility of
indulging the most disastrous errors with perfect sincerity. Besides, if
we consider how great a diversity of opinion prevails among the people
of the loyal States, on the subject of the rebellion and its causes, it
will require no great degree of credulity to induce the belief that the
Southern people are impelled by deep convictions in their present
struggle.
Failure and defeat on their part will cast the usual discredit on the
cause which is overthrown; and in this case we do not entertain a doubt
that ultimately the right will prevail, and that the discomfiture and
disgrace will fall where justice would require. Men will be deeply
mortified to find themselves utterly overcome, and all their brave deeds
and their magnanimous sacrifices and sufferings expended in a failing
and a bad cause. It will be their great misfortune that serious
reflection and conviction should come to them only after these great
events, and when it is too late to recall them. But it is the peculiar
characteristic of contests like this, that they do eventually make clear
the subjects of dispute in which they originate. All the wranglings of
politicians, and all the learning and logic of contending theologians in
divided churches, could never accomplish the speedy and thorough
decision of contested questions which will follow this tremendous war.
Bold and extra-constitutional expedients necessarily grow out of the
prevailing violence. They will soon test the possibility of measures
which are too great for ordinary times, and will push the existing
tendencies toward fundamental change into sudden and premature
development.
Physical strength and success in war are by no means fair tests of truth
and principle; but in the present contest, such is the condition of our
country and the character of its relations with the civilized world
that, if the Union shall be restored to its former integrity, the result
will give strong evidence of the righteousness of our cause. Such are
the temptations to foreign interference, and such the evident
disposition of the ruling dynasties in some powerful nations to destroy
the influence and example of this great republic, as well as to break
down her rivalry in commerce and manufactures, that nothing but a holy
cause, appealing to the moral sense of mankind, could prevent the
natural alliance between despotism abroad and the kindred system in the
South which seeks to establish its tyranny on the ruins of our
Government. Besides, the diverging systems of policy in the two sections
have carried on their struggle for more than a quarter of a century,
under conditions which make it demonstrable that their present
inequality of strength and means is the direct consequence of these
divergencies. Their long-continued emulation, passing through all the
stages of envy, hatred, and political contention, has finally culminated
in bloody civil war; and from the peculiar circumstances of the case,
the termination of the contest, if the parties be left to themselves,
will fully and fairly test the physical strength and moral force of the
contending principles. The better principle, by virtue of its superior
growth, will overthrow the worse and weaker one, which has relatively
declined in power throughout all the long contest between the two.
Enlightened convictions will grow up as the mighty conflict subsides;
and institutions will be modified in conformity with the truths which
are destined to appear through the blaze and smoke of battle.
Heaven forbid that we should confound moral distinctions, and place
treason and rebellion on the same footing with patriotic devotion to the
cause of Union and liberty. Political and moral errors, however innocent
in intention, stand on the same footing, as to their consequences, with
all other violations of natural law. They bring retribution inevitable;
nor can the blind and ignorant partisan of wrong entirely escape the
shame of his misconduct, on the ground of erroneous judgment. But let us
not arrogate to ourselves a superiority of virtue, which in reality we
have no just right to claim. Are we sure that, even on our side, which
we consider that of truth and humanity, all our individual motives are
up to the level of the great principles involved? Are we not rather, to
some extent, the blind instruments of social causes, stronger than our
own will, and while seeming to follow the inclination of our own
enlightened minds, are we not impelled by passion and ambition in the
inevitable direction indicated, and even necessitated, by the
circumstances surrounding us? Are not similar influences operating on
the Southern mind, and forcing it, with a compulsion equally inexorable,
into the fatal current of civil war? With the masses on both sides, this
is undoubtedly true. Whole communities do not engage in such disastrous
strife in mere wantonness and wicked advocacy of a bad cause. Either
their judgment is distorted, or their passions aroused to such an extent
as to render them utterly blind to the true nature of the principles
involved, and to make them believe they are acting, under the strongest
provocation, for the defence of their honor, their interests, and their
acknowledged rights. Every liberal mind will readily concede the
existence of these sentiments and motives.
But suppose the war ended by the overthrow of the rebellion and the
restoration of the Federal authority: what is to be the effect in those
States which have been the theatre of the great conspiracy, whence have
issued all the mighty armies which have assailed so fiercely the
Constitution and Government of our fathers? Will the men who have shed
their blood freely to destroy the Union ever again be brought to sustain
it with sincerity and zeal? Can they be expected to acknowledge their
profound error, and receive again heartily to their affections and
willing obedience the authority which they have so haughtily spurned and
sought to smite with utter destruction? This is a momentous question. It
is the most important which can be presented to the country at the
moment of its anticipated triumph, when the fearful clash of arms is
about to subside and give place to the serious labor of conciliation and
reconstruction. To conquer the rebellion will be, at least, to make all
its aims utterly hopeless. Failure and disaster will be forever stamped
upon the ideas on which the revolution has been founded, and they, with
their inspiration, good or bad, will be permanently overthrown, together
with the men who have used them so efficiently for the inauguration and
continuance of this tremendous strife. There is wonderful power in the
success of an idea, as there is a corresponding influence in the utter
overthrow of its physical manifestations and efforts. A cause rendered
hopeless by defeat ceases to sustain the passions which it has excited,
under the influence of which it has made itself respectable and
powerful. If it be founded in truth and right, it will have within
itself the elements of resuscitation, and it can never become altogether
hopeless. But if it have no such basis of substantial truth, its failure
once is for all time. The hearts of men cannot long cling to such a
cause. Its traditions even become odious, and the effort will be to
ignore and forget its incidents, and to escape the discredit of having
participated in its ambitious struggles.
But to conquer the rebellion is not to subjugate the South. This is a
distinction of the utmost importance in attempting to estimate the
consequences of the great struggle. So far from the subjugation of the
Southern people resulting, in any contingency, the success of the Union
arms must be their regeneration and redemption. To overthrow the
confederate government will be only to relieve the people from its
grasp, and to reinstate them in the rights and liberties which they have
hitherto enjoyed. A combination of force, fraud, and self-delusion has
sustained the power of the rebel dynasty, and enabled it to wield the
influence and authority of the whole people of the seceding States, with
some few remarkable exceptions. To break up this combination will do
more than merely defeat a hostile power: it will, in effect, annihilate
the whole vicious organization, and leave its elements free to engage in
other combinations, more in accordance with right, and better calculated
to secure success and prosperity. It is not unreasonable to anticipate
that they will eventually resume their former relations with the Federal
Government, as most conducive to these ends. There are some men, perhaps
one whole class, who can never escape the responsibility of all the
overwhelming evils and calamities which the war has brought upon the
South. The cordial acquiescence of these can hardly be anticipated; but
their power will be completely destroyed, and the people may well be
expected to disregard their murmurs and complaints. Indeed, it is not
altogether unlikely that an injured and exasperated people may turn on
the authors of their ruin, and wreak upon them a fearful vengeance, so
far, at least, as to ostracize and banish them forever from the land
they have blighted and destroyed. The masses of the people, holding few
or no slaves, though involved in the war by force of the general
delusion into which they have been artfully inveigled, will not consider
themselves responsible for its consequences; they will rather look on
themselves as the victims of designing men, who, for selfish purposes,
have partly seduced and partly impelled them into the perils and
disasters of a gigantic but fruitless rebellion. This state of feeling
will leave the minds of the Southern people in a condition to estimate
fairly their own relations to the rebellion, and their obligations to
the Union, which again calls them, with paternal tenderness, to its
generous confidence and magnanimous protection. They will have no cause
for apprehension that their restoration to good fellowship and perfect
equality will not be complete and free from all unfriendly reservations.
But this influence will not operate on those alone who have few or no
slaves, comprehending the great mass of whites: it will exert itself
more notably on the large body of slaves themselves. This is an element
in the calculation which, humble though it be, cannot be overlooked
without great error in the results. A fundamental change will take place
in the condition of the blacks. They will be emancipated, either
gradually and safely, or with violent precipitation, with all its evils
and disasters. Yet, however the decree may come, whether by the sudden
blow of military power, or by the free and cheerful cooperation of the
States and their people, the measure itself will be plainly the result
of the rebellion, as met by the firm and noble stand assumed by the
Federal Government, and maintained at so great a cost of treasure and of
precious lives. The Government which, out of civil war and chaotic
strife, brings such advantages--out of calamity and danger educes such
blessings of security and progress will be entitled to the unbounded
gratitude of those who will be the chief gainers by its policy. But
experience will soon teach the whites that they will be equal gainers in
the end; and, in time, we may justly expect not only their cheerful
acquiescence, but their renewed allegiance and ardent support to the
Federal authorities.
MOTTOES FOR CONTRACTORS.
When you contract for boots and shoes,
Be not contracted in your views.
When you agree to clothe the body,
Expand your soul and flee from shoddy.
No soul the difference can see
'Twixt chico-rye and chicoree.
'Tis wise to feed the soldier well:
For reason _why_--see Dante's 'Hell.'
SUNSHINE IN THOUGHT.[3]
The genial pen of Mr. Leland has found an attractive theme in the title
of this curious and suggestive volume. Without the formality of an
inexorable system, it is written from the impulses of a large and
sympathetic nature, more accustomed to the acute observation of details
than to exact and rigid generalizations, but sending free and
penetrating glances beneath the surface of social life, and presenting a
variety of sagacious hints and comments, often admirable for their
quaint, original illustrations, and seldom destitute of an important
ethical bearing and significance.
In the composition of this work, Mr. Leland has aimed at the defence of
that view of life which combines a cheerful earnestness of purpose with
manly energy of action, as opposed to the melancholic, whining,
lachrymose spirit, which has been affected by certain popular modern
poets, and, through their vicious example, has been cherished as one of
the essential qualities of genius. Of this style of character Mr. Leland
has not the slightest degree of tolerance. Its manifestations are all
abominable in his eyes, and unsavory in his nostrils. He cannot endure
its presence; he regards its exercise as a nuisance: its permission in
the plan of a kindly Providence is a mystery.
The influence of a morbid melancholy, whether affected or genuine, in
the literature of the United States, is justly a matter of surprise and
lamentation with the author. The American mind, as he remarks, has
doubtless a strong tendency to humor. It delights in the expression of a
mischievous irony or good-natured sarcasm. The querulous wailings which
are the stock in trade of a certain class of writers are unnatural and
discordant sounds. We should expect rather a serene and cheerful melody
from a young and brave-hearted race, which is in intimate relations with
the external world. Instead of this, we have sucked in with the milk of
our Puritan mothers a forlorn and sorrowful spirit. We celebrate our
festivals with a sad countenance. We attempt to make merry by singing
dismal psalms. We weave our woes into poetry, and expand our
wretchedness in plaintive declamations.
This is a wide departure from the genius of Christianity, as well as
from the healthy instincts of humanity. In the first ages after Christ,
the newborn element of thought was a pure and beautiful spring, bubbling
up from the moss-grown ruins of the temple of heathendom. A hopeful,
joyous tone is indicated in the symbols of the early faith preserved in
the Vatican. It contained the germ of republican freedom and of a benign
and beneficent civilization. But it was driven by political convulsions
toward the East, and returned in the melancholy robes of the dreamy and
morbid oriental. It learned from Indian fakirs that laughter was a sin,
that misery was meritorious, that the hatred of beauty and joy was a
virtue in the sight of Heaven. The early Christians were imbued with the
sentiment of moral grandeur and loveliness; they represented Christ our
Lord as the fair ideal of humanity; but a darker age decreed that his
form should be meagre and homely--misled by those pagan Syrian pictures,
which still disfigure the churches in Russia, and whose original may be
found in the avatars of violence, modified by old Persian influence.
From the seventh to the twelfth century, the tendency to asceticism was
rampant. Beauty was proscribed as a temptation of the devil; deformed
and crooked limbs were ranked among the beatitudes; even dirt was
apotheosized, and, as a consequence, millions of men were mowed down by
unheard-of forms of disease. Humanity did not submit to this rule of
austerity and torture without a struggle. There was often a brave,
vigorous resistance. A lively protest was uttered in the joyous strains
of the troubadours and minnesingers. The glad spirit of nature could not
be wholly suppressed, and from amid the social oppressions of the times
sweet voices fell upon the ear, celebrating the praises of woman, the
love of beauty, and the joyousness of life.
But, according to our author, none of the great names in literature have
ever proclaimed the evangel of cheerfulness in all its health and
purity. The world as yet has never been fit to receive it. Years may
pass before it will be fully unfolded. Society is still in its earliest
March spring. The fresh winds which blow are still wild and chill; the
nights are long and dreary; and during these gloomy hours, the ancient
crone still relates horrible legends to believing ears. If the elder or
wiser ones only half believe them, most of the listeners still shiver at
their weird, grotesque poetry, and when they make new songs for
themselves, the old demoniac strains still linger on the air, showing
the origin of their earliest lays.
In order to illustrate the lack of true joyousness in the literature of
the world, Mr. Leland takes a rapid survey of some of the most
distinguished writers in ancient and modern times. Aristophanes, he
maintains, did not possess the genuine element in question. Allowing the
claims of the great satirist to genius, he had not reached the perennial
springs of cheerfulness in the depths of the human soul. In his gayest
arabesques, we trace the eternal line of life, but the deep, monotonous
echo of death is always nigh. He still had the sorrows which grieve the
strong humorist of every age. He could not escape the deep woe of seeing
social right and human happiness trodden under foot by tyranny; and
folly and ignorance, pain and sorrow were the great foundation stones on
which the gay temple of Grecian beauty was built. For every free citizen
who wandered through the groves of the Academy, holding high converse
with Plato, and revelling in the enjoyment of the divinest beauty in
nature and art, there was an untold multitude of slaves and barbarians,
into whose lives was crowded every element of bitterness.
But surely, the great sage of humor, glorious Father Rabelais, of later
days, was an exception to the prevailing rule of joyousness in
literature? Not at all, contends our author. To the young mind which
hungers for truth and joy, there is something irresistibly fascinating
and persuasive in the jolly philosophy and reckless worldly wisdom of
Rabelais. But after all, it will not do. It is anything but attainable
by most of the world. It demands good cheer and jovial company. But it
dies out in the desert, and is stifled among simple, vulgar associates.
Rabelais believed that he sacrificed to freedom, when he only worshipped
fortune. He went through the world, familiar with the ways of princes
and peers, priests and peasants, travelling in many lands, exhausting
the resources of art and learning, seeing through the sins and shams and
sorrows of life, and laughing at everything, like a good-natured,
large-hearted Mephistopheles. But he had never learned the true
philosophy of joyousness in the sincere love of nature, the deep phases
of humanity, and the affluence and purity of strong affection.
Nor do we find a better specimen in the renowned English humorists,
Sterne and Swift. The former closely follows his French prototype in
grotesque fancies: he abounds in tender and delicate pathos, though in
the highest degree artificial and forced; but do we ever arise from
reading him, like a giant refreshed by wine? Sterne, in fact, has even
less of the true philosophy of life than Rabelais. He affords no
stimulant to joyous, healthy action, awakens no impulse to gladden life,
or to make sorrow less and hope greater. It may be all very touching,
very comic, very ingenious, but it is not healthy or joyous. And Swift?
An immense fund of laughter, doubtless, had the witty Irish dean; but as
little claim to be a joyous writer as the prophet Jeremiah, or the
author of 'Groans from the Bottomless Pit.' The men who have been spoken
of dealt largely in satire and humor; but joyousness deals in infinitely
more. Mirth and laughter are all very well, but they are not all in all.
Cheerfulness requires something more than a well-balanced Rabelaisian
nonchalance in adversity and a keen relish for all pleasure.
The relation of Christianity to the theme of the volume presents a
delicate, and, it may be thought, a dangerous topic of discussion, for a
so decidedly secular pen as Mr. Leland's; but he touches upon it with
freedom and boldness, though with frankest sympathy and reverence for
the great Spirit, whose religion is the most significant fact in the
history of the world. 'I must confess,' says he, 'that even regarded
from a material and historical point alone, that is a poor, cowardly
soul, which does not feel the deepest earnestness of truth in
acknowledging the Wonderful One, Jesus Christ, as the Lord and Saviour
of the whole world.' His sublime soul, profound, universal, loving
beyond all power of human conception, introduced a new era for humanity.
Under his teaching, philosophy became indeed truly divine, for it became
infinite, and was thrown open to all. He first of all opened the
consolations of free thought, of freedom from old superstition, of love,
and strength, and inward joy, to the whole race of mankind. No narrow
limits of sect or caste or nationality cramped him, the first great
Cosmopolite. We cannot sufficiently admire the infinite adaptability,
the universal knowledge of humanity, the boundless sympathy with man,
which are everywhere manifest in the original Christian philosophy of
life. What a depth of meaning in the symbolic bread and wine, typical of
the life which flows through eternity and all its changes, of human love
and birth and death, of bounteous, beautiful nature, with its
continually renewed strength--the whole given, not in funereal guise,
not with sombre fasting, but as a joyous feast.
The New Testament abounds in symbols, parables, and proverbs, taken from
ancient tradition, but beautifully woven into a purer faith, which
taught that the healthy joys of life, and all knowledge of divine truth,
should be given not to a few kings or priests, a few favored with
initiation into divine mysteries, as of old, but to the whole world; for
the spirit of Christianity was identical with the genius of
republicanism. As taught by our Lord Jesus Christ, it was eminently
healthy, brave-hearted, and joyous. It did not commend celibacy, nor
excess of fasting, nor too long prayers, nor righteousness overmuch. It
did not approve of a plethora of outward goods, while the culture of our
highest faculties was neglected. It condemned all excess of care, even
in our daily duties, at the expense of that 'better part' which
distinguishes us from mere ants or bees. It gave no warrant for the
dismal dirges and melancholy groans which are raised in its name, by men
whom Jesus would have been the first to reprove. 'It was a religion of
life and of beauty, of friendship and temperate mirth, of love, truth,
and manliness; one which opposed neither feasting at weddings nor "going
a fishing."'
The temptation to find a refuge from the evils of life in active
exertion, instead of cultivating the sources of joy in our own nature,
is the subject of an ingenious and striking chapter. In a land, where
enjoyment in many minds is connected with a sense of sin, it is
doubtless better that the overflowing energy of character, which is a
trait of the population, should seek vent in the excitements of labor,
than in poisonous liquors, horse races, politics, and the gaming table.
Where the natural support of life is wanting, partial methods of relief
may be employed. He who can no longer swallow, may gain an imperfect
nourishment by means of baths, or artificial transmission. So, the grim
and hardened soul, which has lost the support of inward cheerfulness,
may find strength in work, merely for the sake of work. But it is a
fraud upon humanity to educate men solely as industrious animals. Hives
are beautiful, honey is sweet, and wonderful is the cunning structure of
the cell; but society is not a hive, nor the people bees. The day is
dawning when it will be understood that cheerful songs are as essential
to genuine manhood as work; that labor is not to be borne as a curse,
with sighs and groans; but combined with mental culture, will become
capable of self-support, and will supply its own enthusiasm.
The great problem of the age is the union of beauty with practical uses.
In their highest forms, art and science blend and become identical, just
as the Beautiful and the Good assimilate, as we trace them to their
source in Truth. While art becomes more practical, it loses none of its
beauty. In the infancy of science, it was mainly devoted to the
illustration of the fanciful and ornamental. Even architecture, in the
early ages, looked less to permanent comfort than to artistic effect.
But everything now tends to realization. Poetry and art fall in with
this influence of the age. Science is every day taking man away from the
purely ideal, the morbid and visionary; from the fond fancies of old
eras, and leading him to facts and to nature.
Mr. Leland never becomes formal or spiritless in the treatment of his
favorite topics, and often rises to a high degree of enthusiastic
eloquence. Witness the following noble appeal in behalf of a cheerful
earnestness in the cultivation of literature and art:
Young writer, young artist, whoever you be, I pray you go to work
in this roaring, toiling, machine-clanking, sunny, stormy,
terrible, joyful, commonplace, vulgar, tremendous world in
_downright earnest_. By all the altars of Greek beauty themselves,
I swear it to you; yes, by all that Raphael painted and Shakspeare
taught; by all the glory and dignity of all art and of all Thought!
you will find your most splendid successes not in cultivating the
worn-out romantic, but in _loving_ the growing Actual of life.
Master the past if you will, but only that you may the more
completely forget it in the present. He or she is best and bravest
among you who gives us the freshest draughts of reality and of
Nature. It lies all around you--in the foul smoke and smell of the
factory, amid the crash and slip of heavy wheels on muddy stones,
in the blank-gilt glare of the steamboat saloon, by the rattling
chips of the faro table, in the quiet, gentle family circle, in the
opera, in the six-penny concert, the hotel, the watering-place, on
the prairie, in the prison. Not as the poor playwright and little
sensation-story grinder see them, not as the manufacturers of
Magdalen elegies and mock-moral and mock-philanthropical tales skim
them, but in their truth and freshness as facts, around and through
which sweep incessantly the infinite joys and agonies, the dreams
and loves and despair of _humanity_. Heavens! is not LIFE as
earnest and as mysterious and as well worth the fierce grapple of
GENIUS, here and _now_, in this American nineteenth century, as it
ever was under the cedars of Italy, the olives of Greece, or the
palms of Morning Land? Are there not as much, or more vigor and
raciness in the practical souls of the multitude and in their
never-ending strife with Nature, as among the spoiled and dainty
darlings of fortune and among the nerveless, mind-emasculated
Victims of Society who sing us their endless Miserere from the
Sistine chapels of fashionable novels? You know there is, and if
you watch the time, you may see that it is the warm truth from real
life, which is most eagerly read and which goes most directly to
the hearts of all. Never yet in history was there an age or a
country so rich in great ideas, in great developments, or which
offered such copious material to the writer as these of ours. Be
bold and seize it with a strong hand. Those who are to live after
us will wonder as we now do of the great eras of the past, that
there were so few on the spot to picture them. Yet, why speak of
_great_ scenes, when humanity and Nature are always great--great in
small things even, far beyond our utmost power of apprehension?
Forget the spirit of the past, live in the present, and thus--and
thus only--you will secure a glorious and undying reward in the
future.
The fault of this volume, in the eyes of many readers, will be a certain
confusion in the arrangement of the matter, and the want of sufficient
expansion in the development of some of its leading suggestions. But it
must be judged as the earnest utterances of a poet, rather than a grave
didactic treatise. With the purpose which the author had in view, a
spice of rhapsody is no defect. He presents a beautiful example of the
smiling wisdom of which he is such an eloquent advocate. He has an
intuitive sense of the genial and joyous aspects of life, and has no
sympathies to waste on the victims of 'carking care' or morbid
melancholy. A more complete exposition of the conditions of cheerfulness
in the nature of man, would furnish materials for an interesting volume;
but it belongs more properly to an ethical or philosophical discourse.
We will not complain of the author for not doing what he has not
attempted--for what he had no inward call or outward occasion; what he
could not have accomplished but at the sacrifice of much which
constitutes the charm and grace of the present work; while we cordially
thank him for this endeavor to speak a cheering word in behalf of the
joyousness of life, and to spread 'sunshine in the shady place.'
R.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 3: SUNSHINE IN THOUGHT. By CHARLES GODFREY LELAND. 12mo, pp.
197. New York: Geo. P. Putnam.]
HOW THEY JESTED IN THE GOOD OLD TIME.
There is nothing which contributes so much to ease social intercourse as
the jest. In comparison with it, the proverb is only a humble
subordinate, and song itself, with all its power, but a weak influence.
Yet the song and the proverb boast a critical literature, while the
brief compendiums of merriment which never die, which, once written,
live through every age, and force their way through every penetrable
language, are undoubtedly less studied than any other popular medium of
feeling.
What is a jest? It is as little worth the while to try to define its
nature, as it is to analyze wit. We all know that the world laughs, and
what it laughs at, and what the droll saws, anecdotes, rhymes, quips,
and facetiae are, which give fame to a Bebel, or a Frischlin, a Tom
Brown, and a Joseph Miller. Leave labored analysis to the philosophers,
contenting ourselves with remarking that a jest is a laugh candied or
frozen in words, and thawed and relished in the reading or utterance.
And laughter? When a man is too lazy to think out an idea, and yet too
active to dreamily _feel_ it, he laughs. When he catches its leading
points, and yet realizes that behind them remains the incomprehensible
or incongruous, he settles it for the nonce with a smile. Hence it comes
that we laugh so seldom with all our heart, a second time over a jest.
It has been _comprehended_; the mystery, the sense of contradiction and
incongruity, has vanished--we may revive it in others, and laugh
electrically with them; but the first piquant gusto of _its_ spice is
gone forever.
Yet the jest, like the proverb, acquires a value by becoming current.
It often illustrates an opinion or an experience, and when it is much
worn, it may still gain a new point, by being brought into illustrative
relation with some event or idea. Esop's fables, or any fables, are,
after all, only good jokes in a narrative form, which owe their fame
simply to their boundless capacity for application. Sidney Smith's story
of Mrs. Partington, who tried to mop out the Atlantic, was a jest, and
so too was Lady Macbeth's 'cat i' the adage,' who wanted fish, yet would
not wet her paws, and let 'I dare not' wait upon 'I would.' _Something_
of our old enjoyment of a joke for the first time, always lingers around
it, and we gladly laugh again--for, 'old love never quite rusts out.'
And there are many jests, which, owing to their boundless variety of
application, always come before us in a new light. Such are those which
illustrate character. Woe to the man among the vulgar, who once becomes
the scape-goat of a story on the subject of a joke-anecdote which 'shows
him up.' Woe in truth, if it grow to a nickname--for then he, of all
persons, learns that there are jests which never lose their sting.
Some jests have been progressive--they have been re-made to suit the
times. Diogenes, when asked which wine he preferred, replied, 'That of
other people.' An Englishman answered to the same question, 'The O. P.
brand,' referring the initials not only to Other People, but also to the
far-famed Old Particular stamp which marked certain rare varieties--or,
as others explain it, to 'Old Port.' The Scholastikos of Hierocles,
having a house for sale, carried a brick around as a sample--a modern
story says that a commander when asked of what material his
fortifications were built, called up his troops, and said:
'There!--every man's a brick.' Here we have the 'living walls' of the
Romans--two old stories blended into one, and the whole greatly
strengthened by a modern slang expression. When thus changed to suit the
times, jests, instead of growing old, rather grow new again. Not
unfrequently, a single joke becomes, in this manner, the parent of
scores of others. I think that it is Mr. Wendell Phillips, who, in a
lecture on Lost Arts, declares that there were never yet more than
twenty-five original 'good stories,' and that all of those now current
may be traced back to them. In a certain sense, the assertion is true;
but it is a mistake to confound the result of a cause with the cause
itself, and an error to declare the descendant to be one and the same
with the ancestor. Max Muller has proved that hundreds of words of the
most different meanings descend from the same root, and, in like manner,
we might show, if the traditional links were supplied, that the last
'good one' current at Washington, originated at the court of King
Pharaoh. Let no one laugh, for Chaucer's Clerke of Oxforde's Tale was
for years told, with Daniel Webster and Henry Clay as the heroes, and we
have even met with a bold Southron who '_knew_ that it was true of
them!'
In this connection it is worth while to observe that even the slang
phrases of the day, which are popular, partly because they _save trouble
in thinking_, and partly because the vulgar mind, like the vulgar ear,
finds a relief or pleasure in monotony--are not unfrequently of ancient
origin. The current expression, 'a high old time,' occurs in a Latin
jest, given in an old German-Latin jest-book, which, as its preface
asserts, consists entirely of a reprint from still older works.
'Henricus,' it says, 'was begged to make at a wedding (_Hoch
zeit_--literally, 'high time') a wedding song, and complied with the
following:
'Iste vetus Juvenis Socius prius ad stationem arripit
Atque _altum tempus_ habere cupit.'[4]
The expression is better in its old form, since _altum_ means both high
and old. Those who have laughed at the instance in 'Ferdinand Count
Fathom,' of the Dutchman, who boasted that his brother had written a
great book of poetry as thick as a cheese, may find its original
'motive' in an anecdote given in the same work.
'A peasant going to a lawyer, begged him to undertake a case for
him, to which the man of law assenting, began to refer to and read
in a very small book. But the peasant, who saw many large folios in
the study, touched the advocate on the arm and said:
'Sir--please read some in a _great_ book also, for this is
certainly a big case which I have brought to you.'
Everybody knows the story of the fortune hunter who commanded his
servant to duplicate in the affirmative, when he should be in
conversation, all his assertions. 'I have a fine farm,' said he. 'Faith,
ye mane ye have two on thim,' interpolated his Irishman; and so it went
on, until the master admitted that he had a cork leg. '_Two_ false ligs,
_an' ye know it_,' cried out the man. This is somewhat varied and
enlarged from the old story as given in the _Facetiae_ of Bebel, in which
the nobleman, remarking to his lady-love that he was 'a little out of
sorts,'--'_dixit ille, se pallidulum parumque infirmum_,' was
interrupted by his servant with: 'And no wonder, since you suffer with
such a terrible and incurable quotidian disease!'[5]
If all stories and jests are to be traced to a few originals, perhaps
the many eccentric tales of Jack on horseback may be found in a very old
anecdote of a certain _Venetus insuetus ac nescius equitare_--a Venetian
unaccustomed to and ignorant of riding, who, when mounted on horseback,
having inadvertently spurred the animal, exclaimed, as it reared and
plunged:
'Lord! the waves of the sea are nothing to those on land,'--thinking
that the leaping of his steed was caused by a sudden storm! The
anecdotes of absent-mindedness may find a prototype in a very old
monk-Latin anecdote of a certain doctor who went riding '_cum Palatino
Rheni_,' with the Prince Palatine, and who, on being told that he had no
breeches on, replied: '_Credebam, o princeps, mihi famulum ea
induisse._' 'I thought, oh prince, that my valet had put them on!'
Domine Sampson and the magistrate who appeared un-breeched before
General Washington, are both anticipated in these absent small-clothes.
Many of the capital extravagances contained in 'Baron Munchausen' are
borrowed literally from the old Latin jest-books. The incident of the
wild pig which led about by its tail a blind wild boar, so that when the
former was slain the latter was taken home by simply giving it the tail
to hold, is of very respectable antiquity--as is also the story of the
horse cut in two--attributed by Bebel to a locksmith. The locksmiths, he
tells us in the parenthesis, are the boldest of Major Longbows.
There are many jests current in all languages, quizzing the vanity of
humble persons suddenly raised to some small dignity. 'Neebors, I am
still but a mon,' remarked the Scotchman, who became mayor.[6] Perhaps
their type is latent in the '_De rustica praefecti uxore_--the village
magistrate's wife,--which runs as follows:
'When a certain man had been made a prefect of a small village, he
bought his wife a new fur garment (_melotam_). She, proud of her
finery and full of her new honor, entered church, _capite elato et
superbo_, with her head raised, just as all the congregation rose
to their feet, when the Gospel was to be read. When she, thinking
it to be in her honor, and recollecting her former condition, said:
Sit still! I have not forgotten that I was once poor!'
A very great proportion of the shrewd retorts and witty replies
attributed to great men are very old. 'What do you think of soldiers
who can endure such wounds?' remarked Napoleon, when, showing a
frightfully scarred grenadier to an Englishman. 'What does your majesty
think of the men who gave the wounds?' was the reply. It is essentially
the remark of Louis the Bavarian, who, on enlisting four soldiers famed
for incredible bravery, and observing that they were scarred from head
to foot, said to them: 'Ye are brave fellows; but I had rather see the
men _a quibus tot vulnera accepistis_--from whom ye received so many
wounds.' The number of witty retorts and droll stories associated with
the names of Talleyrand, Piron, Voltaire--in fact, to a certain degree,
of almost all great men--is so great as to almost persuade the reader
who wanders in the neglected field of ancient humor, that no man of the
later centuries was ever capable of a single witty and original thought.
It is not long since I met with an anecdote, stating that Alexandre
Dumas, who had a very unattractive wife, one day surprised a gentleman
in the act of tenderly embracing her. In a compassionate and astonished
tone the novelist exclaimed: 'Poor man! why do you act so? I am sure
that nobody could have compelled you to it against your will.' '_Eh!
monsieur, qui est-ce qui vous y obligeait?_' The jest is 'old as the
hills'--it was old before Dumas was born. So, too, with the amusing bit
of naivete attributed to an English duchess, who, to express her
deeply-seated religious prejudices, declared that she would sooner have
a dozen Protestant husbands than one Catholic. The same point is
expressed as follows, in a very witty but extremely wicked collection of
facetiae of the seventeenth century:[7]
Displicet, insignis, mihi Clericus ordo puella
Inquit et est valde gens odiosa mihi.
Malo decem certe me consociare colonis,
Unicum Clero quam coiisse velim.
Sir Isaac Newton, and I know not how many other philosophers, have been
made to learn by a current story how to bear coals--literally. A learned
man, it is said, being asked by a little girl for a live coal, offered
to bring her a fire shovel. 'It is not necessary,' replied the child,
and having laid cold ashes on her palm, she placed a glowing ember on
them and bore it away safely. 'With all my wisdom,' said the sage, 'I
should never have thought of that!' The jest is of mediaeval
antiquity--possibly pre-Latin--it was in later days, however, versified
by Schurrias--an extremely aged and dying woman being substituted for
the learned man.
'Nam nuda poteris ignea ferre manu?
Parva puella refert: mater, perizomate prunas
Portabo flammae ne nocuisse queant.
Quid facies igitur, Anus inquit? Serviet hicce
Mi cinis, illa refert; quo super hasce feram.
Mox exclamat Anus: disco, moriorque profecto.
En disco moriens quae latuere senem:
_O, ich lern und stirb_!'
A very great number of the 'good stories' current at the present day
with new names and faces, are to be found in the works of Rabelais, and
in the _Moyen Parvenir_, now generally attributed to him. It is almost
needless to say that few of these were however original with the great
French humorist. We find them in the Macaronics of Merlin Coccaius, and
in scores of older authorities. Still it must be borne in mind that a
similarity does not always establish an identity. There are few persons
who cannot cite some droll instance of a sharper or greedy fellow, who,
expecting an undeserved reward for some sham service, has found himself
drolly overreached. So Rabelais dresses up for us anew the fable of the
woodman, who, having lost his hatchet, and wearied Jupiter with prayers
for its recovery, was tempted by Mercury with a golden hatchet, and
asked if it were the missing article. He answering 'No,' received the
precious one for reward. Which being made known, excited great hopes
among his neighbors of becoming rich by the same means:
'Ha, ha! said they--was there no more to do but to lose a hatchet
to make us rich? Now for that; it is as easy as ----, and will
cost us but little. Are then at this time of the year the
revolutions of the heavens, the constellations of the firmament and
aspects of the planets such that whosoever shall lose a hatchet,
shall immediately grow rich? Ha, ha, ha! by Jove you shall even be
lost and it please you, my dear hatchet! With this they all fairly
lost their hatchets out of hand. The devil of a one that had a
hatchet left; he was not his mother's son that did not lose his
hatchet. No more was wood felled or cleared in that country,
through want of hatchets. Nay, the Aesopian apologue even saith,
that certain petty country gents of the lower class who had sold
the Woodman their little mill and little field to have wherewithal
to make a figure at the next muster, having been told that his
treasure was come to him by this only means, sold the only badge of
their gentility, their swords, to purchase hatchets to go lose
them, as the silly clodpates did, in hopes to gain store of chink
by that loss.
'You would have truly sworn they had been a parcel of your petty
spiritual usurers, Rome-bound, selling their all, and borrowing of
others to buy store of mandates,--a penny-worth of a new-made pope.
'Now they cried out and brayed, and prayed and bawled, and invoked
Jupiter: 'My hatchet! my hatchet! Jupiter, my hatchet! on this
side, my hatchet! on that side, my hatchet! ho, ho, ho, ho,
Jupiter, my hatchet!' The air round about rung with the cries and
howlings of these rascally losers of hatchets.
'Mercury was nimble in bringing them hatchets; to each offering
that which he had lost, as also another of gold, and a third of
silver.
'Every _he_ was still for that of gold, giving thanks in abundance
to the great giver Jupiter; but in the very nick of time, that they
bowed and stooped to take it from the ground, whip, in a trice,
Mercury chopped off their heads, as Jupiter had commanded; and of
heads thus cut off the number was just equal to that of the lost
hatchets.'
This is but a small portion of the fable as amplified by Rabelais; but
what is cited illustrates the _accretive_ power of a jest when it
involves a principle of general application. The same idea--that of
roguery rewarded according to the letter--is involved in an anecdote,
which tells us that a certain alchemist having dedicated to Pope Leo the
Tenth a book containing the whole art of making gold, received as
recompense a great empty purse, with the words: 'If thou canst make
gold, thou art far richer than I; but herein is a purse wherein thou
mayest put thy gold.'
In the German _Lallenbuch_, as well as other works, we find the story of
the stupid fellow who, coming to the banks of a river, waited long and
in vain until the water should all have rolled by. It is given in the
following form in a very droll collection of jests:[8]
'Rustici cujusdam filius a patre in proximam urbem missus, quum ad
flumen aliquod pervenisset, diu dum integrum deflueret, sicque
transitum praeberet, expectans, tandem ubi continuo aquam fluere
vidit, domum reversus est, de eo quod sibi accidisset, parentibus
conquestus.'
But the story was old, centuries before the monks--for even Horace sums
it up in two verses as one quotes a well-known popular proverb:
'Rusticus exspectat dum defluat amnis: at ille
Labitur et labetur in omne volubilis aevum.'
'The clown awaits until the flood be gone:
It glides and whirls for ages ever on.'
The reader has probably heard of the apocryphal twelfth commandment,
'Mind your own business.' Possibly its existence was suggested by the
discovery of the _first_, told as follows in the _Democritus Ridens_.
'A certain soldier being asked by his pastor what was the first
commandment given by GOD, replied, 'Thou shalt not eat!' At which
answer the priest inquiring what he meant, received for reply that
this was the first command to our first parents relative to the
apple. _Quo audito, Pastor conticuit!_ Which having heard, the
priest was silent.'
Of the same family or parentage is the modern story of the clergyman
who, wishing to preach against the extravagant head-dresses worn by the
women of his congregation, took for a text, 'Top knot come down!'
referring for his authority to Matthew xxiv. 17. In like manner a not
over-learned brother is said to have expounded Genesis, chap. xxii. v.
23, as follows: 'These eight Milcah bear.' This shows us, my brethren,
what hard times they had of old, when it took eight on 'em to milk a bar
(and I 'spose get mighty little at that), when nowadays my darter kin
milk a cow with nary help, as easy as look at her.'
Every one has heard of the Irishman crossing the brook. 'Sure, Paddy, if
ye carry me, don't I carry the barrel of whiskey, an' isn't that fair
and aiquil?' It is differently told in one of the old Latin jest books,
where a certain Piero, pitying his weary jackass, which bore a heavy
plough, took the latter on his own shoulders, and mounting the donkey,
said: '_Nune procedere poteris, non enim tu sed ego aratrum
fero_,'--'Now you may go along, for not you but I now bear the plough.'
Not a few of the jokes given to modern Irishmen originated centuries ago
in other countries than theirs. The reader may recall the advice given
by an Emeralder to another at a tavern, when the latter found that his
boiled egg was ready to hatch. 'Down wid it, Murphy, ye divil, before
the landlord comes in and charges ye for a _chicken breakfast_!' The
same occurs as an old Latin joke, with this difference, that, in the
latter, the companion, when the breakfast was over, required that the
chicken eater should pay the reckoning for both. '_Ni facis, dicam
cauponi de pullo quem pro ovo absumpsisti, et solves largius._' 'Unless
you do, I will tell the landlord of the chicken which you ate for an
egg, and _then_ see what a bill you'll have to pay.'
The Germans of the present day have a story of a certain Englishman who,
on being told that his coat was burning, politely replied: 'What the
devil business is that of yours? I have seen your coat burning this half
hour, and never bothered myself about it.' Tom Brown tells us of a
roguish boy who said to a traveller, warming his feet at a fire: 'Take
care, sir, or you'll burn your spurs!' 'My boots! you mean,' quoth the
traveller. 'No, sir, I mean your spurs; your boots be burned already.'
But the best form of the joke is given by Erasmus in his Adages, as
follows:
'A certain traveller in Holland lay so near the fire that his cloak
was scorched. Which being observed by a guest, he said to the
sleeper, 'Here--I want to tell you something!' To which the other
replied: 'If it is bad news, put it off, for I don't wish to hear
any in company where all should be jolly. _Post convivium, inquit,
seria_--'save up the sorrow until after supper.' And when they had
merrily supped, 'Now,' said he, 'I am ready to hear it.' Then the
other showed him and immense hole in his cloak, and he began to
rage that he had not been warned of it in time. 'I wished to do
so,' replied the guest meekly, 'but you forbade me.'
The witty sayings of men about to be executed are numerous, but are in
many cases far from being original or authentic. During the horrors of
the French Revolution, when men 'became so accustomed to death that they
lost all respect for it,' it became the fashion to make a jest with the
last breath, and it is said that a volume of these sayings was collected
and published. In the _Democritus Ridens_, already referred to, under
the head of _Jocus sub necem_, the author gives several anecdotes, more
than one of which has been attributed in modern times to some noted
criminal:
'Those condemned to death are not infrequently so excited and
confused as to lose their wits and joke most improperly. As an
example, take that man who, when standing on the scaffold, said
with a smile to the judge who was present: 'I wonder, old fellow,
that you with such a turned-up nose can see anything!'
'Another when about to die asked for a parting cup. A goblet of
beer was brought, from which he carefully blew away the froth,
saying that it was 'unhealthy and conducive to the gravel.'
'Another on the way to the gallows, seeing a crowd hastening
forward, said to them: 'There is no need of hurrying, children;
even though you go as slowly as I, for depend upon it, the thing
will not come off till I get there.'
'Another on quitting the prison, turning to his jailor, said
privately: 'You needn't keep the house open beyond the usual time
this evening on my account, for I shall not return.''
'Another is said, when about to be shipwrecked, to have called for
salt meat. And being asked why? replied: 'Because I shall soon have
to drink more than I ever did in all my life.' _O ridiculos et o
insanos homunculos!_ adds the old writer: 'O foolish and mad worms
of men who could thus joke at the very opening instant of
eternity!''
This last instance of dying recklessness has been used by Rabelais as
one of the jests of Panurge. Much like it is the anecdote to the effect
that in a storm at sea, when the sailors were all at prayers, expecting
every moment to go to the bottom, a passenger appeared quite
unconcerned. The captain asked him how he could be so much at his ease
in this awful situation. 'Sir,' said the passenger, 'my life is
insured.'
Somewhat allied to this spirit of blindness was the remark of the Greek
to his slave during a terrible storm at sea. Seeing the latter weeping,
he exclaimed, 'Why are you so troubled--I give you your freedom?' And
allied to it is the well-known epigram:
'It blew a hard storm and in utmost confusion
The sailors all hurried to get absolution;
Which done, and the weight of the sins they confessed
Was conveyed, as they thought, from themselves to the priest:
To lighten the ship and conclude their devotion,
They tossed the poor parson souse into the ocean.'
One of the coarse jokes current with the last generation was that of a
sailor who, when a duke with his lady was on board ship, and all
expected soon to be lost, asked the mate if he had ever lain with a
duchess? The other answering in fear and trembling, 'no,' was told by
the reckless fellow: 'Well, we shall all have that pleasure soon.' The
ship, however, was saved, and the sailor being asked by the duke what he
meant by his insulting remark, replied: 'At the bottom of the sea, your
grace, we all lie low in death together.' And he was pardoned. It is
remarkable that in all ages wit has been suffered to save men when
better qualities would perhaps be of no avail.
We may class with these jests of men _in articulo mortis_ the droll
story told by Bebelius, to the effect that a certain duke having caught
a miller in the act of stealing, asked his victim as he stood beneath
the gallows, to swear by his faith if he believed that there was on
earth a single man of his calling who was honest. To which the miller
stoutly swore that to his knowledge there was not one who was not a
greater thief than himself. 'If that be the case,' replied his judge,
'go in peace and live while you may, for I had rather be robbed by you
than by some more rapacious rascal of your trade.'