_1st._ Number of--
_2d._ Nature of--
_3d._ Longevity of--
_First_. Their number. They are not enumerated in any census. Not even the
most painstaking statistician has meddled with the topic. Fancy takes bold
leaps at the very suggestion of such an estimate, and begins to think at
once of all things in the universe which are usually mentioned as beyond
numbering. Probably one good way of getting at a certain sort of result
would be to ask each person of one's acquaintance, "Do you happen to know
a private tyrant?"
How well we know beforehand the replies we should get from _some_ beloved
men and women,--that is, if they spoke the truth!
But they would not. That is the saddest thing about these private
tyrannies. They are in many cases borne in such divine and uncomplaining
silence by their victims, perhaps for long years, the world never dreams
that they exist. But at last the fine, subtle writing, which no control,
no patience, no will can thwart, becomes set on the man's or the woman's
face, and tells the whole record. Who does not know such faces? Cheerful
usually, even gay, brave, and ready with lines of smile; but in repose so
marked, so scarred with unutterable weariness and disappointment, that
tears spring in the eyes and love in the hearts of all finely organized
persons who meet them.
_Secondly_. Nature of private tyrants. Here also the statistician has not
entered. The field is vast; the analysis difficult.
Selfishness is, of course, their leading characteristic; in fact, the very
sum and substance of their natures. But selfishness is Protean. It has as
many shapes as there are minutes, and as many excuses and wraps of sheep's
clothing as ever ravening wolf possessed.
One of its commonest pleas is that of weakness. Here it often is so
inextricably mixed with genuine need and legitimate claim that one grows
bewildered between sympathy and resentment. In this shape, however, it
gets its cruelest dominion over strong and generous and tender people.
This kind of tyranny builds up and fortifies its bulwarks on and out of
the very virtues of its victims; it gains strength hourly from the very
strength of the strength to which it appeals; each slow and fatal
encroachment never seems at first so much a thing required as a thing
offered; but, like the slow sinking inch by inch of that great, beautiful
city of stone into the relentless Adriatic, so is the slow, sure going
down and loss of the freedom of a strong, beautiful soul, helpless in the
omnipresent circumference of the selfish nature to which it is or believes
itself bound.
That the exactions never or rarely take shape in words is, to the
unbiassed looker-on, only an exasperating feature in their tyranny. While
it saves the conscience of the tyrant,--if such tyrants have any,--it
makes doubly sure the success of their tyranny. And probably nothing short
of revelation from Heaven, in shape of blinding light, would ever open
their eyes to the fact that it is even more selfish to hold a generous
spirit fettered hour by hour by a constant fear of giving pain than to
coerce or threaten or scold them into the desired behavior. Invalids, all
invalids, stand in deadly peril of becoming tyrants of this order. A
chronic invalid who entirely escapes it must be so nearly saint or angel
that one instinctively feels as if their invalidism would soon end in the
health of heaven. We know of one invalid woman, chained to her bed for
long years by an incurable disease, who has had the insight and strength
to rise triumphant above this danger. Her constant wish and entreaty is
that her husband should go freely into all the work and the pleasure of
life. Whenever he leaves her, her farewell is not, "How soon do you think
you shall come back? At what hour, or day, may I look for you?" but, "Now,
pray stay just as long as you enjoy it. If you hurry home one hour sooner
for the thought of me, I shall be wretched." It really seems almost as if
the longer he stayed away,--hours, days, weeks even,--the happier she
were. By this sweet and wise unselfishness she has succeeded in realizing
the whole blessedness of wifehood far more than most women who have
health. But we doubt if any century sees more than one such woman as she
is.
Another large class, next to that of invalids the most difficult to deal
with, is made up of people who are by nature or by habit uncomfortably
sensitive or irritable. Who has not lived at one time or other in his life
in daily contact with people of this sort,--persons whose outbreaks of
temper, or of wounded feeling still worse than temper, were as
incalculable as meteoric showers? The suppressed atmosphere, the chronic
state of alarm and misgiving, in which the victims of this species of
tyranny live are withering and exhausting to the stoutest hearts. They are
also hardening; perpetually having to wonder and watch how people will
"take" things is apt sooner or later to result in indifference as to
whether they take them well or ill.
But to define all the shapes of private tyranny would require whole
histories; it is safe, however, to say that so far as any human being
attempts to set up his own individual need or preference as law to
determine the action of any other human being, in small matters or great,
so far forth he is a tyrant. The limit of his tyranny may be narrowed by
lack of power on his part, or of response on the part of his fellows; but
its essence is as purely tyrannous as if he sat on a throne with an
executioner within call.
_Thirdly._ Longevity of private tyrants. We have not room under this head
to do more--nor, if we had all room, could we do better--than to quote a
short paragraph from George Eliot's immortal Mrs. Poyser: "It seems as if
them as aren't wanted here are th' only folks as aren't wanted i' th'
other world."
Margin.
Wide-margined pages please us at first sight. We do not stop to ask why.
It has passed into an accepted rule that all elegant books must have
broad, clear margins to their pages. We as much recognize such margins
among the indications of promise in a book, as we do fineness of paper,
clearness of type, and beauty of binding. All three of these last, even in
perfection, could not make any book beautiful, or sightly, whose pages had
been left narrow-margined and crowded. This is no arbitrary decree of
custom, no chance preference of an accredited authority. It would be
dangerous to set limit to the power of fashion in any thing; and yet it
seems almost safe to say that not even fashion itself can ever make a
narrow-margined page look other than shabby and mean. This inalienable
right of the broad margin to our esteem is significant. It lies deep. The
broad margin means something which is not measured by inches, has nothing
to do with fashions of shape. It means room for notes, queries, added by
any man's hand who reads. Meaning this, it means also much more than
this,--far more than the mere letter of "right of way." It is a fine
courtesy of recognition that no one page shall ever say the whole of its
own message; be exhaustive, or ultimate, even of its own topic; determine
or enforce its own opinion, to the shutting out of others. No matter if
the book live and grow old, without so much as an interrogation point or a
line of enthusiastic admiration drawn in it by human hand, still the
gracious import and suggestion of its broad white spaces are the same.
Each thought invites its neighbor, stands fairly to right or left of its
opponent, and wooes its friend.
Thinking on this, we presently discover that margin means a species of
freedom. No wonder the word, and the thing it represents, wherever we find
them, delight us.
We use the word constantly in senses which, speaking carelessly, we should
have called secondary and borrowed. Now we see that its application to
pages, or pictures, or decorations, and so forth, was the borrowed and
secondary use; and that primarily its meaning is spiritual.
We must have margin, or be uncomfortable in every thing in life. Our plan
for a day, for a week, for our lifetime, must have it,--margin for change
of purpose, margin for interruption, margin for accident. Making no
allowance for these, we are fettered, we are disturbed, we are thwarted.
Is there a greater misery than to be hurried? If we leave ourselves proper
margin, we never need to be hurried. We always shall be, if we crowd our
plan. People pant, groan, and complain as if hurry were a thing outside
of themselves,--an enemy, a monster, a disease which overtook them, and
against which they had no shelter. It is hard to be patient with such
nonsense. Hurry is almost the only known misery which it is impossible to
have brought upon one by other people's fault.
If our plan of action for an hour or a day be so fatally spoiled by lack
of margin, what shall we say of the mistake of the man who leaves himself
no margin in matters of belief? No room for a wholesome, healthy doubt? No
provision for an added enlightenment? No calculation for the inevitable
progress of human knowledge? This is, in our eyes, the crying sin and
danger of elaborate creeds, rigid formulas of exact statement on difficult
and hidden mysteries.
The man who is ready to give pledge that the opinion he will hold
to-morrow will be precisely the opinion he holds to-day has either thought
very little, or to little purpose, or has resolved to quit thinking
altogether.
The Fine Art of Smiling.
Some theatrical experiments are being made at this time to show that all
possible emotions and all shades and gradations of emotion can be
expressed by facial action, and that the method of so expressing them can
be reduced to a system, and taught in a given number of lessons. It seems
a matter of question whether one would be likely to make love or evince
sorrow any more successfully by keeping in mind all the while the detailed
catalogue of his flexors and extensors, and contracting and relaxing No.
1, 2, or 3, according to rule. The human memory is a treacherous thing,
and what an enormous disaster would result from a very slight
forgetfulness in such a nicely adjusted system! The fatal effect of
dropping the superior maxillary when one intended to drop the inferior, or
of applying nervous stimuli to the up track, instead of the down, can
easily be conceived. Art is art, after all, be it ever so skilful and
triumphant, and science is only a slow reading of hieroglyphs. Nature sits
high and serene above both, and smiles compassionately on their efforts
to imitate and understand. And this brings us to what we have to say about
smiling. Do many people feel what a wonderful thing it is that each human
being is born into the world with his own smile? Eyes, nose, mouth, may be
merely average commonplace features; may look, taken singly, very much
like anybody's else eyes, nose, or mouth. Let whoever doubts this try the
simple but endlessly amusing experiment of setting half a dozen people
behind a perforated curtain, and making them put their eyes at the holes.
Not one eye in a hundred can be recognized, even by most familiar and
loving friends. But study smiles; observe, even in the most casual way,
the variety one sees in a day, and it will soon be felt what subtle
revelation they make, what infinite individuality they possess.
The purely natural smile, however, is seldom seen in adults; and it is on
this point that we wish to dwell. Very early in life people find out that
a smile is a weapon, mighty to avail in all sorts of crises. Hence, we see
the treacherous smile of the wily; the patronizing smile of the pompous;
the obsequious smile of the flatterer; the cynical smile of the satirist.
Very few of these have heard of Delsarte; but they outdo him on his own
grounds. Their smile is four-fifths of their social stock in trade. All
such smiles are hideous. The gloomiest, blankest look which a human face
can wear is welcomer than a trained smile or a smile which, if it is not
actually and consciously methodized by its perpetrator, has become, by
long repetition, so associated with tricks and falsities that it partakes
of their quality.
What, then, is the fine art of smiling?
If smiles may not be used for weapons or masks, of what use are they? That
is the shape one would think the question took in most men's minds, if we
may judge by their behavior! There are but two legitimate purposes of the
smile; but two honest smiles. On all little children's faces such smiles
are seen. Woe to us that we so soon waste and lose them!
The first use of the smile is to express affectionate good-will; the
second, to express mirth.
Why do we not always smile whenever we meet the eye of a fellow-being?
That is the true, intended recognition which ought to pass from soul to
soul constantly. Little children, in simple communities, do this
involuntarily, unconsciously. The honest-hearted German peasant does it.
It is like magical sunlight all through that simple land, the perpetual
greeting on the right hand and on the left, between strangers, as they
pass by each other, never without a smile. This, then, is "the fine art of
smiling;" like all fine art, true art, perfection of art, the simplest
following of Nature.
Now and then one sees a face which has kept its smile pure and undefiled.
It is a woman's face usually; often a face which has trace of great sorrow
all over it, till the smile breaks. Such a smile transfigures; such a
smile, if the artful but knew it, is the greatest weapon a face can have.
Sickness and age cannot turn its edge; hostility and distrust cannot
withstand its spell; little children know it, and smile back; even dumb
animals come closer, and look up for another.
If one were asked to sum up in one single rule what would most conduce to
beauty in the human face, one might say therefore, "Never tamper with your
smile; never once use it for a purpose. Let it be on your face like the
reflection of the sunlight on a lake. Affectionate good-will to all men
must be the sunlight, and your face is the lake. But, unlike the sunlight,
your good-will must be perpetual, and your face must never be overcast."
"What! smile perpetually?" says the realist. "How silly!"
Yes, smile perpetually! Go to Delsarte here, and learn even from the
mechanician of smiles that a smile can be indicated by a movement of
muscles so slight that neither instruments nor terms exist to measure or
state it; in fact, that the subtlest smile is little more than an added
brightness to the eye and a tremulousness of the mouth. One second of time
is more than long enough for it; but eternity does not outlast it.
In that wonderfully wise and tender and poetic book, the "Layman's
Breviary," Leopold Schefer says,--
"A smile suffices to smile death away;
And love defends thee e'en from wrath divine!
Then let what may befall thee,--still smile on!
And howe'er Death may rob thee,--still smile on!
Love never has to meet a bitter thing;
A paradise blooms around him who smiles."
Death-Bed Repentance.
Not long since, a Congregationalist clergyman, who had been for forty-one
years in the ministry, said in my hearing, "I have never, in all my
experience as a pastor, known of a single instance in which a repentance
on what was supposed to be a death-bed proved to be of any value whatever
after the person recovered."
This was strong language. I involuntarily exclaimed, "Have you known many
such cases?"
"More than I dare to remember."
"And as many more, perhaps, where the person died."
"Yes, fully as many more."
"Then did not the bitter failure of these death-bed repentances to bear
the tests of time shake your confidence in their value under the tests of
eternity?"
"It did,--it does," said the clergyman, with tears in his eyes. The
conversation made a deep impression on my mind. It was strong evidence,
from a quarter in which I least looked for it, of the utter paltriness and
insufficiency of fear as a motive when brought to bear upon decisions in
spiritual things. There seem to be no words strong enough to stigmatize it
in all other affairs except spiritual. All ages, all races, hold cowardice
chief among vices; noble barbarians punished it with death. Even
civilization the most cautiously legislated for, does the same thing when
a soldier shows it "in face of the enemy." Language, gathering itself up
and concentrating its force to describe base behavior, can do no more than
call it "cowardly." No instinct of all the blessed body-guard of instincts
born with us seems in the outset a stronger one than the instinct that to
be noble, one must be brave. Almost in the cradle the baby taunts or is
taunted by the accusation of being "afraid." And the sting of the taunt
lies in the probability of its truth. For in all men, alas! is born a
certain selfish weakness, to which fear can address itself. But how
strange does it appear that they who wish to inculcate noblest action,
raise to most exalted spiritual conditions, should appeal to this lowest
of motives to help them! We believe that there are many "death-bed
repentances" among hale, hearty sinners, who are approached by the same
methods, stimulated by the same considerations, frightened by the same
conceptions of possible future suffering, which so often make the chambers
of dying men dark with terrors. Fear is fear all the same whether its
dread be for the next hour or the next century. The closer the enemy, the
swifter it runs. That is all the difference. Let the enemy be surely and
plainly removed, and in one instance it is no more,--is as if it had
never been. Every thought, word, and action based upon it has come to end.
I was forcibly reminded of the conversation above quoted by some
observations I once had opportunity of making at a Methodist camp-meeting.
Much of the preaching and exhortation consisted simply and solely of
urgent, impassioned appeals to the people to repent,--not because
repentance is right; not because God is love, and it is base not to love
and obey him; not even because godliness is in itself great gain, and
sinfulness is, even temporarily, loss and ruin; but because there is a
wrath to come, which will inflict terrible and unending suffering on the
sinner. He is to "flee" for his life from torments indescribable and
eternal; he is to call on Jesus, not to make him holy, but to save him
from woe, to rescue him from frightful danger; all and every thing else is
subordinate to the one selfish idea of escaping future misery. The effect
of these appeals, of these harrowing pictures, on some of the young men
and women and children was almost too painful to be borne. They were in an
hysterical condition,--weeping from sheer nervous terror. When the
excitement had reached its highest pitch, an elder rose and told the story
of a wicked and impenitent man whom he had visited a few weeks before. The
man had assented to all that he told him of the necessity of repentance;
but said that he was not at leisure that day to attend the class meeting.
He resolved and promised, however, to do so the next week. That very
night he was taken ill with a disease of the brain, and, after three days
of unconsciousness, died. I would not like to quote here the emphasis of
application which was made of this story to the terrors of the weeping
young people. Under its influence several were led, almost carried by
force, into the anxious seats.
It was hard not to fancy the gentle Christ looking down upon the scene
with a pain as great as that with which he yearned over Jerusalem. I
longed for some instant miracle to be wrought on the spot, by which there
should come floating down from the peaceful blue sky, through the sweet
tree-tops, some of the loving and serene words of balm from his Gospel.
Theologians may theorize, and good Christians may differ (they always
will) as to the existence, extent, and nature of future punishment; but
the fact remains indisputably clear that, whether there be less or more of
it, whether it be of this sort or of that, fear of it is a base motive to
appeal to, a false motive to act from, and a worthless motive to trust in.
Perfect love does not know it; spiritual courage resents it; the true
Kingdom of Heaven is never taken by its "violence."
Somewhere (I wish I knew where, and I wish I knew from whose lips) I once
found this immortal sentence: "A woman went through the streets of
Alexandria, bearing a jar of water and a lighted torch, and crying aloud,
'With this torch I will burn up Heaven, and with this water I will put out
Hell, that God may be loved for himself alone.'"
The Correlation of Moral Forces.
Science has dealt and delved patiently with the laws of matter. From
Cuvier to Huxley, we have a long line of clear-eyed workers. The
gravitating force between all molecules; the law of continuity; the
inertial force of matter; the sublime facts of organic co-ordination and
adaptation,--all these are recognized, analyzed, recorded, taught. We have
learned that the true meaning of the word law, as applied to Nature, is
not decree, but formula of invariable order, immutable as the constitution
of ultimate units of matter. Order is not imposed upon Nature. Order is
result. Physical science does not confuse these; it never mistakes nor
denies specific function, organic progression, cyclical growth. It knows
that there is no such thing as evasion, interruption, substitution.
When shall we have a Cuvier, a Huxley, a Tyndall for the immaterial
world,--the realm of spiritual existence, moral growth? Nature is one. The
things which we have clumsily and impertinently dared to set off by
themselves, and label as "immaterial," are no less truly component parts
or members of the real frame of natural existence than are molecules of
oxygen or crystals of diamond. We believe in the existence of one as much
as in the existence of the other. In fact, if there be balance of proof in
favor of either, it is not in favor of the existence of what we call
matter. All the known sensible qualities of matter are ultimately
referable to immaterial forces,--"forces acting from points or volumes;"
and whether these points are occupied by positive substance, or "matter"
as it is usually conceived, cannot to-day be proved. Yet many men have
less absolute belief in a soul than in nitric acid; many men achieve
lifetimes of triumph by the faithful use and application of Nature's
law--that is, formula of uniform occurrence--in light, sound, motion,
while they all the while outrage and violate and hinder every one of those
sweet forces equally hers, equally immutable, called by such names as
truth, sobriety, chastity, courage, and good-will.
The suggestions of this train of thought are too numerous to be followed
out in the limits of a single article. Take, for instance, the fact of the
identity of molecules, and look for its correlative truth in the spiritual
universe. Shall we not thence learn charity, and the better understand the
full meaning of some who have said that vices were virtues in excess or
restraint? Taking the lists of each, and faithfully comparing them from
beginning to end, not one shall be found which will not confirm this
seemingly paradoxical statement.
Take the great fact of continuous progressive development which applies
to all organisms, vegetable or animal, and see how it is one with the law
that "the holy shall be holy still, the wicked shall be wicked still."
Dare we think what would be the formula in statement of spiritual life
which would be correlative to the "law of continuity"? Having dared to
think, then shall we use the expression "little sins," or doubt the
terrible absoluteness of exactitude with which "every idle word which men
speak" shall enter upon eternity of reckoning.
On the other hand, looking at all existences as organisms, shall we be
disturbed at seeming failure?--long periods of apparent inactivity? Shall
we believe, for instance, that Christ's great church can be really
hindered in its appropriate cycle of progressive change and adaptation?
That any true membership of this organic body can be formed or annulled by
mere human interference? That the lopping or burning of branches of the
tree, even the uprooting and burning of the tree itself, this year, next
year, nay, for hundreds of years, shall have power to annihilate or even
defer the ultimate organic result?
The soul of man is not outcast from this glory, this freedom, this safety
of law. We speak as if we might break it, evade it; we forget it; we deny
it: but it never forgets us, it never refuses us a morsel of our estate.
In spite of us, it protects our growth, makes sure of our development. In
spite of us, it takes us whithersoever we tend, and not whithersoever we
like; in spite of us, it sometimes saves what we have carelessly perilled,
and always destroys what we wilfully throw away.
A Simple Bill of Fare for a Christmas Dinner.
All good recipe-books give bills of fare for different occasions, bills of
fare for grand dinners, bills of fare for little dinners; dinners to cost
so much per head; dinners "which can be easily prepared with one servant,"
and so on. They give bills of fare for one week; bills of fare for each
day in a month, to avoid too great monotony in diet. There are bills of
fare for dyspeptics; bills of fare for consumptives; bills of fare for fat
people, and bills of fare for thin; and bills of fare for hospitals,
asylums, and prisons, as well as for gentlemen's houses. But among them
all, we never saw the one which we give below. It has never been printed
in any book; but it has been used in families. We are not drawing on our
imagination for its items. We have sat at such dinners; we have helped
prepare such dinners; we believe in such dinners; they are within
everybody's means. In fact, the most marvellous thing about this bill of
fare is that the dinner does not cost a cent. Ho! all ye that are hungry
and thirsty, and would like so cheap a Christmas dinner, listen to this