We may have a testimonial class in time, a sort of nobility here in
America, made so by popular gift, the members of which will all be
able to show some stick or piece of plated ware or massive chain, "of
which they have been the recipients." In time it may be a
distinction not to belong to it, and it may come to be thought more
blessed to give than to receive. For it must have been remarked that
it is not always to the cleverest and the most amiable and modest man
that the deputation comes with the inevitable ice-pitcher (and
"salver to match"), which has in it the magic and subtle quality of
making the hour in which it is received the proudest of one's life.
There has not been discovered any method of rewarding all the
deserving people and bringing their virtues into the prominence of
notoriety. And, indeed, it would be an unreasonable world if there
had, for its chief charm and sweetness lie in the excellences in it
which are reluctantly disclosed; one of the chief pleasures of living
is in the daily discovery of good traits, nobilities, and kindliness
both in those we have long known and in the chance passenger whose
way happens for a day to lie with ours. The longer I live the more I
am impressed with the excess of human kindness over human hatred, and
the greater willingness to oblige than to disoblige that one meets at
every turn. The selfishness in politics, the jealousy in letters,
the bickering in art, the bitterness in theology, are all as nothing
compared to the sweet charities, sacrifices, and deferences of
private life. The people are few whom to know intimately is to
dislike. Of course you want to hate somebody, if you can, just to
keep your powers of discrimination bright, and to save yourself from
becoming a mere mush of good-nature; but perhaps it is well to hate
some historical person who has been dead so long as to be indifferent
to it. It is more comfortable to hate people we have never seen. I
cannot but think that Judas Iscariot has been of great service to the
world as a sort of buffer for moral indignation which might have made
a collision nearer home but for his utilized treachery. I used to
know a venerable and most amiable gentleman and scholar, whose
hospitable house was always overrun with wayside ministers, agents,
and philanthropists, who loved their fellow-men better than they
loved to work for their living; and he, I suspect, kept his moral
balance even by indulgence in violent but most distant dislikes.
When I met him casually in the street, his first salutation was
likely to be such as this: "What a liar that Alison was! Don't you
hate him?" And then would follow specifications of historical
inveracity enough to make one's blood run cold. When he was thus
discharged of his hatred by such a conductor, I presume he had not a
spark left for those whose mission was partly to live upon him and
other generous souls.
Mandeville and I were talking of the unknown people, one rainy night
by the fire, while the Mistress was fitfully and interjectionally
playing with the piano-keys in an improvising mood. Mandeville has a
good deal of sentiment about him, and without any effort talks so
beautifully sometimes that I constantly regret I cannot report his
language. He has, besides, that sympathy of presence--I believe it
is called magnetism by those who regard the brain as only a sort of
galvanic battery--which makes it a greater pleasure to see him think,
if I may say so, than to hear some people talk.
It makes one homesick in this world to think that there are so many
rare people he can never know; and so many excellent people that
scarcely any one will know, in fact. One discovers a friend by
chance, and cannot but feel regret that twenty or thirty years of
life maybe have been spent without the least knowledge of him. When
he is once known, through him opening is made into another little
world, into a circle of culture and loving hearts and enthusiasm in a
dozen congenial pursuits, and prejudices perhaps. How instantly and
easily the bachelor doubles his world when he marries, and enters
into the unknown fellowship of the to him continually increasing
company which is known in popular language as "all his wife's
relations."
Near at hand daily, no doubt, are those worth knowing intimately, if
one had the time and the opportunity. And when one travels he sees
what a vast material there is for society and friendship, of which he
can never avail himself. Car-load after car-load of summer travel
goes by one at any railway-station, out of which he is sure he could
choose a score of life-long friends, if the conductor would introduce
him. There are faces of refinement, of quick wit, of sympathetic
kindness,--interesting people, traveled people, entertaining people,
--as you would say in Boston, "nice people you would admire to know,"
whom you constantly meet and pass without a sign of recognition, many
of whom are no doubt your long-lost brothers and sisters. You can
see that they also have their worlds and their interests, and they
probably know a great many "nice" people. The matter of personal
liking and attachment is a good deal due to the mere fortune of
association. More fast friendships and pleasant acquaintanceships
are formed on the Atlantic steamships between those who would have
been only indifferent acquaintances elsewhere, than one would think
possible on a voyage which naturally makes one as selfish as he is
indifferent to his personal appearance. The Atlantic is the only
power on earth I know that can make a woman indifferent to her
personal appearance.
Mandeville remembers, and I think without detriment to himself, the
glimpses he had in the White Mountains once of a young lady of whom
his utmost efforts could give him no further information than her
name. Chance sight of her on a passing stage or amid a group on some
mountain lookout was all he ever had, and he did not even know
certainly whether she was the perfect beauty and the lovely character
he thought her. He said he would have known her, however, at a great
distance; there was to her form that command of which we hear so much
and which turns out to be nearly all command after the "ceremony;" or
perhaps it was something in the glance of her eye or the turn of her
head, or very likely it was a sweet inherited reserve or hauteur that
captivated him, that filled his days with the expectation of seeing
her, and made him hasten to the hotel-registers in the hope that her
name was there recorded. Whatever it was, she interested him as one
of the people he would like to know; and it piqued him that there was
a life, rich in friendships, no doubt, in tastes, in many
noblenesses, one of thousands of such, that must be absolutely
nothing to him,--nothing but a window into heaven momentarily opened
and then closed. I have myself no idea that she was a countess
incognito, or that she had descended from any greater heights than
those where Mandeville saw her, but I have always regretted that she
went her way so mysteriously and left no glow, and that we shall wear
out the remainder of our days without her society. I have looked for
her name, but always in vain, among the attendants at the rights-
conventions, in the list of those good Americans presented at court,
among those skeleton names that appear as the remains of beauty in
the morning journals after a ball to the wandering prince, in the
reports of railway collisions and steamboat explosions. No news
comes of her. And so imperfect are our means of communication in
this world that, for anything we know, she may have left it long ago
by some private way.