“_My dear W._—Elected! Apart from all nonsense and affectation
I am heartily glad of it! of course I received the
congratulations of every body here quietly, as if it was all a
matter of course that I should be elected Senator, but with you
I have no reserve. Know then, my _very_ dear W., that I am glad
I am elected. For three reasons. First, because I am elected
while just barely of the requisite age: Second, because I am
elected by an overwhelming majority—20 to 1: Third, because it
places me out in a free and higher field of usefulness and
energy. Why I feel as if I had just begun my life. I have not
attained the _end_—only the beginning of my ambition. I don’t
think that it ought to be branded as _ambition_—this feeling of
mine either. I _don’t_ think it is ambition. It is a purer
feeling—A wish, an eagerness, a _nature_ to be doing,
influencing, bettering as wide a sphere as I possibly can. I was
elected without any _art_ on my part whatever. I told the people
exactly what I was, and what I intended to try to do if they
elected me. I intend to be just exactly what I am! If I were to
try to appear other than exactly _that_ I would look as well as
feel mean—my arm would falter in every gesture, my tongue
stammer, my knees shake—I would become weak—weak physically,
mentally, utterly! A pure-minded, single-intentioned,
whole-souled manner in thought, word and deed has borne me thus
far like a straight arrow from a true bow. It is the shortest,
best way to cleave the future, I know.
“There is a fourth reason why I do rejoice in my election. It is
because I know that _you_ will rejoice in it. It is _you_ my
friend who have made me high-thoughted and far-thoughted. It is
_you_ who during the last twenty years have been my good
genius—in your conversation when present with me—in your
correspondence when absent from——”
I read the rest of the letter to my wife, but it is entirely too
flattering to me to be coolly written out here. Indeed I remarked all
along, through the three more pages which followed, to my wife, that his
encomiums were only the warm expressions of a warm soul unusually
excited, and which must be taken with all allowance.
Charley’s letter flushed me through and through. That my old friend
should be elected Senator to congress from his State I hoped but hardly
expected. Intimate companionship with a friend, you know, has a tendency
to dwindle him in our eyes. Don’t misunderstand! Intimacy with such a
man as Charles Bell makes one love and prize him more and more—but does
_not_ make one think more and more that such a man is suited to be a
grave and reserved Senator. It is just as it is with the Swiss peasant
whose cabin is on a side of Mont Blanc—the hoary old mountain does not
appear a tithe so sublime to him as it does to some traveler in the
distance.
I say I felt thoroughly warmed and rejoiced. I arose, put all my wife’s
spools and scraps off the table into her lap, laid my portfolio and
ink-stand upon it, begged my wife to absorb herself in her baby’s velvet
cap, dipped my pen in the ink and now have written thus far.
All my past intercourse with Charley rushes to my lips now, as tears do
sometimes to one’s eyes. I want to tell just as briefly and distinctly
as possible how he has risen from nothing to what he now is. I know much
better than he—and if he reads this, it will do him good. Any-how, I
feel in the mood of writing, and before I go to bed, if my baby don’t
wake with the colic and my wife don’t interrupt me I will tell you
exactly how Charley Bell became a United States Senator.
The fact is, too, that I have a half-hope that some youth may read this
and may get a word which may wake _him_ to a higher and nobler life than
he has ever yet dreamed of. If the eye of any such a one rests on these
pages, just one word my fine fellow. Forget for a little while that
everlasting Julia whom you fell in love with last Tuesday a week ago,
and read with all your soul of souls.
I cannot exactly say when I did _not_ know Charley. He is some three
years older than myself—he being about eighteen, and I about fifteen
years of age when our friendship began to be a thing to be remembered.
He looked when I saw him a year ago exactly as he did when we used first
to chat cosily beside his fire-side, about Bulwer and Dora Anson. He is
of a medium size, handsome, earnest face, forehead broad rather than
high. There is a peculiar gentleman-look about him, wherever he is or
whatever he is doing. He has such an enthusiastic sympathy with every
man, woman and child he meets with that he is popular of course.
His peculiarity, however, always consisted in a hunger after personal
excellence. From our first acquaintance we made a distinct arrangement
to tell each other of our faults as plainly as words could convey
meaning. If he did not faithfully do his part toward me in this
arrangement I am very, very much mistaken. He thought _aloud_ about
me—told me exactly what I _was_, and what I was _not_. I did the same
in regard to him. We have acted thus for many years now. We have been of
vast benefit to each other—and will continue to be till we die.
I do verily believe that this arrangement had a good deal to do in
making him the man he is.
Just in this way.
When we first became intimate, and had made our arrangement as above, I
opened the war by talking to him as follows:
“Charley, my fine fellow, you are ambitious to be a good speaker.
Now—you remember our little arrangement about correcting the faults of
each other?”
“Yes.”
“Well, the plain fact is you have got a most miserable, squeaking voice.
Your chest is narrow, you stoop, you don’t have that broad, strong,
manly appearance which is almost essential to a speaker.”
I saw he winced under this. He _felt_ eloquence deeply—he _thought_
eloquently—and forgot that the thought must be _expressed_ eloquently,
or it is eloquence only to himself.
That afternoon he made a pair of dumb-bells—and I do verily believe
that he has hardly missed a day from that to this in which he has not
exercised his chest and his voice in every possible way. No one would
ever think _now_ that he was not always the broad-chested,
powerful-voiced orator he is.
It strikes me that even this little event had something to do with
Charley in his becoming a Senator. You never saw a narrow-chested man
who had any voice, energy or eloquence in your life. If _you_ have got a
stoop, my boy, you had better correct it if you ever intend being any
thing.
I received from him one day a very, very plain exposition of one of my
many faults. Never mind what it is. He pointed it out to me as you would
point out a rattlesnake in a thicket to any companion you chanced to be
walking with. I saw it—this vile fault of mine—and have been hunting
it, and striking savagely at it, whenever I detect it stealing through
my conduct with its accursed insidiousness ever since. Alas! it is “only
skotched not killed” yet. But that is another matter. I only mention it
to say that his very plain remarks gave an edge to my remarks, as I
observed—
“You are right, Charley, perfectly so—and I war against that accursed
fault forever. But it reminds me of one of _yours_.”
“Eh?”
“Charley, you have a vile, offensive, disgusting habit of chewing
tobacco. It is loathsome. If you would only keep the weed in your mouth,
why it would only poison yourself—but you will be everlastingly
spitting out its juice—and it poisons _me_—poisons me through sight,
smell, hearing and feeling. Don’t use it any more.”
True to his own true nature, he never took another quid. Whether this is
one cause of his blooming health and firm nerve I will not say. I _will_
say that it is one cause of his astonishing popularity with the
ladies—whether _they_ know that it is or not—and thus one cause of
this election of his as Senator.
These faults of ours! I said they are like snakes. So they are.
Sometimes a man catches sight of one of them lying full-length in its
loathsomeness in his own conduct or conversation. Suppose the fault is
self-conceit?—a disease of mentioning one’s self at all times, which
you have contracted. Well, you see the same fault in some fool or other,
or some Charley Bell tells you of it. The knowledge falls like a flash
of daylight on the vice—you see it! If it would only perish—crawl
_out_ of you, it would be well. But the vile thing—crawls _into
you_—like a snake into its hole. It does not show its head while you
are watching for it. A day or two passes. You forget about it—and it is
out—drawing its filthy trail through all your conduct again.
This is _not_ a digression. Because I wanted to say that Charley was a
man of too strong a desire after personal excellence not to wage eternal
war after such vermin. A shrewd observer would have known the existence
of his besetting faults only by the unusual prominence of just the
opposite virtues, just as you recognize the former drunkard in the man
who has a special horror now of all that can intoxicate.
There were several minor defects in Charley’s character, which I pointed
out to him, but which he has so completely conquered that I have
forgotten what they were.