recreation. If we would only halt occasionally in this everlasting
chase after the Almighty Dollar, there would be less occasion for
hospitals, insane asylums, and penitentiaries. There would be fewer
suicides, and general smash-ups and break-downs. There is no good
reason why a man shouldn't be just as fresh at forty as at twenty,
but, as we go now, there isn't one man in a thousand who is fit for
anything but a calculating machine at forty. Physically, he isn't
worth a pinch of snuff. Mentally and morally, he is dried up; and
the women, sir, are just as bad as the men. It pains me, sir, to
see our women fade so quickly. This fast pace is killing to them.
Brought up in hothouses, and forced beyond nature in their growth,
they mature when they should be in bud, and wither when they should
be in maturity, and are not of much further use, except for running
sewing-circles, and drinking weak tea. It pains me, sir, to see the
young girls on our streets, with that callous sort of countenance,
and knowing expression, which show that they have got out of illusion
into reality, and to see so many pale, careworn, bent and faded
women, out of whom all buoyant life has departed long since, and who
can no more keep time than a watch with a broken spring.
"In the mean time, _business will be suspended for one hour_. Bah!
Boy's play sir; all boy's play!!
* * * * * * * * *
"These are my opinions, sir, and it is quite immaterial to me who
knows them. And, sir, if your new desk will give them any extra
weight, I shall be glad of it. I do not know that Mrs. Blobbs
will agree with all that I have written to you, but that also is
quite immaterial. She is a remarkable woman sir, and _principally
remarkable for not thinking as I do_.
"Allow me to subscribe myself, sir.
"Your very obedient servant,
"JOHN BLOBBS."
May 8, 1869.
FOOTNOTE:
[2] The completion of the Pacific Railroad.
_TYPES._
At the breakfast table this morning, time hung rather heavily on our
hands, for the breakfast was not altogether a success. Old Blobbs
was a little sulky, as Mrs. Blobbs had not rested well during the
night. When Mrs. Blobbs does not rest well, she either gets up and
wanders about the house, in an aimless sort of way, or else she
talks to Old Blobbs, which is just the last thing in the world Old
Blobbs wants her to do, when he is trying to sleep. Aurelia's baby
was troublesome also, and was at last sent away in disgrace, when it
had emptied a brimming cup of milk into Mrs. Blobbs' lap, and down
the folds of the black silk. Mignon was in a pet about something or
other, and was moodily tearing a geranium leaf to pieces, which she
had pulled out of the breakfast bouquet. Celeste was in a towering
rage with Fitz-Herbert, and shot lightnings out of her pretty eyes
at him, because he had spoken slightingly of her coiffure. F. H.,
however, was as impervious to lightning as a glass non-conductor, and
in a chaotic sort of way caressed the promise of a side whisker just
beginning to dawn on his cheek.
I was, as usual, serene and philosophical; and to dispel these little
spring clouds which every moment threatened to rain torrents upon
the breakfast table, told them I had something to say.
The announcement was magical, and had the same effect upon the
company, that oil has when poured upon the troubled waters, or the
show window of a millinery store on opening day upon the ruffled
breast of lovely woman.
And what I said was this:
I think there is a direct line of ascent from the atom, the grain of
sand upon the sea shore, for instance, up to God, and that the great
principle of life, which emanates from God, finds its way down to the
atom, although we cannot perceive it with our finite sight.
Let us commence, if you please, with the dust, which is not to be
despised, my dears, because you are made out of it, the sand, the
drops of water, or any other of the very lowest forms of creation.
We pass up from these elements, and find them crystalized into
minerals, and wrought into flowers, and obtain our first ideas of
beauty. Looking up through the grades of flowers, we happen upon the
sensitive plants, which shrink from you, and shiver when you point
your finger at them like guilty souls, and the winged orchids, which
you must touch to convince yourself they are not butterflies; and
in these you begin to get foreshadowings of life. From this point
you find organisms which may be vegetable, or may be animal. Our
skill is insufficient to decide which they are. Presently you reach
the sponges and the corals, in which animal life is very apparent;
and if you will do yourself the pleasure to look into that glass of
water with a microscope, my dear Celeste, you will be thoroughly
convinced of life, and also that you are daily drinking millions
of very unpleasant looking animals. A step higher up, you reach the
insects and the ephemera, who live their little day of breezy life
in the sunshine, and in their buzzing you find music commences. All
these little fellows, with wings and feelers, play very pretty tunes,
if your ear is only good enough to catch them, when they praise God
by beating their gauzy wings together. As you pass from the insects
to the birds, life is more pronounced, and the music of which I
have spoken develops in construction and increases in beauty. Now,
we are reaching the grade of animals, where intelligence commences;
and as we come up to the dog, ox, horse or elephant, affection is
added to intelligence. The animals begin to assume the qualities of
man, and before we are aware of it, some of the animals are walking
on two legs instead of four, and assuming the form and features of
men, as, for instance, the monkeys, the apes, and the orang-utans.
You pass from the monkey to the Digger Indian or Hottentot, and with
the single unimportant exception of length of tail, it is well nigh
impossible to tell them apart. Man is a short-tailed monkey, or,
_vice versa_, monkey is a long-tailed man. Even in the highest order
of man, it is sometimes difficult to tell a man from a monkey. Turn
a child out into the woods, and let it grow up for thirty or forty
years, subsisting upon roots, herbs and nuts, like an animal, and
what does it become at last but a hairy, chattering ape, climbing
trees, burrowing in the ground, and living like an animal? Thus we
rise through various grades of men, each new type more perfect than
the other, but still possessing some characteristic of the animal,
until we reach woman, who is a step higher; then up through the
various types of women, until we reach the angels; through the
various types of angels until we reach the archangels, and then
through the shining hierarchy of Heaven, until we stop at God, the
centre of all life and the sun of all perfection, beyond Whom is
nullity.
Thus do I believe that man is linked with all animal and vegetable
forms below him, and that in each change the higher type takes
something from the lower and preserves some characteristics of
it, and that man loves God best when he loves all the types below
him--the beast, the bird, the insect, the flower, and even the
atom. The line from God to the atom, and from the atom to God,
seems to me clear and uninterrupted; and thus the whole of this
great universe is bound together by clear, though sometimes unseen
relations, and radiates from God, its centre. And who knows but that
in other planets there are intelligences superior to us, forming
more links in this grand chain? When man dies, he goes back to the
dust whence he sprang. He mingles with the brook; he blossoms in
the flowers of the field; he is crystalized into the mineral; and
thus part after part is absorbed, until only the original atom is
left, which is the foundation upon which God has built up all this
marvelous superstructure. Purified of all the bad qualities of animal
and vegetable, and other material organisms, the soul, or what the
philosophers call the Ego, only is left, and is only fitted to be in
the presence of the Originator of this complex mechanism.
Exactly where the soul comes in, in tracing the changes from type
to type, I confess, is a difficult matter to solve. The physical
peculiarities are easily defined, but the spiritual developments are
very subtle. I am free to confess to you that I don't believe man
has a monopoly of all the soul there is in the world. I am prepared
to admit that some men don't have souls at all, but only instincts.
The common saying, "This man hasn't the soul of a louse," I think may
be literally true. Some animals, I solemnly believe, have larger,
better and truer souls than some men. All the learned arguments
in the world would never convince me that the faithful horse, who
is diligent in business, who understands what is said to him, and
who stands there weeping big tears out of his eyes, and uttering a
mournful cry under the lash of the brute who is driving him, has not
a soul, and more than that, a better and bigger soul than his driver.
The mental acumen of all the schools would never convince me that the
faithful dog who loses his master, searches for him day and night,
only to find his grave, and, lying upon that grave, refuses food and
drink, and, moaning piteously, dies upon his master's sleeping place,
has not a soul. Did you ever look directly into the eyes of the ox,
and not see the soul of the animal looking out at you in those soft
and expressive orbs? To my mind, blind old Homer never said a finer
thing than when he called the mother of the gods, "Ox-eyed Juno,"
although I think it was an injustice to the animal, because Juno was
a scallawag, and deserved just such an old rake of a husband as the
Cloud-Bearer.
In these various types we do not always find perfection. There are
breaks in the ascent. I will illustrate this to you. Among the
insects, there are fleas, mosquitos, cockroaches, and other species,
which have not advanced a particle in decency or intelligence above
the hideous horned animalisms in the drop of water. Among the birds,
there are some types of no more consequence than the insects. In the
higher grades of the animals, there are the same unfortunate breaks.
In the dog family, for instance, the yellow dog is really far below
the plane on which he stands. He belongs to the same category as
the skunk. He is of no earthly use to the types above or below him.
The only thing he can do is to bark; and as he barks at everything,
from the moon to a mud-puddle, even his barking has no significance.
When you get up to men, there is no exception to the rule. Some
men have not fully changed from one type to another, but have the
characteristics of the lower type in a crude form, like pollywogs and
water-newts.
Now, you see, assuming my doctrine to be correct, you can explain a
great many peculiarities of men, and the animal characteristics they
carry about with them. It explains why some men look like animals;
why some men act like a dog; why some are slow as a snail; why some
are secretive as a clam; why some absorb all you have got, like a
sponge; why some are as dirty as a hog; why some are as sly as a
fox; why some are as scaly as a fish; and so on _ad infinitum_. You
can find the features of almost every animal in the human face--the
ass and the monkey being specially prominent. The number of men,
who, in the change of types, have preserved the family semblance to
these animals is somewhat remarkable. In fact, the ass was a very
hard animal to get by in the ascent. Almost every man now and then
makes an ass of himself, and returns to the lower type--the only
shade of difference being in the length of the ear. Were it not that
a superior power continually holds him in check, man would gravitate
downward, as his whole tendency is to retrograde to these lower
types. Some men, who are not obstructed by this superior power,
manage to get back to the brute and stay there. He must have certain
conventional surroundings, also, in addition to this superior power,
which is that of education, to keep his elevated position.
I think that the women mainly come from the flowers and the birds.
You will find the analogies of nearly all women in the vegetable
kingdom. Some women, tender, delicate, fragile, and spiritual, have
all the attributes of the violet, and though they may blossom in
some out of the way corner, they make everything around them joyous
with their beauty and fragrance. Then there are others who flaunt
their heads with a pretty disdain, and dazzle you with the beauty
of their faces, but the moment you touch them, they fall to pieces
like the seeds of the dandelion. They won't bear handling. Then
there are women with strong natures, whose bodies are in harness,
and souls in curb, who resemble the tough azalea, with a stalk like
iron, and flowers we never care to gather, owing to their glutinous
consistency. There are other women whom you can't take hold of at
all. They repel you from every side like a porcupine. They resemble
the fruit of the Durion tree, which is excellent eating provided you
have courage enough to get through its hard spikes.
I was reading the other day that the birds of Paradise, when they are
in their most gorgeous plumage, select some tree, or other eligible
spot, go through with a regular dance for the edification of the
other birds, and, during the dance, display their lustrous feathers
by spreading them out as much as possible, and chatter together, in
an insanely garrulous manner.
I was about to make an application of this custom to women, when I
caught the eye of Mrs. Blobbs looking at me in a significant manner.
I confess to you I am a little afraid of that majestic woman when she
puts on her war-paint, and I immediately refrained, and we arose from
the table.
May 15, 1869.
_WOMAN IN CHURCH._
In refusing to admit the women into the Young Men's Christian
Association, Brother Moody has thrown aside the strongest
element in religious matters which he could have used. Women are
peculiarly receptive. Their nature is intensely emotional. They see
instinctively where the man has to grope and reason his way up. A
thousand sympathetic tendrils stretch out from their hearts, like
the arms of the cuttle fish, which seize upon, wind around and
draw to the centre, in strong affinity, if not assimilation, every
object to which they are attracted. If it be good, it transforms
them to angels; if evil, to fiends. No man can be such a saint as a
woman; no man such a sinner. It is this intense emotion and natural
instinct which admirably qualify them for religious purposes. And it
proves, moreover, why, without them, there isn't a church in this
city that could live six months. The church membership as every one
knows is largely feminine. The influence which the Church exerts
is feminine. The sympathy which the minister gets is feminine. His
smoking-cap, dressing-robe, slippers, book-marks, donation-parties
and other pleasant perquisites are feminine. And all the grumbling,
fault-finding, hard work and hard knocks which the minister has
to encounter, are purely masculine. The man, naturally lacking in
reverence as well as religion, is inclined to regard the minister
from a commercial point of view, and to treat him as an equal, while
the woman looks up with admiring reverence.
Any woman who has been to church, unless her nearest neighbor has
just come out in a new hat, can tell you what text the minister
preached from, and give you a syllabus of his discourse. There
isn't one man in ten who can do that. The man carries his business
into church with him. The woman, unless there is an harassing doubt
concerning the integrity of the beans, which might have been placed
in the oven a little too soon, leaves her business at home. She can
shed her cares as an umbrella sheds rain. The man, be he a dentist,
allows dental reflections to insinuate themselves among the threads
of the discourse, and wonders how he can get sister this or that
into his chair of torture, and mentally determines to try it on at
the next sewing-circle. The doctor is rather quietly rejoiced to
see a large number of sisters absent, because this argues sickness.
Women don't stay away from church unless they are sick, or some one
is coming to dinner. The lawyer wonders if a certain statement the
minister has made, has any legal bearing, and this leads him to think
of the case of Boggs _vs._ Noggs, which is pending in the courts.
The merchant who has just seen two of his clerks driving down the
avenue at a very rapid rate, with cigars in their mouths, and in a
style which seems to indicate they are not going to a Sunday School,
wonders where they _are_ going, where they got their money to go
with, and what they are going to do when they get there. And so on
with each class. It is all very well to talk of the quiet of the
Sabbath, and the propriety of forgetting the things of this world.
It is a pretty theory, but men don't observe it. A man, in course
of time, gets his nature so soaked and saturated with the cares,
foibles, and follies of this world, that the moment it is squeezed
in the slightest degree, some of these things will ooze out. So he
thinks of the things of this world, and the words of the minister hum
through his thoughts as the buzz of the bees comes to your ears in a
hot summer day, when you are lying in the shade of the trees; and, as
the architect was in league with the devil when he built the church,
the ventilation is slightly bad. All these things militate against
watchfulness, and the man, having confidence that the minister is on
the right doctrinal track, quietly goes to sleep, and makes no sign
thereafter, except to brush a fly from his nose, or nod vigorous
assents to the parson's heads with his own.
I have noticed that women do not sleep in church. When Mrs. Blobbs
accompanies old Blobbs to church, that good woman's attention is
sadly distracted from the sermon, by the constant necessity of
punching Old Blobbs in the ribs to keep him from snoring, whereat
Old Blobbs opens both eyes wide open, fixes them upon the minister,
as if he had never slept a wink in his life, gives his individual
and serious attention to the sermon for the space of one minute,
gradually closes one eye, as if winking at somebody, then quietly
shuts the other, as if he did not want to disturb any one, and in
another moment his nose sounds the whistle that he has arrived at
the station of Morpheus, which necessitates another punch from Mrs.
Blobbs. Thus Old Blobbs is kept between a snore and a swear the
whole blessed morning, and goes home to his dinner without a single
coherent idea about the sermon, while Mrs. Blobbs can go from firstly
to tenthly, and throw in significant remarks about the young fellow
who was fool enough to go to sleep on a window sill, while Paul was
preaching, resulting in a broken neck, or something of that sort, you
know.
Woman gives herself up without a question or a doubt to the
inspiration of the hour, with the whole intensity of her emotional
nature, very much as I think I should give myself up to the beats and
pulsations of the organ-heart of some old cathedral, while the "dim,
religious light" streamed in through the stained windows, and saints
and martyrs looked down upon me from their niches.
And then a man in a sewing circle, or church sociable, or maternal
meeting, or aid society meeting, or anything else of that harmless
sort, is as much out of place, and as essentially useless as a
coal-heaver would be at a classical concert. And yet these are great
aids. They must be in the hands of the women. The major part of the
machinery of the church must be engineered by the women. For all
these reasons do I think that Brother Moody was unwise to refuse
admission to the women.
May 22, 1869.
_THE MOUNTAINS._
Did you ever go East over the Pennsylvania Central Railroad? If not,
do it at your first opportunity, and get a glimpse at the mountain
scenery. It will reconcile you to life. The memory of those grand,
imposing forms, towering into the heavens, clothed with their mighty
greenery, girdled with the mists and crowned with the eternal
sunshine, will stand you in good stead when life presses with its
cares and anxieties, and the daily routine frets and worries, and
friendship grows forgetful, and the grasshopper begins to be a burden.
I remember that the first thought which flashed upon me, as I stood
upon the rear of the train, crawling up the hills in sinuous track,
like some great serpent, was not so much the physical aspects as the
perfect repose which seemed to brood among them. There was no life
apparent--no motion visible. There was a river, which now and then
glistened in the sunlight, but it was far down in the valleys, and
it seemed from our height only a silver thread, tying the mountains
together in a great emerald cluster. You saw the tops of the trees
overlaying each other, and covering the mountains like the scales of
a fish. But there was no motion in them. They were solid, massive
and gigantic as petrified Titans. I do not believe the birds sing
on those mountain sides; I do not believe the fairies gambol there
in the moonlight, nor even that the insects play their part in the
breezy morning symphonies under those still trees. It seems to me
that none but a Deity should come down to those mountain tops, and
thrice happy the man who can commune with him in that solitude. It
seems to me that there would be no need of the written word there.
The genius of solitude broods there--on the jutting peaks, in the
great trees, in the solemn shadows, in the dark, silent pools and
tarns, in the dank, trailing robes of the mist, and in the ineffable
golden glory of the sunshine. I can now see how Irma found repose on
"the Heights;" how she could reach from the Alpine summits up toward
Heaven, and feel the hand of the Great Father reaching down to her;
how, among the toils, and the sorrows, and the sins of the little
world down in the valleys, the sweet repose of the mountains purified
her; and how she struggled out of vice into virtue, out of impurity
into perfect purity. I can see how all great souls, tormented with
the follies and littleness of the world, with the ungratefulness
and faithlessness of those they have trusted, bound down under the
weight of their earthly burdens, their wings clipped, and their
hands fettered, have longed for the mountain tops, where they might
forever forget the world, and be alone with nature and the Deity. I
can see how God came down to Moses on the mountain; how the marvelous
transfiguration shone from the mountain; how Goethe sang,
"On every height there lies repose."
Another thought struck me, and that was the magnificent littleness
of humanity, when it is brought into the presence of these mighty
manifestations of Nature. What a poor little speck you are upon the
great canvas! How small you look with your aches and pains, your
fusses and foibles, your fashions and furbelows, your vanities and
ambitions, in this eternal presence! How evanescent is fame; how
transient is wealth; how feeble is love; how fickle is friendship;
how small is this hand-breadth of life; how utterly insignificant
all accomplishment of human industry; how utterly pinchbeck all
displays of human grandeur, compared with this awful majesty of
Nature! How few men have caught the mountain spirit and left it in
their works! Blot out Shakspeare and Milton and Dante, Moses and Paul
and Martin Luther, Raphael and Michael Angelo, Rembrandt, Beethoven,
Mendelssohn, and Bach, and who is left to correspond with the height
and depth, the majesty and solitude of the mountains? Not that genius
was confined to them, but the other great names have been celebrated
in the valleys, by the brooks, and among the flowers. They made the
earth lovelier and brighter for their presence, but they did not
reach the heights of human nature, where dwells everlasting repose.
They saw the star-shadows on the water, but these others soared to
them in the heavens. They sowed the world with richest flowers of
thought. To these others, it was given to pluck the asphodels and
amaranths growing by eternal waters. They budded in the trees of the
valleys, and their songs were sweet. These others sought the regions
above the storms with their eagle-flights, and when their voices
come to us from their calm heights, they are laden with an awful
majesty and beauty, as the west is now laden with the thunder-clouds,
and pregnant with sweeping power, as those clouds are now pregnant
with the lightnings.