I am confident, that, at the annunciation of my theme, Andover,
Princeton, and Cambridge will skip like rams, and the little hills of
East Windsor, Meadville, and Fairfax, like lambs. However
divinity-schools may refuse to "skip" in unison, and may butt and batter
each other about the doctrine and origin of _human_ depravity, all will
join devoutly in the _credo_, I believe in the total depravity of
inanimate things.
The whole subject lies in a nutshell, or rather an apple-skin. We have
clerical authority for affirming that all its miseries were let loose
upon the human race by "them greenins" tempting our mother to curious
pomological speculations; and from that time till now--Longfellow, thou
reasonest well!--"things are not what they seem," but are diabolically
otherwise,--masked-batteries, nets, gins, and snares of evil.
(In this connection I am reminded of--can I ever cease to remember?--the
unlucky lecturer at our lyceum a few winters ago, who, on rising to
address his audience, applauding him all the while most vehemently,
pulled out his handkerchief, for oratorical purposes only, and
inadvertently flung from his pocket three "Baldwins" that a friend had
given to him on his way to the hall, straight into the front row of
giggling girls.)
My zeal on this subject received new impetus recently from an
exclamation which pierced the thin partitions of the country-parsonage,
once my home, where I chanced to be a guest.
From the adjoining dressing-room issued a prolonged "Y-ah!"--not the
howl of a spoiled child, nor the protest of a captive gorilla, but the
whole-souled utterance of a mighty son of Anak, whose amiability is
invulnerable to weapons of human aggravation.
I paused in the midst of toilet-exigencies, and listened
sympathetically, for I recognized the probable presence of the old enemy
to whom the bravest and sweetest succumb.
Confirmation and explanation followed speedily in the half apologetic,
wholly wrathful declaration,--"The pitcher was made foolish in the first
place." I dare affirm, that, if the spirit of Lindley Murray himself
were at that moment hovering over that scene of trial, he dropped a
tear, or, better still, an adverbial _ly_ upon the false grammar, and
blotted it out forever.
I comprehended the scene at once. I had been there. I felt again the
remorseless swash of the water over neat boots and immaculate hose; I
saw the perverse intricacies of its meanderings over the carpet, upon
which the "foolish" pitcher had been confidingly deposited; I knew,
beyond the necessity of ocular demonstration, that, as sure as there
were "pipe-hole" or crack in the ceiling of the study below, those
inanimate things would inevitably put their evil heads together, and
bring to grief the long-suffering Dominie, with whom, during my day,
such inundations had been of at least bi-weekly occurrence, instigated
by crinoline. The inherent wickedness of that "thing of beauty" will be
acknowledged by all mankind, and by every female not reduced to the
deplorable poverty of the heroine of the following veracious anecdote.
A certain good bishop, on making a tour of inspection through a
mission-school of his diocese, was so impressed by the aspect of all its
beneficiaries that his heart overflowed with joy, and he exclaimed to a
little maiden whose appearance was particularly suggestive of
creature-comforts,--"Why, my little girl! you have everything that heart
can wish, haven't you?" Imagine the bewilderment and horror of the
prelate, when the miniature Flora McFlimsey drew down the corners of her
mouth lugubriously, and sought to accommodate the puffs and dimples of
her fat little body to an expression of abject misery, as she
replied,--"No, indeed, Sir! I haven't got any--skeleton!"
We who have suffered know the disposition of graceless "skeletons" to
hang themselves on "foolish" pitchers, bureau-knobs, rockers,
cobble-stones, splinters, nails, and, indeed, any projection a tenth of
a line beyond a dead level.
The mention of nails is suggestive of voluminous distresses.
Country-parsonages, from some inexplicable reason, are wont to bristle
all over with these impish assailants of human comfort.
I never ventured to leave my masculine relatives to their own devices
for more than twenty-four consecutive hours, that I did not return to
find that they had seemingly manifested their grief at my absence after
the old Hebraic method, ("more honored in the breach than the
observance,") by rending their garments. When summoned to their account,
the invariable defence has been a vehement denunciation of some
particular _nail_ as the guilty cause of my woes.
By the way, O Christian woman of the nineteenth century, did it ever
enter your heart to give devout thanks that you did not share the woe
of those whose fate it was to "sojourn in Mesech and dwell in the tents
of Kedar"? that it did not fall to your lot to do the plain sewing and
mending for some Jewish patriarch, patriot, or prophet of yore?
Realize, if you can, the masculine aggravation and the feminine
long-suffering of a period when the head of a family could neither go
down-town, nor even sit at his tent-door, without descrying some
wickedness in high places, some insulting placard, some exasperating
war-bulletin, some offensive order from head-quarters, which caused him
to transform himself instantly into an animated rag-bag. Whereas, in
these women-saving days, similar grievances send President Abraham into
his cabinet to issue a proclamation, the Reverend Jeremiah into his
pulpit with a scathing homily, Poet-Laureate David to the "Atlantic"
with a burning lyric, and Major-General Joab to the privacy of his tent,
there to calm his perturbed spirit with Drake's Plantation Bitters. In
humble imitation of another, I would state that this indorsement of the
potency of a specific is entirely gratuitous, and that I am stimulated
thereto by no remuneration, fluid or otherwise.
Blessed be this day of sewing-machines for women, and of safety-valves
and innocent explosives for their lords!
But this is a digression.
I awoke very early in life to the consciousness that I held the doctrine
which we are considering.
On a hapless day when I was perhaps five years old, I was, in my own
estimation, intrusted with the family-dignity, when I was deposited for
the day at the house of a lordly Pharisee of the parish, with solemnly
repeated instructions in table-manners and the like.
One who never analyzed the mysteries of a sensitive child's heart cannot
appreciate the sense of awful responsibility which oppressed me during
that visit. But all went faultlessly for a time. I corrected myself
instantly each time. I said, "Yes, Ma'am," to Mr. Simon, and "No, Sir,"
to Madam, which was as often as I addressed them; I clenched little
fists and lips resolutely, that they might not touch, taste, handle,
tempting _bijouterie_; I even held in check the spirit of inquiry
rampant within me, and indulged myself with only one question to every
three minutes of time.
At last I found myself at the handsome dinner-table, triumphantly
mounted upon two "Comprehensive Commentaries" and a dictionary, fearing
no evil from the viands before me. Least of all did I suspect the
vegetables of guile. But deep in the heart of a bland, mealy-mouthed
potato lurked cruel designs upon my fair reputation.
No sooner had I, in the most approved style of nursery good-breeding,
applied my fork to its surface, than the hardhearted thing executed a
wild _pirouette_ before my astonished eyes, and then flew on impish
wings across the room, dashing out its malicious brains, I am happy to
say, against the parlor-door, but leaving me in a half-comatose state,
stirred only by vague longings for a lodge with "proud Korah's troop,"
whose destination is unmistakably set forth in the "Shorter Catechism."
There is a possibility that I received my innate distrust of things by
inheritance from my maternal grandmother, whose holy horror at the
profanity they once provoked from a bosom-friend in her childhood was
still vivid in her old age.
It was on this wise. When still a pretty Puritan maiden, my grandame was
tempted irresistibly by the spring sunshine to the tabooed indulgence of
a Sunday-walk. The temptation was probably intensified by the
presence of the British troops, giving unwonted fascination to
village-promenades. Her confederate in this guilty pleasure was a
like-minded little saint; so there was a tacit agreement between them
that their transgression should be sanctified by a strict adherence to
religious topics of conversation. Accordingly they launched boldly upon
the great subject which was just then agitating church-circles in New
England.
Fortune smiled upon these criminals against the Blue Laws, until they
encountered a wall surmounted by hickory rails. Without intermitting the
discussion, Susannah sprang agilely up. Quoth she, balancing herself for
one moment upon the summit,--"No, no, Betsey! _I_ believe God is the
author of sin!" The next she sprang toward the ground; but a salient
splinter, a chip of depravity, clutched her Sunday-gown, and converted
her incontinently, it seems, into a confessor of the opposing faith; for
history records, that, following the above-mentioned dogma, there came
from hitherto unstained lips,--"The Devil!"
Time and space would, of course, be inadequate to the enumeration of all
the demonstrations of the truth of the doctrine of the absolute
depravity of things. A few examples only can be cited.
There is melancholy pleasure in the knowledge that a great soul has gone
mourning before me in the path I am now pursuing. It was only to-day,
that, in glancing over the pages of Victor Hugo's greatest work, I
chanced upon the following:--"Every one will have noticed with what
skill a coin let fall upon the ground runs to hide itself, and what art
it has in rendering itself invisible; there are thoughts which play us
the same trick," etc., etc.
The similar tendency of pins and needles is universally understood and
execrated,--their base secretiveness when searched for, and their
incensing intrusion when one is off guard.
I know a man whose sense of their malignity is so keen, that, whenever
he catches a gleam of their treacherous lustre on the carpet, he
instantly draws his two and a quarter yards of length into the smallest
possible compass, and shrieks until the domestic police come to the
rescue, and apprehend the sharp little villains. Do not laugh at this.
Years ago he lost his choicest friend by the stab of just such a little
dastard lying in ambush.
So also every wielder of the needle is familiar with the propensity of
the several parts of a garment in the process of manufacture to turn
themselves wrong side out, and down side up; and the same viciousness
cleaves like leprosy to the completed garment so long as a thread
remains.
My blood still tingles with a horrible memory illustrative of this
truth.
Dressing hurriedly and in darkness for a concert one evening, I appealed
to the Dominie, as we passed under the hall-lamp, for a
toilet-inspection.
"How do I look, father?"