I could not wonder at the enthusiasm of the good man over such deeds as these on the part of boys whom he had rescued from a degradation of which we can hardly form an idea. It was a triumph of which an angel might have been proud.
I was desirous of learning something of the industrial occupations of the pupils, and made some inquiries respecting them.
"A considerable portion of our boys," said Dr. Wichern, "are engaged in agricultural, or rather, horticultural pursuits. As we practise spade husbandry almost exclusively, and devote our grounds to gardening purposes, we can furnish employment to quite a number. For those who prefer mechanical pursuits, we have a printing-office, book-bindery, stereotype-foundry, lithographing and wood-engraving establishment, paint-shop, silk-weaving manufactory, and shoe-shop, as well as those trades which are carried on for the most part out of doors, such as masonry and carpentry. The girls are mostly employed in household duties, and are in great demand as servants and assistants in the households of our farmers."
Passing westward, we came next to the bakery and the farmer's residence, catching a glimpse through the trees of the Fisherman's Hut, at a little distance, near the bank of the larger of the two sylvan lakes on the premises, where another family are gathered, and then approachd a large building of more pretension than the rest.
"This," said Dr. Wichern, "is the home of the Brothers of our Inner Mission, and the school-room for our boarding-school boys, the children of respectable and often wealthy parents, who have proved intractable at home."
"What," I asked, "do you include in the term, Inner Mission?"
"I must take a round-about method of answering your inquiry. When we found it necessary to form new families, our greatest difficulty was in procuring suitable persons to become house-fathers of these families. It was easy enough to obtain honest, intelligent men and women, who possessed a fair education and a sufficient knowledge of some of the mechanic arts for the situation; but we felt that much more than this was necessary. We wanted men and women who would act a parent's part, and perform a parent's duty to the children under their care; and these, we found, must be trained for the place. We then began our circles of Brothers, to furnish house-fathers and assistants for our families. We required in the candidates for this office an irreproachable character; that they should be free from physical defect, of good health and robust constitution; that they should give evidence of piety, and of special adaptation to this calling; that they should understand farming, or some one of the trades practised in the establishment, or possess sufficient mechanical talent to acquire a knowledge of them readily; that they should have already a certain amount of education, and an amiable and teachable disposition; and that they should be not under twenty years of age, and exempt from military service."
"And do you find a sufficient number who can fulfil conditions so strict?" I inquired.
"Candidates are never wanting," was his reply, "though the demand for their services is large."
"What is your course of training?"
"Mainly practical; though we have a course of special instruction for them, occupying twenty hours a week, in which, during their four years' residence with us, they are taught sacred and profane history, German, English, geography, vocal and instrumental music, and the science of teaching. Instruction on religious subjects is also given throughout the course. For the purpose of practical training, they are attached, at first, to families as assistants, and after a period of apprenticeship they undertake in rotation the direction. They teach the elementary classes; visit the parents of the children, and report to them the progress which their pupils have made; maintain a watchful supervision over them, after they leave the Rauhe Haus; and assist in religious instruction, and in the correspondence. By the system of monthly rotation we have adopted, each Brother is brought in contact with all the pupils, and is thus enabled to avail himself of the experience acquired in each family."
"You spoke of a great demand for their services; I can easily imagine that men so trained should be in demand; but what are the callings they pursue after leaving you? for you need but a limited number as house-fathers and teachers."
"The Inner Mission," he replied, "has a wide field of usefulness. It furnishes directors and house-fathers for reform schools organized on our plan, of which there are a number in Germany; overseers, instructors, and assistants in agricultural and other schools; directors and subordinate officers for prisons; directors, overseers, and assistants in hospitals and infirmaries; city and home missionaries; and missionaries to colonies of emigrants in America."
"What is your annual expenditure above the products of your farm and workshops?" I asked.
"Somewhat less than fifty dollars a head for our entire population," was the reply.
It was by this time high noon, and as we returned to the Mutter-Haus, the benevolent superintendent insisted that we should remain and partake with him of the mid-day meal. We complied, and presently were summoned to the dining-hall, where we found a small circle of the Brothers, and the two head teachers. After a brief but appropriate grace, we took our seats, being introduced by the director.
"At supper all our teachers assemble here," said Dr. Wichern, "and with them those children whose birthday it is; but at dinner the Brothers remain with their own families."
The table was abundantly supplied with plain but wholesome food, and the cheerful conversation which ensued gave evidence that the cares of their position had not exerted a depressing influence on their spirits. Each seemed thoroughly in love with his work, and in harmony with all the rest. Dr. Wichern mentioned that I was from America.
"Have you," inquired one of the Brothers, "any institutions like this in your country?"
"We have," I answered, "Reform Schools, Houses of Refuge, Juvenile Asylums, and other reformatory institutions; but I am afraid I must say, nothing like this. We are making progress, however, in Juvenile Reform, and I hope that ere long we, too, may have a Rough House whose influence shall pervade our country, as yours has done Central Europe."
"Dr. Wichern," inquired another, "have our friends visited the 'God'sAcre?'"[A]
[Footnote A: The German name of a grave-yard.]
"Not yet," was the reply; "but I will go thither with them after we have dined, if they can remain so long."
We assented, and one of the Brothers remarked,—
"Our boys have taken especial pains to beautify that favorite spot, this season."
"This disposition to adorn the resting-place of the body, so common among us, is becoming popular in your country, I believe," said our host, courteously.
I replied, that it was,—that in our larger towns the place of burial was generally rendered attractive, but that in the rural districts the burying-grounds were yet neglected and unsightly; and ventured the opinion, that this neglect might be partly traceable to the iconoclastic tendencies of our Puritan ancestors.
Dr. Wichern thought not; the neglect of the earthly home of the dead resulted from the prevalence of indifference to the glorious doctrine of the Resurrection; and whatever a people might profess, he could not but believe them infidel at heart, if they were entirely neglectful of the resting-place of their dead.
The close of our repast precluded further discussion, and at our host's invitation we accompanied him to the rural cemetery, where such of the pupils and Brothers as died during their connection with the school were buried. An English writer has very appropriately called the Rauhe Haus a "Home among the Flowers"; but the title is far more appropriate to this beautiful spot. Whatever a pure and exquisite taste could conceive as becoming in a place consecrated to such a purpose, willing hands have executed; and early every Sabbath morning, Dr. Wichern says, the pupils resort hither to see that everything necessary is done to keep it in perfect order. The air seemed almost heavy with the perfume of flowers; and though the home of the living pupils of the Rauhe Haus is plain in the extreme, the palace of their dead surpasses in splendor that of the proudest of earthly monarchs. One could hardly help coveting such a resting-place.
It was with reluctance that we at last turned our faces homeward, and bade the excellent director farewell. The world has seen, in this nineteenth century, few nobler spirits than his. Possessed of uncommon intellect, he combines with it executive talent of no ordinary character, and a capacity for labor which seems almost fabulous. His duties as the head of the Inner Mission, whose scope comprises the organization and management of reformatory institutions of all kinds, throughout Germany, as well as efforts analogous to those of our city missions, temperance societies, etc., might well be supposed to be sufficient for one man; but these are supplementary to his labors as director of the Rauhe Haus, and editor of theFliegende Blätter, and the other literature, by no means inconsiderable, of the Inner Mission. Dr. Wichern is highly esteemed and possesses almost unbounded influence throughout Germany; and that influence, potent as it is, even with the princes and crowned heads of the German States, is uniformly exerted in behalf of the poor, the unfortunate, the ignorant, and the degraded. When the history of philanthropy shall be written, and the just meed of commendation bestowed on the benefactors of humanity, how much more exalted a place will he receive, in the memory and gratitude of the world, than the perjured and audacious despot who, born the same year, in the neighboring city of the Hague, has won his way to the throne of France by deeds of selfishness and cruelty! Even to-day, who would not rather be John Henry Wichern, the director of the Rauhe Haus at Horn, than Louis Napoleon, emperor of France?
Would that on our own side of the Atlantic a Wichern might arise, whose abilities should be sufficient to unite in one common purpose our reformatory enterprises, and rescue from infamy and sin the tens of thousands of children who now, apt scholars in crime, throng the purlieus of vice in our large cities, and are already committing deeds whose desperate wickedness might well cause hardened criminals to shudder. The existence of a popular government depends, we are often told, upon the intelligence and virtue of the people. What hope, then, can we have of the perpetuity of our institutions, when those who are to control them have become monsters of iniquity ere they have reached the age of manhood?
The forces of Good and Evil are ever striving for the mastery in human society. Happy is that philanthropist, and honored should he be with a nation's gratitude, who can rescue these juvenile offenders from the power of evil, and from the fearful suggestings of temptation and want, and enlist them on the side of virtue and right! We rear monuments of marble and bronze to those heroes who on the battle-field and in the fierce assault have kept our nation's fame untarnished, and added new laurels to the renown of our country's prowess; but more enduring than marble, more lasting than brass, should be the monument reared to him who, in the fierce contest with the powers of evil, shall rescue the soul of the child from the grasp of the tempter, and change the brutalized and degraded offspring of crime and lust into a youth of generous, active, and noble impulses. But though earthly fame may be denied to such a benefactor of his race, his record shall be on high; and at that grand assize where all human actions shall be weighed, His voice, whose philanthropy exceeded, infinitely, the noblest deeds of benevolence of the sons of earth, shall be heard, saying to these humble laborers in the vineyard of our God, "Friends, come up higher!"
Those who are interested in knowing what has been accomplished by the reformatory institutions of Europe will find a full and entertaining account of most of them in a volume recently published, entitled "Papers on Preventive, Correctional, and Reformatory Institutions and Agencies in Different Countries," by Henry Barnard, LL.D. Hartford: F.C. Brownell, 1857. Dr. Barnard has done a good work in collecting these valuable documents.
Fond lover of the Ideal Fair,My soul, eluded everywhere,Is lapsed into a sweet despair.Perpetual pilgrim, seeking ever,Baffled, enamored, finding never;Each morn the cheerful chase renewing,Misled, bewildered, still pursuing;Not all my lavished years have boughtOne steadfast smile from her I sought,But sidelong glances, glimpsing light,A something far too fine for sight,Veiled voices, far off thridding strains,And precious agonies and pains:Not love, but only love's dear woundAnd exquisite unrest I found.
At early morn I saw her passThe lone lake's blurred and quivering glass;Her trailing veil of amber mistThe unbending beaded clover kissed;And straight I hasted to waylayHer coming by the willowy way;—But, swift companion of the Dawn,She left her footprints on the lawn,And, in arriving, she was gone.Alert I ranged the winding shore;Her luminous presence flashed before;The wild-rose and the daisies wetFrom her light touch were trembling yet;Faint smiled the conscious violet;Each bush and brier and rock betrayedSome tender sign her parting made;And when far on her flight I trackedTo where the thunderous cataractO'er walls of foamy ledges broke,She vanished in the vapory smoke.
To-night I pace this pallid floor,The sparkling waves curl up the shore,The August moon is flushed and full;The soft, low winds, the liquid lull,The whited, silent, misty realm,The wan-blue heaven, each ghostly elm,All these, her ministers, conspireTo fill my bosom with the fireAnd sweet delirium of desire.Enchantress! leave thy sheeny height,Descend, be all mine own this night,Transfuse, enfold, entrance me quite!Or break thy spell, my heart restore,And disenchant me evermore!
* * * * *
On the other side of the Atlantic there is a populous city called Grandville. It is, as its name indicates, a great city,—but it is said that it thinks itself a good deal greater than it really is. I meant to say that Grandville was its original name, and the name by which even at the present day it is called by its own citizens. But there are certain wits, or it may be, vulgar people, who by some process have converted this name into Grindwell.
I may be able, in the course of this sketch, to give a reason why so sounding and aristocratic a name as Grandville has been changed into the plebeian one of Grindwell. I might account for it by adducing similar instances of changes in the names of cities through the bad pronunciation and spelling of foreigners. For instance, the English nickname Livorno Leghorn, the Germans insist on calling Venice Venedig, and the French convert Washington into the Chinese word Voss-Hang-Tong. And so it may be that the name Grindwell has originated among us Americans simply from miscalling or misspelling the foreign name of Grandville.
I incline to think, however, that there is a better reason for the name.
For a good many years Grandville has been famous for a great machine, of a very curious construction, which is said to regulate the movements of the whole city, and almost to convert the men, women, and children into cranks, wheels, and pinions. As a model of this machine does not exist in our Patent Office at Washington, I shall beg the reader's indulgence while I attempt to give some account of it. It may be thought a very curious affair, though I believe there is little about it that is original or new. The idea of it was handed down from remote generations.
In America I know that many persons may consider the Grindwell Governing Machine a humbug,—an obsolete, absurd, and tyrannous institution, wholly unfitted to the nineteenth century. A machine that proposes to think and act for the whole people, and which is rigidly opposed to the people's thinking and acting for themselves, is likely to find little favor among us. With us the doctrine is, that each one should think for himself,—be an individual mind and will, and not the spoke of a wheel. Every American voter or votress is allowed to keep his or her little intellectual wind-mill, coffee-mill, pepper-mill, loom, steam-engine, hand-organ, or whatever moral manufacturing or grinding apparatus he or she likes. Each one may be his own Church or his own State, and yet be none the less a good and useful citizen, and the union of the States be in none the more danger. But it is not so in Grindwell. The rules of the Grindwell machine allow no one to do his own grinding, unless his mill-wheel is turned by the central governing power. He must allow the big State machine to do everything,—he paying for it, of course. A regular programme prescribes what he shall believe and say and do; and any departure from this order is considered a violation of the laws, or at least a reprehensible invasion of the time-honored customs of the city.
The Grindwell Governing Machine (though a patent has been taken out for it in Europe, and it is thought everything of by royal heads and the gilded flies that buzz about them) is really an old machine, nearly worn out, and every now and then patched up and painted and varnished anew. If a committee of our knowing Yankees were sent over to gain information with regard to its actual condition, I am inclined to think they would bring back a curious and not very favorable report. It wouldn't astonish me, if they should pronounce the whole apparatus of the State rotten from top to bottom, and only kept from falling to pieces by all sorts of ingenious contrivances of an external and temporary nature,—here a wheel, or pivot, or spring to be replaced,—there a prop or buttress to be set up,—here a pipe choked up,—there a boiler burst,—and so on, from one end of the works to the other. However, the machine keeps a-going, and many persons think it works beautifully.
Everything is reduced to such perfect system in its operations, that the necessity for individual opinion is almost superseded, and even private consciences are laid upon the shelf,—just as people lay by an antiquated timepiece that no winding-up or shaking can persuade into marking the hours,—for have they not the clock on the Government railroad station opposite, which they can at any time consult by stepping to the window? For instance, individual honesty is set aside and replaced by a system of rewards and punishments. Honesty is an old-fashioned coat. The police, like a great sponge, absorbs the private virtue. It says to conscience, "Stay there,—don't trouble yourself,—I will act for you."
You drop your purse in the street. A rogue picks it up. In his private conscience he says, "Honesty is a very good thing, perhaps, but it is by no means the best policy,—it is simply no policy at all,—it is sheer stupidity. What can be more politic than for me to pocket this windfall and turn the corner quick?"—So preacheth his crooked fag-end of a conscience, thatvery, verysmall still voice, in very husky tones; but he knows that a policeman, walking behind him, saw him pick up the purse, which alters the case,—which, in fact, completely sets aside his fag-end of a husky-voiced conscience, and makes virtue his necessity, and necessity his virtue. External morality is hastily drawn on as a decent overcoat to hide the tag-rags of his roguishness, while he magnanimously restores the purse to the owner.
Jones left his umbrella in a cab one night. Discovering that he hadn't it under his arm, he rushed after the cabman; but he was gone. Jones had his number, however, and with it proceeded the next day to the police-office, feeling sure that he would find his umbrella there. And there, in a closet appropriated to articles left in hackney-coaches,—a perfect limbo of canes, parasols, shawls, pocket-books, and what-not,—he found it, ticketed and awaiting its lawful owner. The explanation of which mystery is, that the cabmen in Grindwell are strictly amenable to the police for any departure from the system which provides for the security of private property, and a yearly reward is given to those of the coach-driving fraternity who prove to be the most faithful restorers of articles left in their carriages. Surely, the result of system can no farther go than this,—that Monsieur Vaurien's moral sense, like his opinions, should be absorbed and overruled by the governing powers.
What a capital thing it is to have the great governmental head and heart thinking and feeling for us! Why, even the little boys, on winter afternoons, are restricted by the policemen from sliding on the ice in the streets, for fear the impetuous little fellows should break or dislocate some of their bones, and the hospital might have the expense of setting them; so patriarchal a regard has the machine for its young friends!
I might allude here to a special department of the machine, which once had great power in overruling the thoughts and consciences of the people, and which is still considered by some as not altogether powerless. I refer to the Ecclesiastic department of the Grindwell works. This was formerly the greatest labor-saving machinery ever invented. But however powerful the operation of the Church machinery upon the grandmothers and grandfathers of the modern Grindwellites, it has certainly fallen greatly into disuse, and is kept a-going now more for the sake of appearances than for any real efficacy. The most knowing ones think it rather old-fashioned and cumbrous,—at any rate, not comparable to the State machinery, either in its design or its mode of operation. And as in these days of percussion-caps and Miniè rifles we lay by an old matchlock or crossbow, using it only to ornament our walls,—or as the powdered postilion with his horn and his boots is superseded by the locomotive and the electric telegraph,—so the old rusty Church wheels are removed into buildings apart from the daily life of the people, where they seem to revolve harmlessly and without any necessary connection with the State wheels.
Not that I mean to say that it works smoothly and well at all times,—this Grindwell machine. How can such an old patched and crumbling apparatus be expected always to work well? And how can you hope to find, even in the most enslaved or routine-ridden community, entire obedience to the will of the monarch and his satellites? Unfortunately for the cause of order and quiet, there will always be found certain tough lumps, in the shape of rebellious or non-conformist men, which refuse to be melted in the strong solvents or ground up in the swift mills of Absolutism. Government must look after these impediments. If they are positively dangerous, they must be destroyed or removed. If only suspected, or known to be powerless or inactive, they must at least be watched.
And here, again, the machine of government shows a remarkable ingenuity of organization.
For instance, it is said that there are pipes laid all along the streets, like hose, leading from a central reservoir. Nobody knows exactly what they are for; but if any one steps upon them, up spirts something like a stream of gas, and takes the form of agendarme,—and the unlucky street-walker must pay dear for his carelessness. Telegraph wires radiate like cobwebs from the chamber of the main-spring, and carry intelligence of all that is going on in the houses and streets. Man-traps are laid under the pavements,—sometimes they are secretly introduced under your very table or bed,—and if anything is said against that piece of machinery called the main-spring, or against the head engineer, the trap will nab you and fly away with you, like the spider that carried off Margery Mopp. If a number of people get together to discuss the meaning of and the reasons for the existence of the main-spring, or any of the big wheels immediately connected therewith, the ground under them will sometimes give way, and they will suddenly find themselves in unfurnished apartments not to their liking. And if any one should be so rash as to put his hand on the wheels, he is cut to pieces or strangled by the silent, incessant, fatal whirl of the engine.
The head engineer keeps his machine, and the city on which it acts, as much in the dark as possible. He has a special horror of sunshine. He seems to think that the sky is one great burning lens, and his machine-rooms and the city a vast powder-magazine.
There are certain articles thought to be especially dangerous. Newspapers are strictly forbidden,—unless first steeped in a tincture of asbestos of a very dull color, expressly manufactured and supplied by the Governing Machine. When properly saturated with the essence of dulness and death, and brought down from a glaring white and black to a decidedly ashy-gray neutral color, a few small newspapers are permitted to be circulated, but with the greatest caution. They sometimes take fire, it is said,—these journals,—when brought too near any brain overcharged with electricity. Two or three times, it is said, the Governing Machine has been put out of order by the newspapers and their readers bringing too much electro-magnetism (or something like it) to bear on parts of the works;—the machine had even taken fire and been nearly burnt up, and the head engineer got so singed that he never dared to take the management of the works again.
So it is thought that nothing is so unfavorable to the working of the wheels as light, heat, electricity, magnetism, and, generally, all the imponderable and uncatchable essences that float about in the air; and these, it is thought, are generated and diffused by these villanous newspapers. Certain kinds of books are also forbidden, as being electric conductors. Most of the books allowed in the city of Grindwell are so heavy, that they are thought to be usually non-conductors, and therefore quite safe in the hands of the people.
It is at the city gates that most vigilance is required with regard to the prohibited articles. There the poor fellows who keep the gates have no rest night or day,—so many suspicious-looking boxes, bundles, bales, and barrels claim admittance. Quantities of articles are arrested and prevented from entering. Nothing that can in any way interfere with the great machine can come in. Newspapers and books from other countries are torn and burnt up. Speaking-trumpets, ear-trumpets, spectacles, microscopes, spy-glasses, telescopes, and, generally, all instruments and contrivances for extending the sphere of ordinary knowledge, are very narrowly examined before they are admitted. The only trumpets freely allowed are of a musical sort, fit to amuse the people,—the only spectacles, green goggles to keep out the glare of truth's sunshine,—the magnifying-glasses, those which exaggerate the proportions of the imperial governor of the machinery. All sorts of moral lightning-rods and telegraph-wires are arrested, and lie in great piles outside the city walls.
But in spite of the utmost vigilance and care of the officers at the gates and the sentinels on the thick walls, dangerous articles and dangerous people will pass in. A man like Kossuth or Mazzini going through would produce such a current of the electric fluid, that the machine would be in great danger of combustion. Remonstrances were sometimes sent to neighboring cities, to the effect that they should keep their light and heat to themselves, and not be throwing such strongreflectionsinto the weak eyes of the Grindwellites, and putting in danger the governmental powder-magazine,—as the machine-offices were sometimes called. An inundation or bad harvest, producing a famine among the poor, causes great alarm, and the government officers have a time of it, running about distributing alms, or raising money to keep down the price of bread. Thousands of servants in livery, armed with terrific instruments for the destruction of life, are kept standing on and around the walls of the city, ready at a moment's notice to shoot down any one who makes any movement or demonstration in a direction contrary to the laws of the machine. And to support this great crowd of liveried lackeys, the people are squeezed like sponges, till they furnish the necessary money.
The respectable editors of the daily papers go about somewhat as the dogs do in August, with muzzles on their mouths. They are prohibited from printing more than a hundred words a day. Any reference to the sunshine, or to any of the subtile and imponderable substances before mentioned, is considered contrary to the order of the machine; to compensate for which, there is great show of gaslight (under glass covers) throughout the city. Gas and moonshine are the staple subjects of conversation. Besides lighting the streets and shops, the chief use of fire seems to be for cooking, lighting pipes and cigars, and fireworks to amuse the working classes.
Great attention is paid to polishing and beautifying the outer case of the machine, and the outer surface generally of the city of Grindwell. Where any portion of the framework has fallen into dilapidation and decay, the gaunt skeleton bones of the ruined structure are decked and covered with leaves and flowers. Old rusty boilers that are on the verge of bursting are newly painted, varnished, and labelled with letters of gold. The main-spring, which has grown old and weak, is said to be helped by the secret application of steam,—and the fires are fed with huge bundles of worthless bank-bills and other paper promises. The noise of the clanking piston and wheels is drowned by orchestras of music; the roofs and sides of the machine buildings are covered all over with roses; and the smell of smoke and machine oil is prevented by scattering delicious perfumes. The minds of the populace are turned from the precarious condition of things by all sorts of public amusements, such as mask balls, theatres, operas, public gardens, etc.
But all this does not preserve some persons from the continual apprehension that there will be one day a great and terrific explosion. Some say the city is sleeping over volcanic fires, which will sooner or later burst up from below and destroy or change the whole upper surface. The actual state of things might be represented on canvas by a gaping, laughing crowd pressing around a Punch-and-Judy exhibition in the street, beneath a great ruined palace in the process of repairing, where the rickety scaffolding, the loose stones and mortar, and in fact the whole rotten building, may at any moment topple down upon their heads.
But while such grave thoughts are passing in the minds of some people, I must relate one or two amusing scenes which lately occurred at the city gates.
Travellers are not prohibited from going and coming; but on entering, it is necessary to be sure that they bring with their passports and baggage no prohibited or dangerous articles. A young man from our side of the Atlantic, engaged in commerce, had been annoyed a good deal by the gate-officers opening and searching his baggage. The next time he went to Grindwell, he brought, besides his usual trunks and carpet-bags, a rather large and very mysterious-looking box. After going through with the trunks and bags, the officers took hold of this box.
"Gentlemen," said the young practical joker, "I have great objections to having that box opened. Yet it contains, I assure you, nothing contraband, nothing dangerous to the peace of the Grindwell government or people. It is simply a toy I am taking to a friend's house as a Christmas present to his little boy. If I open it, I fear I shall have difficulty in arranging it again as neatly as I wish,—and it would be a great disappointment to my little friend Auguste Henri, if he should not find it neatly packed. It would show at once that it had been opened; and children like to have their presents done up nicely, just as they issued from the shop. Gentlemen, I shall take it as a great favor, if you will let it pass."
"Sir," said the head officer, "it is impossible to grant the favor you ask. The government is very strict. Many prohibited articles have lately found their way in. We are determined to put a stop to it."
"Gentlemen," said the young man, "take hold of that box,—lift it. You see how light it is; you see that there can be no contraband goods there,—still less, anything dangerous. I pray you to let it pass."
"Impossible, Sir!" said the officer. "How do I know that there is nothing dangerous there? The weight is nothing. Its lightness rather makes it the more suspicious. Boxes like this are usually heavy. This is something out of the usual course. I'm afraid there's electricity here. Gentlemen officers, proceed to do your duty!"
So a crowd of custom-house officers gathered around the suspected box, with their noses bent down over the lid, awaiting the opening. One of them was about to proceed with hammer and chisel.
"Stop," said the young merchant, "I can save you a great deal of trouble. I can open it in an instant. Allow me—by touching a little spring here"—
As he said this, he pressed a secret spring on the side of the box. No sooner was it done than, the lid was thrown back with sudden and tremendous violence, as if by some living force, and up jumped a hideous and shaggy monster which knocked the six custom-house officers flat on their backs. It was an enormous Punchinello on springs, who had been confined in the box like the Genie in the Arabian story, and by the broad grin on his face he seemed delighted with his liberty and his triumph over his inquisitors. The six officers lay stunned by the blow; and while others ran up to see what was the matter, the young traveller persuaded Mr. Punch back again into his box, and, shutting him down, took advantage of the confusion to carry it off with the rest of his baggage, and reach a cab in safety. When the officers recovered their senses, the practical joker had escaped into the crowded city. They could give no clear account of what had happened; but I verily believe they thought that Lucifer himself had knocked them down, and was now let loose in the city of Grindwell.
Another amusing incident occurred afterwards at the city gates. An American lady, who was a great lover of Art, had purchased a bronze bust of Plato somewhere on the Continent. She had it carefully boxed, and took it along with her baggage. She got on very well until she reached the city of Grindwell. Here she was stopped, of course, and her baggage examined. Finding nothing contraband, they were about to let her pass, when they came to the box containing the ancient philosopher's head.
"What's this?" they asked. "What's in this box, so heavy?"
"A bust," said the lady.
"A bust? so heavy? a bust in a lady's baggage?—Impossible!"
"I assure you, it is nothing but a bust."
"Pray, whose bust may it be, Madam?"
"The bust of Plato."
"Plato? Plato? Who's Plato? Is he an Italian?"
"He was a Greek philosopher."
"Why is it so heavy?"
"It is a bronze bust."
"We beg your pardon, Madam; but we fear there's something wrong here. This Plato may be a conspirator,—a Carbonaro,—a member of some secret society,—a red-republican,—a conductor of the electric fluid. How can we answer for this Plato? We don't like this heavy box;—these very heavy boxes are suspicious. Suppose it should be some infernal-machine. Madam, we have our doubts. This box must be detained till full inquiries are made."
There was no help for it. The box was detained. "It must be so, Plato!" After waiting several hours, it was brought forward in presence of the entire company of inquisitors, and cautiously opened. Seeing no Plato, but only some sawdust, they grew still more suspicious. Having placed the box on the ground, they all retired to a safe distance, as if awaiting some explosion. They evidently took it for an infernal-machine. In their eyes everything was a machine of some sort or other. After waiting some time, and finding that it didn't burst, nor emit even a smell of sulphur, the boldest man of the party approached it very cautiously, and upset it with his foot and ran.
All this while the lady and her friends stood by, silent spectators of this farce. The only danger of explosion was on their part, with laughter at the whole scene. They contrived, however, to keep their countenances, though less rigidly than the Greek philosopher in the box did his.
When the custom-house officials found, that, though the box was upset, nothing occurred, they grew more bold, and, approaching, saw a piece of the bronze head peering above the sawdust. Then, for the first time, they began to feel ashamed of themselves. So replacing the sawdust and the cover, they allowed the box to pass into the city, and tried, by avoiding to speak of the affair among themselves, to forget what donkeys they had been.
The Grindwell government has many such alarms, and never appears entirely at its ease. It is fully aware of the combustible nature of the component parts of the Governing Machine. There is consequently great outlay of means to insure its safety. An immense number of public spies and functionaries are constantly employed in looking after the fires and lights about the city. Heavy restrictions are laid on all substances containing electricity, and great care is taken lest this subtile fluid should condense in spots and take the form of lightning. Fortunately, the unclouded sunshine seldom comes into Grindwell, else there would be the same fears with regard to light.
So long as this perpetual surveillance is kept up, the machine seems to work on well enough in the main; but the moment there is any remissness on the part of the police,—bang! goes a small explosion somewhere,—or, crack! a bit of the machinery,—and out rush the engineers with their bags of cotton-wool or tow to stop up the chinks, or their bundles of paper money to keep up the steam, or their buckets of oil andsoft soapto pour upon the wheels.
One eccentric gentleman of my acquaintance persists in predicting that any day there may be a general blow-up, and the whole concern, engineers, financiers, priests, soldiers, and flunkies, all go to smash. He evidently wishes to see it, though, as far as personal comfort goes, one would rather be out of the way at such a time.
Most people seem to think, that, considering all things, the present head engineer is about the best man that could be found for the post he occupies. There are, however, a number of the Grindwell people—I can't say how many, for they are afraid to speak—who feel more and more that they are living in a stifled and altogether abnormal condition, and wish for an indefinite supply of the light, heat, air, and electricity which they see some of the neighboring cities enjoying.
What the result is to be no one can yet tell. We are such stuff as dreams are made of, and our little life is rounded with—a crust; some say, a very thin crust, such as might be got up by a skilfulpatissier, and over which gilded court-flies, and evenscaraboei, may crawl with safety, but—which must inevitably cave in beneath the boot-heels of a real, true, thinking man. We cannot forget that there are measureless catacombs and caverns yawning beneath the streets and houses of modern Grindwell.
Ever since the time of that dyspeptic heathen, Plotinus, the saints have been "ashamed of their bodies." What is worse, they have usually had reason for the shame. Of the four famous Latin fathers, Jerome describes his own limbs as misshapen, his skin as squalid, his bones as scarcely holding together; while Gregory the Great speaks in his Epistles of his own large size, as contrasted with his weakness and infirmities. Three of the four Greek fathers—Chrysostom, Basil, and Gregory of Nazianzen—ruined their health early, and were wretched invalids for the remainder of their days. Three only of the whole eight were able-bodied men,—Ambrose, Augustine, and Athanasius; and the permanent influence of these three has been far greater, for good or for evil, than that of all the others put together.
Robust military saints there have doubtless been, in the Roman Catholic Church: George, Michael, Sebastian, Eustace, Martin,—not to mention Hubert the Hunter, and Christopher the Christian Hercules. But these have always held a very secondary place in canonization. If we mistake not, Maurice and his whole Theban legion were sainted together, to the number of six thousand six hundred and sixty-six; doubtless they were stalwart men, but there never yet has been a chapel erected to one of them. The mediaeval type of sanctity was a strong soul in a weak body; and it could be intensified either by strengthening the one or by further debilitating the other. The glory lay in contrast, not in combination. Yet, to do them justice, they conceded a strong and stately beauty to their female saints,—Catherine, Agnes, Agatha, Barbara, Cecilia, and the rest. It was reserved for the modern Pre-Raphaelites to attempt the combination of a maximum of saintliness with a minimum of pulmonary and digestive capacity.
But, indeed, from that day to this, the saints by spiritual laws have usually been sinners against physical laws, and the artists have merely followed the examples they found. Vasari records, that Carotto's masterpiece of painting, "The Three Archangels," at Verona, was criticized because the limbs of the angels were too slender, and Carotto, true to his conventional standard, replied, "Then they will fly the better." Saints have been flying to heaven for the same reason ever since,—and have commonly flown very early.
Indeed, the earlier some such saints cast off their bodies the better, they make so little use of them. Chittagutta, the Buddhist saint, dwelt in a cave in Ceylon. His devout visitors one day remarked on the miraculous beauty of the legendary paintings, representing scenes from the life of Buddha, which adorned the walls. The holy man informed them, that, during his sixty years' residence in the cave, he had been too much absorbed in meditation to notice the existence of the paintings, but he would take their word for it. And in this non-intercourse with the visible world there has been an apostolical succession, from Chittagutta, down to the Andover divinity-student who refused to join his companions in their admiring gaze on that wonderful autumnal landscape which spreads itself before the Seminary Hill in October, but marched back into the Library, ejaculating, "Lord, turn thou mine eyes from beholding vanity!"
It is to be reluctantly recorded, in fact, that the Protestant saints have not ordinarily had much to boast of, in physical stamina, as compared with the Roman Catholic. They have not got far beyond Plotinus. We do not think it worth while to quote Calvin on this point, for he, as everybody knows, was an invalid for his whole lifetime. But we do take it hard, that the jovial Luther, in the midst of his ale and skittles, should have deliberately censured Juvenal'smens sana in corpore sano, as a pagan maxim!
If Saint Luther fails us, where are the advocates of the body to look for comfort? Nothing this side of ancient Greece, we fear, will afford adequate examples of the union of saintly souls and strong bodies. Pythagoras the sage we doubt not to have been identical with Pythagoras the inventor of pugilism, and he was, at any rate, (in the loving words of Bentley,) "a lusty proper man, and built as it were to make a good boxer." Cleanthes, whose sublime "Prayer" is, to our thinking, the highest strain left of early piety, was a boxer likewise. Plato was a famous wrestler, and Socrates was unequalled for his military endurance. Nor was one of these, like their puny follower Plotinus, too weak-sighted to revise his own manuscripts.
It would be tedious to analyze the causes of this modern deterioration of the saints. The fact is clear. There is in the community an impression that physical vigor and spiritual sanctity are incompatible. We knew a young Orthodox divine who lost his parish by swimming the Merrimac River, and another who was compelled to ask a dismissal in consequence of vanquishing his most influential parishioner in a game of ten-pins; it seemed to the beaten party very unclerical. We further remember a match, in a certain sea-side bowling-alley, in which two brothers, young divines, took part. The sides being made up, with the exception of these two players, it was necessary to find places for them also. The head of one side accordingly picked his man, on the presumption (as he afterwards confessed) that the best preacher would naturally be the worst bowler. The athletic capacity, he thought, would be in inverse ratio to the sanctity. We are happy to add, that in this case his hopes were signally disappointed. But it shows which way the popular impression lies.
The poets have probably assisted In maintaining the delusion. How many cases of consumption Wordsworth must have accelerated by his assertion, that "the good die first"! Happily, he lived to disprove his own maxim. We, too, repudiate it utterly. Professor Peirce has proved by statistics that the best scholars in our colleges survive the rest; and we hold that virtue, like intellect, tends to longevity. The experience of the literary class shows that all excess is destructive, and that we need the harmonious action of all the faculties. Of the brilliant roll of the "young men of 1830," in Paris,—Balzac, Soulié, De Musset, De Bernard, Sue, and their compeers,—it is said that nearly every one has already perished, in the prime of life. What is the explanation? A stern one: opium, tobacco, wine, and licentiousness. "All died of softening of the brain or spinal marrow, or swelling of the heart." No doubt, many of the noble and the pure were dying prematurely at the same time; but it proceeded from the same essential cause: physical laws disobeyed and bodies exhausted. The evil is, that what in the debauchee is condemned, as suicide, is lauded in the devotee, as saintship. Thedelirium tremensof the drunkard conveys scarcely a sterner moral lesson than the second childishness of the pure and abstemious Southey.
But, happily, times change, and saints with them. Our moral conceptions are expanding to take in that "athletic virtue" of the Greeks, [Greek: apetae gimnastikae] which Dr. Arnold, by precept and practice, defended. The modern English "Broad Church" aims at breadth of shoulders, as well as of doctrines. Kingsley paints his stalwart Philammons and Amyas Leighs, and his critics charge him with laying down a new definition of the saint, as a man who fears God and can walk a thousand miles in a thousand hours. Our American saintship, also, is beginning to have a body to it, a "Body of Divinity," indeed. Look at our three great popular preachers. The vigor of the paternal blacksmith still swings the sinewy arm of Beecher; Parker performed the labors, mental and physical, of four able-bodied men, until even his great strength temporarily yielded;—and if ever dyspepsia attack the burly frame of Chapin, we fancy that dyspepsia will get the worst of it.
This is as it should be. One of the most potent causes of the ill-concealed alienation between the clergy and the people, in our community, is the supposed deficiency, on the part of the former, of a vigorous, manly life. It must be confessed that our saints suffer greatly from this moral and physicalanhaemia, this bloodlessness, which separates them, more effectually than a cloister, from the strong life of the age. What satirists upon religion are those parents who say of their pallid, puny, sedentary, lifeless, joyless little offspring, "He is born for a minister," while the ruddy, the brave, and the strong are as promptly assigned to a secular career! Never yet did an ill-starred young saint waste his Saturday afternoons in preaching sermons in the garret to his deluded little sisters and their dolls, without living to repent it in maturity. These precocious little sentimentalists wither away like blanched potato-plants in a cellar; and then comes some vigorous youth from his out-door work or play, and grasps the rudder of the age, as he grasped the oar, the bat, or the plough-handle. We distrust the achievements of every saint without a body; and really have hopes of the Cambridge Divinity School, since hearing that it has organized a boat-club.
We speak especially of men, but the same principles apply to women. The triumphs of Rosa Bonheur and Harriet Hosmer grew out of a free and vigorous training, and they learned to delineate muscle by using it.
Everybody admires the physical training of military and naval schools. But these same persons never seem to imagine that the body is worth cultivating for any purpose, except to annihilate the bodies of others. Yet it needs more training to preserve life than to destroy it. The vocation of a literary man is far more perilous than that of a frontier dragoon. The latter dies at most but once, by an Indian bullet; the former dies daily, unless he be warned in time and take occasional refuge in the saddle and the prairie with the dragoon. What battle-piece is so pathetic as Browning's "Grammarian's Funeral"? Do not waste your gymnastics on the West Point or Annapolis student, whose whole life will be one of active exercise, but bring them into the professional schools and the counting-rooms. Whatever may be the exceptional cases, the stern truth remains, that the great deeds of the world can be more easily done by illiterate men than by sickly ones. Wisely said Horace Mann, "All through the life of a pure-minded but feeble-bodied man, his path is lined with memory's gravestones, which mark the spots where noble enterprises perished, for lack of physical vigor to embody them in deeds." And yet more eloquently it has been said by a younger American thinker, (D.A. Wasson,) "Intellect in a weak body is like gold in a spent swimmer's pocket,—the richer he would be, under other circumstances, by so much the greater his danger now."
Of course, the mind has immense control over physical endurance, and every one knows that among soldiers, sailors, emigrants, and woodsmen, the leaders, though more delicately nurtured, will often endure hardship better than the followers,—"because," says Sir Philip Sidney, "they are supported by the great appetites of honor." But for all these triumphs of nervous power a reaction lies in store, as in the case of the superhuman efforts often made by delicate women. And besides, there is a point beyond which no mental heroism can ignore the body,—as, for instance, in seasickness and toothache. Can virtue arrest consumption, or self-devotion set free the agonized breath of asthma, or heroic energy defy paralysis? More formidable still are those subtle results of disease, which cannot be resisted, because their source is unseen. Voltaire declared that the fate of a nation had often depended on the good or bad digestion of a prime-minister; and Motley holds that the gout of Charles V. changed the destinies of the world.
But so blinded, on these matters, is our accustomed mode of thought, that Mr. Beecher's recent lecture on the Laws of Nature has been met with strong objections from a portion of the religious press. These newspapers agree in asserting that admiration of physical strength belonged to the barbarous ages of the world. So it certainly did, and so much the better for those ages. They had that one merit, at least; and so surely as an exclusively intellectual civilization ignored it, the arm of some robust barbarian prostrated that civilization at last. What Sismondi says of courage is preëminently true of that bodily vigor which it usually presupposes: that, although it is by no means the first of virtues, its loss is more fatal than that of all others. "Were it possible to unite the advantages of a perfect government with the cowardice of a whole people, those advantages would be utterly valueless, since they would be utterly without security."
Physical health is a necessary condition of all permanent success. To the American people it has a stupendous importance because it is the only attribute of power in which they are losing ground. Guaranty us against physical degeneracy, and we can risk all other perils,—financial crises, Slavery, Romanism, Mormonism, Border Ruffians, and New York assassins; "domestic malice, foreign levy, nothing" can daunt us. Guaranty us health, and Mrs. Stowe cannot frighten us with all the prophecies of Dred; but when her sister Catherine informs us that in all the vast female acquaintance of the Beecher family there are not a dozen healthy women, we confess ourselves a little tempted to despair of the republic.
The one drawback to satisfaction in our Public-School System is the physical weakness which it reveals and helps to perpetuate. One seldom notices a ruddy face in the school-room, without tracing it back to a Transatlantic origin. The teacher of a large school in Canada went so far as to declare to us, that she could recognize the children born this side the line by their invariable appearance of ill-health joined with intellectual precocity,—stamina wanting, and the place supplied by equations. Look at a class of boys or girls in our Grammar Schools; a glance along the line of their backs affords a study of geometrical curves. You almost long to reverse the position of their heads, as Dante has those of the false prophets, and thus improve their figures; the rounded shoulders affording a vigorous chest, and the hollow chest an excellent back.
There are statistics to show that the average length of human life is increasing; but it is probable that this results from the diminution of epidemic diseases, rather than from any general improvement inphysique. There are facts also to indicate an increase of size and strength with advancing civilization. It is known that two men of middle size were unable to find a suit of armor large enough among the sixty sets owned by Sir Samuel Meyrick. It is also known that the strongest American Indians cannot equal the average strength of wrist of Europeans, or rival them in ordinary athletic feats. Indeed, it is generally supposed that any physical deterioration is local, being peculiar to the United States. Recently, however, we have read, with great regret, in the "Englishwoman's Review," that "it is allowed by all, that the appearance of the English peasant, in the present day, is very different to [from] what it was fifty years ago; the robust, healthy, hard-looking countrywoman or girl is as rare now as the pale, delicate, nervous female of our times would have been a century ago." And the writer proceeds to give alarming illustrations, based upon the appearance of children in English schools, both in city and country.
We cannot speak for England, but certainly no one can visit Canada without being struck with the spectacle of a more athletic race of people than our own. On every side one sees rosy female faces and noble manly figures. In the shop-windows, in winter weather, hang snow-shoes, "gentlemen's and ladies' sizes." The street-corners inform you that the members of the "Curling Club" are to meet to-day at "Dolly's," and the "Montreal Fox-hounds" at St. Lawrence Hall to-morrow. And next day comes off the annual steeple-chase, at the "Mile-End Course," ridden by gentlemen of the city with their own horses; a scene, by the way, whose exciting interest can scarcely be conceived by those accustomed only to "trials of speed" at agricultural exhibitions. Everything indicates out-door habits and athletic constitutions.
We are aware that we may be met with the distinction between a good idle constitution and a good working constitution,—the latter of which often belongs to persons who make no show of physical powers. But this only means that there are different temperaments and types of physical organization, while, within the limits of each, the distinction between a healthy and a diseased condition still holds; and we insist on that alone.
Still more specious is the claim of the Fourth-of-July orators, that, health or no health, it is the sallow Americans, and not the robust English, who are really leading the world. But this, again, is a question of temperaments. The Englishman concedes the greater intensity, but prefers a more solid and permanent power. It is the noble masonry and vast canals of Montreal, against the Aladdin's palaces of Chicago. "I observe," admits the Englishman, "that an American can accomplish more, at a single effort, than any other man on earth; but I also observe that he exhausts himself in the achievement. Kane, a delicate invalid, astounds the world by his two Arctic winters,—and then dies in tropical Cuba." The solution is simple; nervous energy is grand, and so is muscular power; combine the two, and you move the world.
We shall assume, as admitted, therefore, the deficiency of physical health in America, and the need of a great amendment. But into the general question of cause and cure we do not propose to enter. In view of the vast variety of special theories, and the inadequacy of any one, (or any dozen,) we shall forbear. To our thinking, the best diagnosis of the universal American disease is to be found in Andral's famous description of the cholera: "Anatomical characteristics, insufficient;—cause, mysterious;—nature, hypothetical;—symptoms, characteristic;—diagnosis, easy;—treatment, very doubtful."
Every man must have his hobby, however, and it is a great deal to ride only one hobby at a time. For the present we disavow all minor ones. We forbear giving our pet arguments in defence of animal food, and in opposition to tobacco, coffee, and india-rubbers. We will not criticize the old-school physician whom we once knew, who boasted of not having performed a thorough ablution for twenty-five years; nor will we question the physiological orthodoxy of Miss Sedgwick's New England artist, who represented the Goddess of Health with a pair of flannel drawers on. Still less should we think of debating (or of tasting) Kennedy's Medical Discovery, or R.R.R., or the Cow Pepsin. We know our aim, and will pursue it with a single eye.
"The wise for cure onexercisedepend,"
saith Dryden,—and that is our hobby.
A great physician has said, "I know not which is most indispensable for the support of the frame,—food or exercise." But who, in this community, really takes exercise? Even the mechanic commonly confines himself to one set of muscles; the blacksmith acquires strength in his right arm, and the dancing-master in his left leg. But the professional or business man, what muscles has he at all? The tradition, that Phidippides ran from Athens to Sparta, one hundred and twenty miles, in two days, seems to us Americans as mythical as the Golden Fleece. Even to ride sixty miles in a day, to walk thirty, to run five, or to swim one, would cost most men among us a fit of illness, and many their lives. Let any man test his physical condition, we will not say by sawing his own cord of wood, but by an hour in the gymnasium or at cricket, and his enfeebled muscular apparatus will groan with rheumatism for a week. Or let him test the strength of his arms and chest by raising and lowering himself a few times upon a horizontal bar, or hanging by the arms to a rope, and he will probably agree with Galen in pronouncing itrobustum validumque laborem. Yet so manifestly are these things within the reach of common constitutions, that a few weeks or months of judicious practice will renovate his whole system, and the most vigorous exercise will refresh him like a cold bath.
To a well-regulated frame, mere physical exertion, even for an uninteresting object, is a great enjoyment, which is, of course, enhanced by the excitement of games and sports. To almost every man there is joy in the memory of these things; they are the happiest associations of his boyhood. It does not occur to him, that he also might be as happy as a boy, if he lived more like one. What do most men know of the "wild joys of living," the daily zest and luxury of out-door existence, in which every healthy boy beside them revels?—skating, while the orange sky of sunset dies away over the delicate tracery of gray branches, and the throbbing feet pause in their tingling motion, and the frosty air is filled with the shrill sound of distant steel, the resounding of the ice, and the echoes up the hillsides?—sailing, beating up against a stiff breeze, with the waves thumping under the bow, as if a dozen sea-gods had laid their heads together to resist it?—climbing tall trees, where the higher foliage, closing around, cures the dizziness which began below, and one feels as if he had left a coward beneath and found a hero above?—the joyous hour of crowded life in football or cricket?—the gallant glories of riding, and the jubilee of swimming?
The charm which all have found in Tom Brown's "School Days at Rugby" lies simply in this healthy boy's-life which it exhibits, and in the recognition of physical culture, which is so novel to Americans. At present, boys are annually sent across the Atlantic simply for bodily training. But efforts after the same thing begin to creep in among ourselves. A few Normal Schools have gymnasiums (rather neglected, however); the "Mystic Hall Female Seminary" advertises riding-horses; and we believe the new "Concord School" recognizes boating as an incidental;—but these are all exceptional cases, and far between. Faint and shadowy in our memory are certain ruined structures lingering Stonehenge-like on the Cambridge "Delta,"—and mysterious pits adjoining, into which Freshmen were decoyed to stumble, and of which we find that vestiges still remain. Tradition spoke of Dr. Follen and German gymnastics; but the beneficent exotic was transplanted prematurely, and died. The only direct encouragement of athletic exercises which stands out in our memory of academic life was a certain inestimable shed on the "College Wharf," which was for a brief season the paradise of swimmers, and which, after having been deliberately arranged for their accommodation, was suddenly removed, the next season, to make room for coal-bins. Manly sports were not positively discouraged in our day,—but that was all.
Yet earlier reminiscences of the same beloved Cambridge suggest deeper gratitude. Thanks to thee, W.W.,—first pioneer, in New England, of true classical learning,—last wielder of the old English birch,—for the manly British sympathy which encouraged to activity the bodies, as well as the brains, of the numerous band of boys who played beneath the stately elms of that pleasant play-ground! Who among modern pedagogues can show such an example of vigorous pedestrianism in his youth as thou in thine age? and who now grants half-holidays, unasked, for no other reason than that the skating is good and the boys must use it while it lasts?
We cling still to the belief, that the Persiancurriculumof studies—to ride, to shoot, and to speak the truth—is the better part of a boy's education. As the urchin is undoubtedly physically safer for having learned to turn a somerset and fire a gun, perilous though these feats appear to mothers,—so his soul is made healthier, larger, freer, stronger, by hours and days of manly exercise and copious draughts of open air, at whatever risk of idle habits and bad companions. Even if the balance is sometimes lost, and play prevails, what matter? We rejoice to have been a schoolmate of him who wrote
"The hours the idle schoolboy squanderedThe man would die ere he'd forget."
Only keep in a boy a pure and generous heart, and, whether he work or play, his time can scarcely be wasted. Which really has done most for the education of Boston,—Dixwell and Sherwin, or Sheridan and Braman?
Should it prove, however, that the cultivation of active exercises diminishes the proportion of time given by children to study, we can only view it as an added advantage. Every year confirms us in the conviction, that our schools, public and private, systematically overtask the brains of the rising generation. We all complain that Young America grows to mental maturity too soon, and yet we all contribute our share to continue the evil. It is but a few weeks since we saw the warmest praises, in the New York newspapers, of a girl's school, in that city, where the appointed hours of study amounted to nine and a quarter daily, and the hours of exercise to a bare unit. Almost all the Students' Manuals assume that American students need stimulus instead of restraint, and urge them to multiply the hours of study and diminish those of out-door amusements and of sleep, as if the great danger did not lie that way already. When will parents and teachers learn to regard mental precocity as a disaster to be shunned, instead of a glory to be coveted? We could count up a dozen young men who have graduated at Harvard College, during the last twenty years, with high honors, before the age of eighteen; and we suppose that nearly every one of them has lived to regret it. "Nature," says Tissot, in his Essay on the Health of Men of Letters, "is unable successfully to carry on two rapid processes at the same time. We attempt a prodigy, and the result is a fool." There was a child in Languedoc who at six years was of the size of a large man; of course, his mind was a vacuum. On the other hand, Jean Philippe Baratier was a learned man in his eighth year, and died of apparent old age at twenty. Both were monstrosities, and a healthy childhood would be equidistant from either.
One invaluable merit of out-door sports is to be found in this, that they afford the best cement for childish friendship. Their associations outlive all others. There is many a man, now perchance hard and worldly, whom we love to pass in the street simply because in meeting him we meet spring flowers and autumn chestnuts, skates and cricket-balls, cherry-birds and pickerel. There is an indescribable fascination in the gradual transference of these childish companionships into maturer relations. We love to encounter in the contests of manhood those whom we first met at football, and to follow the profound thoughts of those who always dived deeper, even in the river, than our efforts could attain. There is a certain governor, of whom we personally can remember only, that he found the Fresh Pond heronry, which we sought in vain; and in memory the august sheriff of a neighboring county still skates in victorious pursuit of us, (fit emblem of swift-footed justice!) on the black ice of the same lovely lake. Our imagination crowns the Cambridge poet, and the Cambridge sculptor, not with their later laurels, but with the willows out of which they taught us to carve whistles, shriller than any trump of fame, in the happy days when Mount Auburn was Sweet Auburn still.
Luckily, boy-nature is too strong for theory. And we admit, for the sake of truth, that physical education is not so entirely neglected among us as the absence of popular games would indicate. We suppose, that, if the truth were told, this last fact proceeds partly from the greater freedom of field-sports in this country. There are few New England boys who do not become familiar with the rod or gun in childhood. We take it, that, in the mother country, the monopoly of land interferes with this, and that game laws, by a sort of spontaneous pun, tend to introduce games.
Again, the practice of match-playing is opposed to our habits, both as a consumer of time and as partaking too much of gambling. Still, it is done in the case of "firemen's musters," which are, we believe, a wholly indigenous institution. We have known a very few cases where the young men of neighboring country parishes have challenged each other to games of base-ball, as is common in England; and there was, if we mistake not, a recent match at football between the boys of the Fall River and the New Bedford High Schools. And within a few years regattas and cricket-matches have become common events. Still, these public exhibitions are far from being a full exponent of the athletic habits of our people; and there is really more going on among us than this meagre "pentathlon" exhibits.
Again, a foreigner is apt to infer, from the more desultory and unsystematized character of our out-door amusements, that we are less addicted to them than we really are. But this belongs to the habit of our nation, impatient, to a fault, of precedents and conventionalisms. The English-born Frank Forrester complains of the total indifference of our sportsmen to correct phraseology. We should say, he urges, "for large flocks of wild fowl,—of swans, awhiteness,—of geese, agaggle,—of brent, agang,—of duck, ateamor aplump,—of widgeon, atrip,—of snipes, awisp,—of larks, anexaltation.—The young of grouse arecheepers,—of quail,squeakers,—of wild duck,flappers." And yet, careless of these proprieties, Young America goes "gunning" to good purpose. So with all games. A college football-player reads with astonishment Tom Brown's description of the very complicated performance which passes under that name at Rugby. So cricket is simplified; it is hard to organize an American club into the conventional distribution of point and cover-point, long slip and short slip, but the players persist in winning the game by the most heterodox grouping. This constitutional independence has its good and evil results, in sports as elsewhere. It is this which has created the American breed of trotting horses, and which won the Cowes regatta by a mainsail as flat as a board.
But, so far as there is a deficiency in these respects among us, this generation must not shrink from the responsibility. It is unfair to charge it on the Puritans. They are not even answerable for Massachusetts; for there is no doubt that athletic exercises, of some sort, were far more generally practised in this community before the Revolution than at present. A state of almost constant Indian warfare then created an obvious demand for muscle and agility. At present there is no such immediate necessity. And it has been supposed that a race of shopkeepers, brokers, and lawyers could live without bodies. Now that the terrible records of dyspepsia and paralysis are disproving this, we may hope for a reaction in favor of bodily exercises. And when we once begin the competition, there seems no reason why any other nation should surpass us. The wide area of our country, and its variety of surface and shore, offer a corresponding range of physical training. Take our coasts and inland waters alone. It is one thing to steer a pleasure-boat with a rudder, and another to steer a dory with an oar; one thing to paddle a birch-canoe, and another to paddle a ducking-float; in a Charles River club-boat, the post of honor is in the stern,—in a Penobscotbateau, in the bow; and each of these experiences educates a different set of muscles. Add to this the constitutional American receptiveness, which welcomes new pursuits without distinction of origin,—unites German gymnastics with English sports and sparring, and takes the red Indians for instructors in paddling and running. With these various aptitudes, we certainly ought to become a nation of athletes.
We have shown, that, in one way or another, American schoolboys obtain active exercise. The same is true, in a very limited degree, even of girls. They are occasionally, in our larger cities, sent to gymnasiums,—the more the better. Dancing-schools are better than nothing, though all the attendant circumstances are usually unfavorable. A fashionable young lady is estimated to traverse her three hundred miles a season on foot; and this needs training. But out-door exercise for girls is terribly restricted, first by their costume, and secondly by the remarks of Mrs. Grundy. All young female animals unquestionably require as much motion as their brothers, and naturally make as much noise; but what mother would not be shocked, in the case of her girl of twelve, by one-tenth part the activity and uproar which are recognized as being the breath of life to her twin brother? Still, there is a change going on, which is tantamount to an admission that there is an evil to be remedied. Twenty years ago, if we mistake not, it was by no means considered "proper" for little girls to play with their hoops and balls on Boston Common; and swimming and skating have hardly been recognized as "ladylike" for half that period of time.
Still it is beyond question, that far more out-door exercise is habitually taken by the female population of almost all European countries than by our own. In the first place, the peasant women of all other countries (a class non-existent here) are trained to active labor from childhood; and what traveller has not seen, on foreign mountain-paths, long rows of maidens ascending and descending the difficult ways, bearing heavy burdens on their heads, and winning by the exercise such a superb symmetry and grace of figure as were a new wonder of the world to Cisatlantic eyes? Among the higher classes, physical exercises take the place of these things. Miss Beecher glowingly describes a Russian female seminary in which nine hundred girls of the noblest families were being trained by Ling's system of calisthenics, and her informant declared that she never beheld such an array of girlish health and beauty. Englishwomen, again, have horsemanship and pedestrianism, in which their ordinary feats appear to our healthy women incredible. Thus, Mary Lamb writes to Miss Wordsworth, (both ladies being between fifty and sixty,) "You say you can walk fifteen miles with ease; that is exactly my stint, and more fatigues me"; and then speaks pityingly of a delicate lady who could accomplish only "four or five miles every third or fourth day, keeping very quiet between." How few American ladies, in the fulness of their strength, (if female strength among us has any fulness,) can surpass this English invalid!