FOOTNOTES:[102]The Lieutenant-General Duc de Richelieu enjoyed the fame and received the reward of this important discovery, due really to an unknown adventurer. Even the claim of De Lally was set aside in favor of the illustrious impostor.
[102]The Lieutenant-General Duc de Richelieu enjoyed the fame and received the reward of this important discovery, due really to an unknown adventurer. Even the claim of De Lally was set aside in favor of the illustrious impostor.
[102]The Lieutenant-General Duc de Richelieu enjoyed the fame and received the reward of this important discovery, due really to an unknown adventurer. Even the claim of De Lally was set aside in favor of the illustrious impostor.
Mr. Francis Parkman has been fortunate in finding unappropriated, untried even, a dramatic subject of well-defined and completed historical interest, for the treatment of which his taste and talents give him an extraordinary adaptation. He has rightfully asserted his claims to be regarded as occupying the whole of a field whose scope and contents he has so ably mastered, and portions of which he has wrought to such good purpose. He has for many years had in view a series of historical narratives,—each complete and independent in itself, though having an organic relation to the others,—which should present the whole story of early French and English enterprise and rivalry in North America. Under the title of "Pioneers of France in the New World," published two years ago, and noticed at the time in these pages, we had a volume which initiated the full development of the results of his labors as far as they dealt with the earliest events and actors connected with French enterprise on this continent. In his "History of the Conspiracy of Pontiac," published sixteen years ago, Mr. Parkman had already given us the last act in a drama of intense interest.
"The Jesuits in North America" is the title of a new volume, and of a well-rounded and nobly-wrought theme. The English reader had nothing within his reach before from which he could learn what is offered to him here. Rich as the subject actually is in documentary and printed materials of primeauthenticity, and in the infinite minuteness of detail in their contents, these materials were widely scattered and not readily accessible. Mr. Parkman has either copied or procured the copying of many thousand pages of manuscripts illustrating his theme. He has gathered all the pamphlets, volumes, and maps which have any relation to it. He has put himself in communication with officials, custodians, and antiquarian students, who could help him in his researches, and, by visits of exploration and inquiry to the localities which form the scene of his narratives, he has faithfully met all the conditions external to his own more special qualifications for the exacting work which he has undertaken, and, so far, so successfully accomplished.
We have intimated that Mr. Parkman has special qualifications, taste, and talents for the line of historical studies to which he has devoted his life, and in which—in spite of most discouraging and embarrassing impediments of ill-health and physical suffering in eye and limb, and the sympathetic demands of the brain for rest and inaction except at long intervals and for short efforts—he has already done enough to give him place in our foremost literary ranks. We might emphasize our assertion of these special aptitudes and talents of his even up to a point which to those who are not familiar with his pages would seem enthusiastic or exaggerated. The curiosity, or sympathy, or reference to his own historical purposes,—call it and regard it which of these motive influences we will,—which has led Mr. Parkman to seek the closest contact with many of the Indian tribes in our domains,—to share their life, to be domiciled in their dirty lodges, to partake of their unappetizing feasts, to listen to their traditionary and tribal lore, and to endeavor to put himself into communication with the inner workings of their thought and being,—has accrued most helpfully to the benefit of his readers. We feel that he is for us a faithful and competent interpreter and commentator of Indian life, manners, superstitions, and fortunes. He has a marvellous skill in observing and describing the phenomena of nature,—the features and scenes of the wilderness amid which they roved. Those gentle or strong touches for shading and blending, for bringing into bold relief, or for suggesting what is alone for the thought and not for the sight, which the skilful painter uses in his service, are paralleled by Mr. Parkman in the felicity of his verbal delineations. We know of no writer whose pages are so real and vivid in qualities harmonizing with his theme as are his. The abundant material to which we have referred required just that elucidation and illustration which he has given to it by familiarity with the scenes and subjects embraced in it. In some very important points the author, by his thoroughness, candor, and judicial spirit, corrects some false impressions generally accepted, and substitutes fact for the fancies of romance.
Ad majorem Dei gloriam,—"For the greater glory of God,"—the noble motto of the Society of Jesus, had inspiration enough in its sublime simplicity and fulness of aim to consecrate any great enterprise into which piety and zeal and self-sacrificing toil could throw themselves, under whatever limitations of ignorance or superstition. All the perplexing questions, shifting and deepening from age to age, and finding more adequate answers as towhat consists with the glory of God, may help to train a more intelligent and practical judgment in the estimate of means and ends. But no comparative allowance of this sort can reduce the tribute due to devotion and heroism in an untried service for a holy cause, however bewildered and futile the endeavor. Mr. Lecky confronts us with the perhaps undeniable, but still unwelcome fact, that ardor and zeal cool proportionately as intelligent and practical aims direct the humane or the religious activities of men. Enthusiasm has an affinity, if not with superstition, yet with exaggerated and ill-adjusted estimates of therelations between the body and the soul, the visible and the invisible, the temporal and the eternal.
There can be no reasonable doubt that the missionary Jesuits, whose life was so sore a martyrdom that they must have found relief even in a cruel death inflicted by the Indians, did balance their view of what would consist with the glory of God by some equivalent benefit which they thought to secure for the barbarians. It has become very desirable, for various good reasons, to concentrate all the efforts of thorough research and of discriminating judgment upon the actual condition of the native tribes on the northern part of this continent when European enterprise or zeal introduced among them new and potent agencies for good or ill. Is their decay, their extermination, to be ascribed to the cupidity and heartlessness of the white man, with his skilled and calculating arts for overmastering the rude children of nature? Were they a happy, contented race, supported by the forest and the stream, and sharing among themselves such relations as served for their uses in the stead of the more elaborate and artificial institutions of civilization? Did their compensatory advantages balance to any extent the rude and stern conditions of their existence? Did the white man try, even with moderate humanity and sympathy, to lift them to an equality with himself, and to share peacefully and with mutual benefit their old domain? Was their destruction a foredoomed conclusion, a calculated purpose, an acknowledged necessity from the first? or was it slowly and reluctantly accepted as an inevitable destiny decided by conditions which overruled and thwarted every scheme and device of philanthropy? Were the Indians in the way of self-development, working upwards to intelligent improvement in their means and ways of life? Would they have retained their heritage here up to this day, had the white man never come among them? These and many similar questions may be asked, either by curiosity or in the interest of humanity, or in the service of ethnologic science. Mr. Parkman contributes more abundant and more instructive means for discussing and for deciding these questions in the light of authenticated facts, and of fair deductions from them, than do all who have preceded him on the subject.
In an Essay, introductory to his present volume, he embodies the results of many years of study, research, and personal observation concerning our Northern aborigines,—their tribal, treaty, and confederate relations, their distribution and numbers, their government, their family life, their customs, modes of subsistence, and warfare, their character and traits, their intellectual stage, their superstitions, their religious notions and observances. It is evident that his task, to this extent, was made an exacting one, not only by its inherent difficulties and complications, but by the misleading and guess-work representations of other writers who have been accepted as authorities. He makes stupendous reductions from the romance which has invested Indian character and life. "The noble savage," the ideal of so much fanciful and morbid sentimentality, becomes in his pages the representative of quite other qualities than those ascribed to him. In all that constitutes and ennobles manhood, and in all the conditions which should elevate the human above the brute creature, the savage and his lot are wanting.
Mr. Parkman says of the Huron-Iroquois family, that, from average capacity, superior cranium, and such advancement as is indicated by what we must call their mode of government, we might look to them, if to any of the aborigines, for examples of the higher traits popularly ascribed to Indians. But if we so look, we look in vain. Rather do we find in them the more repulsive and hideous qualities of the fiercest and the foulest brutes and reptiles,—a relentless and untamable ferocity and a homicidal frenzy. From the calm and exhaustive analysis of the philosophy of his theme, as well as fromthe tragic story which fills his thrilling pages, it is evident that Mr. Parkman traces to the nature and circumstances of the savage himself the prime causes of his extermination. Independently of the white man's agency,—saving only the sale of guns by the Dutch traders at Albany to the Iroquois,—the decay of the Indian tribes is to be ascribed to their own incapacity for civilization, and to their own homicidal passion. One might as well expect to neutralize the game flavor in the deer or the sea-fowl, as to bring an Indian tribe under the conditions of what we call culture and civilization. Mr. Everett, in his address in commemoration of the massacre at Bloody Brook, near Deerfield, Massachusetts, vindicated the general course of the white men towards the aborigines of these regions, by claiming for it an accordance with the manifest will of Providence from an economical point of view. The Indian was a wasteful, wretched, improvident consumer and spoiler of the means of subsistence and enjoyment for communities of civilized men. So reckless and ruthless was he, so idle and thriftless, that he required for his precarious and beastly subsistence a domain which would furnish cities with all their comforts and luxuries. A thousand white men might subsist in comfort through the whole year where five Indians could find but enough with which to gorge themselves for a small part of the year, while for the rest of it they suffered for lack of food, fire, and shelter.
Undeniable, also, is the fact that, according to the measure of what represented Christianity to themselves, and the form and degree of benefit which they personally by experience derived from it, the earliest European comers labored sincerely, and at cost, to impart the blessing to the Indians. They made this attempt with equal fidelity under the inspiration and guidance respectively of the two very different forms in which Christianity, as a religion, was accepted by themselves, and divided the range of Christendom. Eliot and the Mayhews stand, and will ever stand, as exponents of the purest, most patient and persistent zeal of Protestantism, matched only, but not surpassed, by the chivalrous devotion, constancy, and martyr-heroism of the subjects of Mr. Parkman's volume, in all the aims and toils of their impracticable work. The Protestant offered the Gospel to the Indians through intellectual teachings; the Romanist tried the experiment through a symbolism which one might, at first thought, regard as admirably adapted to the nature and circumstances of the savage. Success of a certain sort seemed to have secured, in both experiments, the promise of an ultimate reward for labor.
Happily, too, the Jesuit and the Protestant might alike find comfort in referring the disastrous overthrow of their hopes, not to the failure of their work, nor even to the inconstancy of their respective converts, but to the fortunes of the ferocious warfare by which the native tribes exterminated each other. Mr. Parkman first, or most lucidly and emphatically among our historians, and without a particle of special pleading, but simply by the fidelity of his narrative, makes it appear that the common impression as to the prime or fatal agency of the white man in visiting so ruthless a destiny on the Indians is exaggerated, if not substantially false. The tragic element in his pages, deep and plaintive as it is, comes in to show how Christian zeal and humane effort were thwarted by animosities and passions working among the Indian tribes before the continent was occupied by Europeans.
One of the most suggestive exercises to which the perusal of Mr. Parkman's book will quicken the minds of many of his readers, and for the more intelligent pursuit of which his pages will be found to afford the most helpful material, will be a comparison or contrast, not only of the genius of the Catholic and the Protestant religions in the work of missions among barbarians, but of the less spiritual and more homely qualities of the French and English proclivities,as exhibited in their respective relations with the savages. The French came more closely and familiarly into sympathy and intercourse with them. The English never could fraternize with them. If an Englishman of the lowest grade took a squaw for his partner, he sank to the level of barbarism himself. It was quite otherwise with the Frenchman. After the permanent occupation of Canada was secured, a race of half-breeds constituted, so to speak, a very respectable, as well as the most efficient, element in its population. It was enough if the squaw of the Frenchman had been the subject of Christian baptism. But that ordinance, however effective for the life to come, did not qualify a native woman for English wedlock. Sir William Johnson, indeed, made no disguise of his manner of life, which the complexion of the daughters who sat at his table with his most honored guests would have rendered rather difficult; but their mother—or mothers—were not presentable.
A very engaging episode in Mr. Parkman's narrative—we propose it to our artists as a subject of rare and novel interest, and rich in capacity—presents us two noble specimens of Christian zeal, in the persons of a Jesuit and a Protestant missionary in amicable intercourse with each other. Would that we had a more detailed account of the interview, and of the conversation which must have given it the highest charm of courteous sympathy, though with reserve, between two men who represented the sharpest antagonisms of creed, while a common faith may have proved an inner attraction for their hearts. The Colony of Massachusetts had applied to the French at Quebec, in negotiations looking toward a reciprocity of trade. The Jesuit missionary Druilletes was sent in that behalf to Boston. His diplomatic character saved him from the penalty of the halter, which Puritan law had pronounced upon any one of his profession who should be caught in this jurisdiction. He arrived in the autumn of 1650, and had a most hospitable and kindly reception, though he failed in his object. The scene we have proposed to a painter is that which finds Druilletes a welcome and honored guest in the humble dwelling of the apostle Eliot, at Roxbury, who invited the Jesuit to remain through the winter. We are sure they met and communed as friends,—high-souled, respecting each other, recognizing in each other aims and purposes, and the experience, alike in success and failure, of the arduous nature of a work which brought into a true communion of piety the spirits consecrated by it.
Not quite a score of years—from 1634 to 1650—suffice for the dates of the chief events in the profoundly interesting and saddening story of effort and failure which Mr. Parkman rehearses with such masterly ability. Starting with the renewed occupancy of Quebec in 1634, and the accession of the Jesuits to the abortive enterprise of the Recollet Fathers, he traces out for us the history of the Mission to the Hurons, giving us the characters of all its agents, an account of the settlements established, and the methods pursued till the work was frustrated.
It is but a sad and painful story—in some of its incidents harrowing and revolting—which Mr. Parkman has to tell us. So far as strict fidelity to his subject would admit, he has had regard to the sensibilities of his readers, and where he could neither hide nor soften, he has contented himself with intimating and suggesting what it would have been simply shocking for him to follow into further details.
With an acute skill in the reading of human nature, and a cosmopolitan spirit of his own which identifies religious toleration and charity with common sense, Mr. Parkman, in a few paragraphs crowded with facts and philosophy, takes us into the inner organization of Jesuitism, indicates the spring and aliment of its vitality, and explains to us how it reconciles the abnegation of the will with the concentration of resolve in obedience. Starting from Quebecas a centre of operation, and the place where French supplies and Indian traders were brought into contact in the spring of each year, the Fathers, following the direction of their Provincial at home, through their Superior resident, Le Jeune, radiated towards the dismal localities where each looked to live and die, as the majority of them did. We ought to have their names before us. The first six of them at Quebec were Le Jeune, Brébeuf, Masse, Daniel, Davost, and De Nouë. To these were added Buteux, Bressani, Ragueneau, Chabanel, Garreau, Garnier, Lalemant, Jogues, Chaumonot, and Vimont. Most of them were very young men, of noble lineage, and with the finest prospects of worldly success had they sought the prizes of courts and of civilized life. With few exceptions, they were not robust, but delicate. Eight of them died under Indian torture. Not one of them failed in purpose or in courage.
It is not possible for the pen of either Romanist or Protestant to make a Jesuit a lovely or attractive object to a Protestant. The flaw, if not the falsehood, in their claim to the loftiest homage, vitiates the appeal of the disciples of Loyola to the profoundest regard of the human heart, independently of the antipathies of creed. It is enough to know that their fellow-Romanists of other orders share to the full the sentiment of distrust towards them which no pleading in their defence has weakened in the common Protestant mind. Their devotion, their heroism, their stern constancy to the recognized principles of their severe discipline, does not neutralize, even if it qualifies, the persuasion, which has not lacked evidence to support it, that, in the service of God, they have been willing to learn art and subtlety from the Devil. True, we are told that a generous candor will always enable and dispose us to honor and reverence self-sacrifice with a sincere purpose, even when folly, instead of necessity, crowns it with martyrdom. The plausibility of this plea lies in a vague use of the wordsincere. The honors of martyrdom are yielded by a fine discrimination, as graduated by a scale recognizing a varying proportion of truth and value in the purpose for which the self-sacrifice is made. Every grain of superstition, duplicity, or recklessness reduces—every element of loftiness, high-thinking, and wise-purposing exalts—the honors rendered to a sufferer and a victim. We think that Mr. Parkman has held a fair balance in those almost alternate sentences in which, with a terse and comprehensive way of communicating his judgment, he recognizes the personal devotion, and compassionates the puerility and aimless toil, of the Jesuit missionaries. They might be pardoned for believing that the direction which the soul of a dying Indian child would take, either for heaven or for hell, was decided by their being able to cross a moistened finger upon its face. But to turn that saving charm into an act of jugglery, deceiving or falsifying to the parents, was an act which reduced the performer of it, either in intelligence or honesty, below the level of the sorcerer.
Mr. Parkman sets up no plea, positive or comparative, in behalf of that remarkable—we cannot say engaging—class of all-enduring men whose grim toils and sufferings he so faithfully narrates. Yet we have been spellbound, and deeply stirred, as we have slowly read and mused over his pages. So graphic and skilful is his method, so animated is his style, so vivid and real does he make the scenes, the surroundings, and the phenomena of his subject, that, while we might dispense wholly with the exercise of the imagination, we find that it has actually beguiled us into its most effective exercise by persuading us that we have seen and shared in many of the personages and incidents of the narrative.
The rules of the Order required of the missionaries something in the nature of a diary, or journal, which, passing through the hands of the local Superior, should reach the Provincial atParis. From these official papers, entering into the fullest minuteness of detail, confidential in their contents, and of the utmost trustworthiness, were composed "The Relations," which, annually made public, were of double service,—in reporting the hopeful labors of those already in the hard and dreary field, and in quickening the fervent zeal for new accessions to it. From these Relations, and from the voluminous and equally rich private correspondence between the missionaries and their European friends, Mr. Parkman, contributing what he has learned from other sources, is able to construct for us a continuous narrative, which anticipates every question we might ask, and informs us fully on every point of interest in his theme. He describes to us the Jesuit living on visions and dreams, reinforcing his spirit by meditations, and keeping his enthusiasm up to the needed point by assuring himself, on emergencies, of the direct interposition of the saints in his behalf. He makes us join the travelling party of the missionary as he avails himself of an Indian escort to penetrate into the wilderness, sharing its perils and its annoyances, aggravated always, even when not created, by the shiftlessness of his companions. We are initiated into all the methods and appliances of travel, of hunting, of encamping, of lodge-building, of feasting and starving, on the trail and in the village. The resources of forest life as presented by Thoreau, who had houses into which he might bring up at night, the furnishings of a wardrobe, and the comfort of salt, will be found on comparison to obtrude many broad contrasts with the realities encountered by the Jesuits and their entertainers. These all-enduring, patient men, born amid the luxuries of civilized life, left all behind them when they embarked in the canoe which was itself, with its contents, to be carried as a burden over the frequent portages connecting streams or avoiding cataracts. The first care of the "Black-Robes" was to provide the vessels and materials for the mass, with paper, pen, and ink. A few trinkets, and perhaps some implements of the rudest home-use, completed their outfit. They were disgusted, all but infuriated, by the filth and vermin, the loathsome familiarities, and the blinding smoke of the wigwam. Their feelings as civilized men were outraged by the fiendish barbarities of which they were spectators. Their lives always hung on a thread, at the mercy of caprice, jealousy, superstition, and hate, which were always active in savage breasts. Yet they toiled and suffered and persevered and hoped, as men can do and will do only when they believe themselves working for heaven,—to obtain heaven for themselves and to fit others for it.
FOOTNOTES:[103]The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century. ByFrancis Parkman. Boston: Little, Brown, & Co.
[103]The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century. ByFrancis Parkman. Boston: Little, Brown, & Co.
[103]The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century. ByFrancis Parkman. Boston: Little, Brown, & Co.
"The women of Columbus, Mississippi, animated by nobler sentiments than are many of their sisters, have shown themselves impartial in their offerings made to the memory of the dead. They strewed flowers alike on the graves of the Confederate and of the National soldiers."—New York Tribune.
"The women of Columbus, Mississippi, animated by nobler sentiments than are many of their sisters, have shown themselves impartial in their offerings made to the memory of the dead. They strewed flowers alike on the graves of the Confederate and of the National soldiers."—New York Tribune.
By the flow of the inland river,Whence the fleets of iron have fled,Where the blades of the grave-grass quiver,Asleep are the ranks of the dead;—Under the sod and the dew,Waiting the judgment day;—Under the one, the Blue;Under the other, the Gray.These in the robings of glory,Those in the gloom of defeat,All with the battle-blood gory,In the dusk of eternity meet;—Under the sod and the dew,Waiting the judgment day;—Under the laurel, the Blue;Under the willow, the Gray.From the silence of sorrowful hoursThe desolate mourners go,Lovingly laden with flowersAlike for the friend and the foe;—Under the sod and the dew,Waiting the judgment day;—Under the roses, the Blue;Under the lilies, the Gray.So with an equal splendorThe morning sun-rays fall,With a touch, impartially tender,On the blossoms blooming for all;Under the sod and the dew,Waiting the judgment day;—Broidered with gold, the Blue;Mellowed with gold, the Gray.So, when the Summer calleth,On forest and field of grainWith an equal murmur fallethThe cooling drip of the rain;—Under the sod and the dew,Waiting the judgment day;—Wet with the rain, the Blue;Wet with the rain, the Gray.Sadly, but not with upbraiding,The generous deed was done;In the storm of the years that are fading,No braver battle was won;—Under the sod and the dew,Waiting the judgment day;—Under the blossoms, the Blue,Under the garlands, the Gray.No more shall the war-cry sever,Or the winding rivers be red;They banish our anger foreverWhen they laurel the graves of our dead!Under the sod and the dew,Waiting the judgment day;—Love and tears for the Blue.Tears and love for the Gray.
By the flow of the inland river,Whence the fleets of iron have fled,Where the blades of the grave-grass quiver,Asleep are the ranks of the dead;—Under the sod and the dew,Waiting the judgment day;—Under the one, the Blue;Under the other, the Gray.
These in the robings of glory,Those in the gloom of defeat,All with the battle-blood gory,In the dusk of eternity meet;—Under the sod and the dew,Waiting the judgment day;—Under the laurel, the Blue;Under the willow, the Gray.
From the silence of sorrowful hoursThe desolate mourners go,Lovingly laden with flowersAlike for the friend and the foe;—Under the sod and the dew,Waiting the judgment day;—Under the roses, the Blue;Under the lilies, the Gray.
So with an equal splendorThe morning sun-rays fall,With a touch, impartially tender,On the blossoms blooming for all;Under the sod and the dew,Waiting the judgment day;—Broidered with gold, the Blue;Mellowed with gold, the Gray.
So, when the Summer calleth,On forest and field of grainWith an equal murmur fallethThe cooling drip of the rain;—Under the sod and the dew,Waiting the judgment day;—Wet with the rain, the Blue;Wet with the rain, the Gray.
Sadly, but not with upbraiding,The generous deed was done;In the storm of the years that are fading,No braver battle was won;—Under the sod and the dew,Waiting the judgment day;—Under the blossoms, the Blue,Under the garlands, the Gray.
No more shall the war-cry sever,Or the winding rivers be red;They banish our anger foreverWhen they laurel the graves of our dead!Under the sod and the dew,Waiting the judgment day;—Love and tears for the Blue.Tears and love for the Gray.
Young America in on the anxious-seat. An imploring cry comes up from the hearts of thousands, "What shall we do to be saved—from work?"
In the happy days of the Adamses, as Professor Agassiz has taught us to say, when every vine was a lodging rent-free, and the fig-trees furnished ready-made clothing, life was a pleasant pastime. But this is an age of cash or barter. The old common-law maxim concerning pains and penalties is the rule of modern society:Qui non habet in crumena, luat in corpore,—"He who cannot pay his fare must work his passage." To evade this law, to shirk the forecastle, and to devise some means of climbing into the cabin-windows, is the problem that the youth of this generation are trying to solve.
The United States offer so manyunprospectedor half-worked placers to sharp eyes, that we must look for a great deal of vagabondry. Gold-miners do not settle themselves down to crushing quartz, so long as there are nuggets to be picked up. Rare chances lie hidden in the by-paths of this broad country, to tempt men to straggle from the ranks of the steady workers and turn foragers andbummers.
And in this generation money has attained an extraordinary value. Since Dr. Johnson announced, in his Tour to the Hebrides, that the feudal system was giving way to wealth, most other social distinctions have yielded to it,—particularly in America, where there were few barriers to break down,—and money has become the chief good. Our standard of position in society is financial worth. Our patents of nobility are railway bonds, stock certificates, and mortgages. The income-return list of the United States Internal Revenue Department is theLibro d'Oroof the American Venice. In this age of scepticism, the excellence of accumulated capital is the one thing no man doubts; and when I take off my hat to a rich man, which I always do when I meet him, I feel that I cannot be mistaken in paying respect to something demonstrable, tangible, real.
Money furnishes all the blessings oflife in this Western World,—health, beauty, wisdom, virtue, consideration; and some theologians have held that even the eye of the needle may expand to admit the camel who has dropped enough of his precious burden upon their premises.
If wealth cannot always give health, it can help to preserve it; it is the best of physicians.
There is nothing so becoming as property. "Handsome is who handsome has," is the accepted modern version of the old saw.
If a rich man does not pass for sensible and good, it is his own fault. Wisdom can be bought, generally at low prices; and virtue is always assumed to be an attribute of Fortune except in moral didactic treatises. A cubic ounce of gold can be beaten to cover fourteen hundred and sixty-six square feet; and a skilful capitalist can make it hide quite as large an area of meanness.
What weight an income adds to a man's sayings and doings! Your lucky broker, who has just turned a corner in stocks with a fortune, thinks Two Shillings has no right to an opinion when Half a Dollar is in the room. Although a man with a threadbare coat may say anything now-a-days, in spite of the Roman satirist, he can get no one to listen to him. Even genuine wit, like a good picture, shows better in a gilt frame with the varnish of success upon it.
It is not surprising that young men want money, and much of it, and quickly.
There is another stumbling-block in the path of steady work. Politically our progress in democracy is complete; but socially we hang back. The aristocracies of Europe despised trade; with us trade is an aristocracy that looks down upon manual labor,—an aristocracy with its gradations of rank and of titles, from merchant-prince to pedler. All who buy and sell consider themselves as belonging to the peerage of business. And as thepetite noblesseof France liked to take a better title and gayer armorials than belonged to them, so our lesser nobility and gentry are fond of using a brevet business-title considerably above the position they really fill. They are ashamed of the old English words that have designated their callings for centuries. We all know that shops and shopkeepers are not to be found in the United States. Even thread-and-needle establishments and apple-stands are stores. Within sight of where I write, a maker of false calves, and other cotton or sawdust contrivances to supply the padding which careless Nature often forgets to furnish, calls his workshop a studio. If I were to use the word "slops" in a "ready-made clothing depot," the Sir Piercie Shafton who keeps it would summarily expel me for my lack of euphemism. As a general rule, everybody is above his business, and thinks manual labor mean, and only fit for emigrants.
It is said that our mechanics are nearly all foreigners, and that an American apprentice is an extinct species, like the cave bear or the dodo. Farmers' sons prefer any way of getting their bread to working with their hands. The pedler's caste ranks higher than the manly independence of the plough. A country store is an object of ambition, where the only toil is to deal out a glass of wretched tipple to the village sots who haunt those castles of indolence to drink, to smoke, and to twaddle over stale village news. Some young fellows solicit subscriptions for maps or for great American works, or drum for fruit nurseries, patent clothes-wringers, or baby-jumpers. Others aspire to enter the religious mendicant orders of America as paid brethren. They are too proud to work, but not ashamed to beg. Beg is perhaps a hard word; but solicitation is begging when the solicitor personally profits by it.
The sons of trading fathers despise the old tiresome roads to wealth of their class. Ledgers and law-books are too slow. All are in search of the short cut to fortune. They believe in the philosopher's stone as implicitly as thealchemists; they seek for it as earnestly. It is a jewel that will last forever, but its composition varies with each generation.
We of the press get scores of letters from young men, who spread out therein what they imagine to be their qualifications and accomplishments,—and plenty of them, for self-satisfaction is really the first law of Nature. Then follow their hopes and wishes and askings for advice, which, stripped of the flimsy rhetorical wrappers they feel obliged to use in deference to the old prejudice in favor of steady industry, come simply to this: "What is the minimum of work on which a clever creature like myself can live? And what kind of work is the least irksome and the most respectable?"
My colleague Tarbox, justly celebrated as a local reporter, belongs to the earnest school, and wishes me to take high ground, and write a sermon on the holiness and dignity of labor. He is always ready with hislaborare est orare, and has by heart a passage from a German professor, who, writing of the manners of the Romans in an epoch of their history not unlike this of ours, says: "When a man works merely in order to attain as quickly as possible to enjoyment, it is a mere accident that he does not become a criminal."
But I tell Tarbox that these foreigners never understand the working of our institutions, nor the genius of our people. As to the dignity of labor, I have written a good deal on that text, particularly just before elections. The phrase sounds well in leading articles and on the stump, and may carry some comfort to a hard-working man. But I doubt if he believes it in his heart. I certainly do not. It is not true. There is no dignity in labor. Honesty, wisdom, manliness, there may be in labor, but not dignity. Dignity is in repose; the proverb is as old as Julius Cæsar. I might perhaps serve out some cut-and-dried bits of morality that have been prescribed as specifics for such complaints since the days of the Seven Wise Men. We keep them "set up" and ready for use. The only fault of these excellent old remedies is, that they never cure chronic cases of inefficiency, whether it be constitutional or contracted. They are good for nothing unless as a mild tonic for people who could do well enough without them. Now the cases we have to deal with are generally constitutional. When a young man writes to a stranger to ask upon what career in life he shall enter, he sends a diagnosis of his character in his letter. You know at once to what subdivision of the species he belongs. The hunting British squire recognizes only three orders of animals,—game, vermin, and stock. The human race may be divided in the same way. Game men take care of themselves; the vermin make others take care of them; and the stock, useful, harmless, and insignificant, except as an aggregate, furnish the first class with tools and the second with victims, and hitherto have done most of the drudgery of the world. Our correspondents belong to a sluggish but ambitious variety of the stock, that is seeking for some respectable or semi-respectable method of avoiding the primeval labor curse. Their own ingenuity failing them, they apply for the use of ours. The robust men, who have "the wrestling thews that throw the world," know how to get what they want, and ask no one to teach them. Indeed, to ask advice at any time is an indication of weakness. We feel kindly to those who consult us. It is a compliment that we were chosen, and not another; but I do not think that we respect them the more for it.
It is evident that the heroic remedies recommended by my colleague are likely to do harm rather than good to young persons who have outgrown their moral strength. It would be more humane to prescribe a treatment which, though it cannot cure, may alleviate their most distressing symptoms, and enable them to bear the burden of life without too much suffering. I shall, therefore, exhibit some of the methods by which young fellows of tolerable education and address may get alongwithout undue exertion,—Disce puer fortunam ex me, verumque laborem ex aliis. For a youngster of good nerves and hopeful temperament there is nothing better than speculation,—as gambling without pasteboard and ivory is called. Up to-day and down to-morrow is as pleasant and exciting to men of that mould as seesaws and swings to children with strong stomachs. But let those made of feebler stuff beware. Between the two millstones of winning and losing they will be ground into despair, or into shameless roguery. "Broad is the way that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat."
There is no simpler way of "achieving honorable maintenance" than to marry an heiress. But to seek fortune in matrimony is almost like looking for it in a lottery. By some mysterious law of Providence, rich people draw the high prizes. Money is apt to fall in love with money. The female dollar prefers the attentions of her own kind. Cupid, "once a god," as Tennyson writes, "is now a lawyer's clerk," with sharp eyes wide open; and suitsin forma pauperisare as little likely to succeed in courts of love as in courts of law.
Politics being a subject everybody understands by instinct, young men will naturally turn their attention that way. The number of offices with salaries make this country almost that Frenchman's Utopia imagined by Madame de Staël, where every adult male was to be a public officer paid by the state. We have even more than this. When all other hopes break down, there is the custom-house,—that last infirmary of noble minds who have failed in every attempt to cure the aches that empty pockets are heirs to. No doubt the profession of politics is generally remunerative; but where I live, a foreign order of nature's nobility rules us. We Saxons have fought our battle of Hastings at the polls, and have lost it; and no one can hope to hold office here, unless he came over with Murphy the Conqueror. Even should he combine in his person that profitable conjunction of knavery, impudence, and laziness which we call a politician, with the physical requisites described by a philosopher of the last century,—Vox stentoria, sempiterna, cum cerebello vacuo,—it would profit him nothing.
The poet Gray makes Jemmy Twitcher marry Divinity, after being refused by Law and Physic. These two smile only upon serious admirers. They who follow the law—at a distance, as some one remarks, never pick up a living. And in medicine, unless the indolent practitioner can invent a pill or a syrup, and can borrow enough to publish lying certificates from country clergymen, and to hire bill-stickers to dirty the face of Nature with the names of his specifics and the wonders they work, he will never earn his daily bread. But Divinity is more easily pleased. It was usual in the generation now passing away to recommend the Church to young gentlemen of moderate energy without capital. And indeed the path seemed easy, and the prospect pleasant.
A year or two in a seminary, a white cravat, a "call" made audible by a salary, Paley's advice in the matter of sermons,—to make one and to steal three,—all the young women of the parish sitting at his feet, working worsted slippers for them, and swinging their intoxicating little censers of flattery under his nose,—such was the imaginary programme of his career. Certainly a tolerable existence while it lasted. But it seldom did last. The "young probationer and candidate for heaven" married. He selected—destiny always seemed to impel him to it—a "sweet woman," who overstocked his parsonage, and, like the magician's apprentice in the ballad, could not rule the young spirits she had evoked. The salary did not increase with the family, and sweet women are never good housekeepers. The congregation began to criticise the old sermons; a jury of stern matrons, who spoke what minds they had, sat in perpetual session on his doctrines, his wife's dress,and his children's behavior;—and the end of that man was dreary, if he was only a drone in the hive of the Lord. In our day The Church is militant, and needs her ministers in the field. Those who are not able to fight will be sent to garrison some remote post, where there is no danger and little pay.
Art offers many more inducements to our young friends. If they have a knack for sketching and a "feeling for color," as the slang goes, they need not waste much time in preparatory study. Let them devote themselves to landscape. It is easy to draw a tree that will not shock the eye of an ordinary observer. Little outlay is needed to hire a room; none whatever to call it a studio. This magical word furnishes it at once, and covers every deficiency in chairs, tables, and carpet. Studio, Artist,—excellent, well-sounding names! In them is often the secret of the whole business.
An artist has this advantage over other men,—he may indulge in whatever amusements his means can afford him, and no one will find fault. Every class has its own standard of manners and conduct. The measure and rule for artists have come over the sea, condensed from FrenchfeuilletonsandVies de Bohéme. They are supposed to belong, by right of profession, to a reckless, witty, singing, and carousing guild. It is almost needless to say that the real life of the hard-working men who have earned fame by the brush is as unlike all this as possible. But these vague, ultramarine notions of fun and revelry have taken possession of the American mind, just opening to art, and established the standard for artists here. It exists in fact only in the imagination; for, excepting a few ebullitions in the way of hair, beards, and black sombreros, our artists are as saturnine as the rest of us, and not as good company around the mahogany as a judicious combination of clergymen and lawyers. Nevertheless, so powerful is the conventional, when it has once taken root in the imagination, that some of our younger artists believe themselves to be wild, rollicking fellows, who despise the humdrum existence of the rest of us, although they are sober and economical, pay their bills weekly, and talk their morning paper like other people. Young correspondents! you will perceive what a chance is here for you. If a kind public, in its youthful enthusiasm for art, invests these steady-going citizens with such delightful romantic qualities, it will of course wink at any irregularities of conduct on your part, as in strict keeping with the character.
In addition, you will always find us of the press your trusty friends. Although behind the scenes myself, the peculiar connection that exists between items-men and artists is as inexplicable to me as the partnership of the owl and the prairie-dog in their dwellings on the plains. Why, when we make every other calling pay roundly for a notice, we puff the artists gratis in the most conspicuous columns of the paper, is a puzzle to me. But the fact exists. Hire your studio, nail up your name on the door, and we will make a pet of you at once, and pat you encouragingly on the back. You shall have little paragraphs of this kind: "Salvator Smith is studying atmospheric effects in the Brooklyn Mountains"; or, "Smith, our own Salvator, is making studies from nature near Roxbury"; or, "He has a grand classical picture on his easel in Green Street, representing a celebrated American in the character of the infant Hercules, strangling the British lion with one hand and the Gallic cock with the other." Few of our readers may have heard of Smith, but they read these iterated notices, and soon believe Smith to be somebody. And he has the sweet sensation of seeing his name in print at no expense to himself, and the rare luck of fame before it is earned. In the circle he adorns he will be looked upon as a judge in all matters æsthetical. It is only necessary to have painted a poor picture in order to be an authority in architecture, music, poetry, dress, decoration, furniture, private theatricals, and fancy balls.
At this moment the fashionable world is an oyster, which with his spatula anartist may open. A picture mania rages. Good works bring enormous prices, and any discoloration of canvas in a gilt frame finds a ready purchaser, if signed by a known name. We are a commercial people, and are satisfied with a first-rate indorsement. The patron of art can soon educate himself for the position. The pet little phrases—"chalky," "sketchy," "tone," "repose," "opaque coloring," and all the rest of the technical vocabulary—are soon learned; and then if Lorenzo is able and willing to give ten thousand dollars for a picture, he may hold a court of artists and be sure of having a number of pleasant fellows about him. They, too, will be sure of champagne and oysters. All the schools, however different their theories of art may be, agree, I believe, that both of these compositions are excellent.
Lastly, I should like to say a few words in favor of my own noble profession, newspaper editing. Mr. Carlyle may spitefully call it "the California of the spiritually vagabond," but there is a proud pleasure in knowing that we gentlemen of the press furnish the great American people with their ideas and their phrases ready made, just as Brooks Brothers and Oak Hall provide them with their clothes. All very much alike, it is true,—"our spring style,"—and often ill-fitting and graceless; but we seem to fill a national want. Our names may be unknown outside of our offices, but the great planets are perceptibly influenced in their courses by little asteroids invisible to the naked eye, and many a celebrity who appears daily in large type is moved by the strings we pull, and knows it not. My comrade Tarbox says: "The oracles that became dumb in the year of our Lord were really a necessity to mankind, and consequently were made vocal again by the agency of Renaudot, who invented newspapers. The Delphis and Dodonas of the nineteenth century are newspaper offices." This may explain why young men in search of a profitable career write to us instead of applying to rich merchants or to dashing brokers. How fortunate that those who consult us never see the shrine or the priests! No gold or silver glitters in the modernadytum, or editor's room, and the tripod from which we distribute ourafflatusto the compositors is a wooden three-legged stool, unpainted and uncushioned. That great oracle, Tarbox himself, was not long ago a noble savage who ran wild in the woods near some country college. Caught and caged in that institution, he devoted three years to pipes, and one tobelles lettres, and receiving from a good-natured Faculty some sort of a degree, probably that of tobacco-laureate, came thence to town; where, inspired by a salary of ten dollars a week, he enlightens the public on finance and politics, art and literature, manners and taste, and writes those brilliant articles the world willingly lets die. When the California gold mines were first discovered, a clever fellow said that he knew of no opening for a young man like the Southwest Pass. That is still true for rough, coarse, self-asserting characters; but for delicate, refined, stay-at-home natures, who have wishes without wills, there are many ways of getting their porridge without selling their birthright of doing as little as possible. If they cannot float buoyantly on the surface, at least they need not sink far beneath it, but may enjoy a quiet, water-logged kind of existence, not devoid of comfort.