I
t is hard to follow in the tracks of giants, but nevertheless the sands of our time are filled with that kind of footprints. The present century has beholden some of the most astonishing elevations of all history. Slaves have become Roman Emperors, but we hardly know what "slave" meant in those days. Within the last hundred years we see a poor old dame with three sons called Joseph, Napoleon and Jerome. We see a cooper's son called Michel Ney, an inn-keeper's son called Joaquin Murat, a lawyer's son named Jean Bernadotte, a military cadet named Louis Davout, and a lame boy called Charles Talleyrand. Behold them mounting the ladder until, at the end of thirty years, the roster stands thus. Joseph Bonaparte, King of Spain; Napoleon Bonaparte, greatest warrior of modern times and Emperor of France, which meant dictator of Europe; Jerome Bonaparte, King of Westphalia; Michel Ney, Prince of the Moskwa and Bravest of the Brave; Joaquin Murat, King of Naples; Jean Bernadotte, King of Sweden, and founder of the present dynasty; Louis Davout, Prince of Eckmuhl, and, in 1811,
COMMANDER OF NEARLY 600,000 MEN;
Charles Talleyrand, Prince of Benevento, and perhaps the greatest diplomat in history. We have Ben Franklin learning to ink type in his youth and in his maturity teaching the world how to subdue our favorite slave, the lightning. We have Daniel Webster ploughing on a farm and afterward delighting two worlds with the magic of his voice. We see John Jacob Astor arrive in America scarcely able to speak English, and die in 1848 worth more than any other man in America at that time. We see George Peabody at work in a grocery at Danvers. Years afterward, as a London banker, we chronicle his charities, almost fabulous in their extent: To Danvers, Mass., two hundred and fifty thousand dollars; to the Baltimore Institute, one million four hundred thousand dollars; to the poor of London, two million five hundred thousand dollars; to the southern negroes, three million five hundred thousand dollars; to eight institutions, three hundred and fifty thousand dollars; to his relatives, five million dollars; We see A.T. Stewart hard pressed for a dollar, and we find him worth thirty millions when he dies. We watch
THE WIFE OF ANDREW JOHNSON
teaching him the alphabet, and we listen to his proclamations as President of the United States. We tell Abraham Lincoln where he can borrow a book that will benefit him, and we pass by his great dust in numbers almost like the stars in heaven. We see Phineas T. Barnum first humbugging the people with a lemonade-stand worth all told two dollars, and we next see him humbugging the people with the greatest show on earth, worth a million. We lend Leland Stanford a quarter and he next buys up three or four high-priced legislatures and defies the Constitution of the United States to prevent him levying a tax on "his people" of a million dollars with a stroke of his pen. We see
ULYSSES S. GRANT
working by the day in a tanyard, and then receiving the sword of a warrior whose name will also echo far out into the "corridors of time," and then again accepting as the representative of America, the pent-up admiration of the Old World for the New. We see Jay Gould investing a thousand dollars in a country store and then in turn dictating to all the railroads and controlling all the telegraphs in the greatest empire that has ever existed. We watch Cornelius Vanderbilt, Sr., begin as a poor lad, save, build, command, and die, leaving to his favorite son
EIGHTY MILLIONS OF DOLLARS!
We see that son, beginning on that paltry patrimony, already the possessor, in a few short years, of seventy millions in addition. We help Elihu Burritt to say his letters at noon-time in a blacksmith shop, and afterward, lo! he converses in thirty languages. We see Edgar Poe, dying as poor as man ever died, yet leaving to the world a name as a writer that Europeans persist is as yet the brightest in American literature. See Horace Greeley, trudging across a State, anxious to get a job for his board and clothes; then listen to his voice in the councils of the President and in the hearts of the people. Remember Salmon P. Chase, a poor Ohio boy, Governor, Secretary of the Treasury, author of the best currency system so far conceived, and Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.
JAMES A. GARFIELD
is now at work driving a canal-boat, now Republican leader of the House, now Senator, now President, and now the object of a weeping world's affection. See the poor boy Sherman, born in Lancaster, O. A short space flies past us, and he has cut his own communications and marched with his army into the enemy's country. The LondonTimessays if he emerges from the unknown country with his army, he will be "the greatest captain of modern times." Soon his banners float on the coast, soon the cities are blazing behind his fearful stride, and soon the cruel war is over. We behold the third son of a very large family of
TENNYSONS
begin writing verses. He writes trash at first, but by and by he is proclaimed the greatest living poet, and his art of writing (all that part of his work which was difficult) is pronounced the greatest the world has ever seen. We see the boy Lee, studying hard to sustain the illustrious name he bore, advancing in science to the great study of astronomy, becoming the intellectual credit of his surroundings, the tutor of the scholarly. We behold him clasping the sword put in his hands by the greatest unsuccessful insurrection of all past time, and, seated on his horse, smiling at the awful repulse of
PICKETT'S IMMORTAL CHARGE AT GETTYSBURG,
saying, simply: "We cannot always expect to have our own way in an attack," when down in his great heart he knows that the proudest people ever defeated have cast the final die, and lost. We stand over his ashes and feel that they are the ashes of a truly great man whom "unmerciful disaster followed fast and followed faster." We see James Gordon Bennett, the jibe of all the printers because of his crooked eyes. Yet he dies the owner of the greatest money-making newspaper of all newspaper history, a journal which sends expeditions to Africa and squadrons to the north pole. We see a "canny" Scotch boy at study. He "takes wonderfully to German," and soon the English world is hailing him as the "literary Columbus." He has shown them the greatness of Frederick, of Schiller, and Goethe. He writes a history of the French Revolution, and calls it the "truth clad in hell-fire." He reads a library in a few hours, or, rather, he reads what he has not read—and finally he lies down, hating the world, hating freedom, but full of genius, and men say "Carlyle is dead."
A BOY CALLED VICTOR HUGO
is born in France. At thirty he is famous. Then for fifty years he wields an influence through the literatures of all nations second only to Shakspeare's. We see the sailor-boy Garibaldi, the commander-in-chief and savior of Uruguay in South America, the idol and king-maker of Italy, and the stern patriot without rank or gew-gaw on
THE ROCK OF CAPRI,
a joining of the characters of such men as Socrates and Washington. We see Disraeli, a poor boy and we see Disraeli more powerful than any other man on earth. We look at Gladstone as a boy starting in life, determined to be a scholar. We hear his glorious voice, we read his books, we study the laws he has framed, we watch the empire he governs, and we feel he succeeded in his boyish ambition. Everywhere—in the lives of Agassiz, Humboldt, Proctor, Seward, Farragut, Nelson, Abercrombie, Joseph E. Johnston, Longstreet, Stanton, Aspinwall, Lorillard, Ayer, Helmbold, Scott, Garrett, Ralston, Garner, Watson, Howe, Singer, Steinway, McCormick, Morse, Edison, Bell, Gray, Applegarth, Hoe, Thomas, Wagner, Verdi, Jurgensen, Picard, Stephenson, Fulton, Rumsey, Fitch, Lamb, Fairbanks, Corliss, Dahlgren, Parrot, Armstrong, Gatling, Pullman, Alden, Crompton, Faber, Remington, Sharp, Colt, Daguerre, Bessemer, Goodyear, Yale, Keene, Gould, Villard,—and
IN THE LIVES OF THE THOUSANDS
which my limits exclude me from mentioning, there is the example of the hard worker, the promise of results that will follow a well-directed effort. "In order to do great things, it is necessary to live as if one was never to die"—that is, pay attention only to the object aimed at. I remember a man of success who meant to break up housekeeping and go to Europe on a matter of business. This was the first of January. The fact that the weather suddenly turned cold to the extent of thirty degrees below zero did not seem to attract his attention. He was absent-minded on that question! When it came to going out to hire an expressman to haul his effects to a storehouse he found no one would venture out with his horse until the thermometer should rise, and his astonishment knew no bounds! He had been
SO IN THE HABIT OF RIDING OVER OBSTACLES
that his distress was very noticeable when he was compelled to wait in idleness for three days. Never allow obstacles to stop you. When the waters meet an obstacle they run around it. So do the ants. Read the lives of successful men. Watch successful men. "We are less convinced by what we hear than what we see," said Herodotus thousands of years ago. Said Seneca, nineteen hundred years ago: "Men trust rather to their eyes than to their ears; the effect of precepts, is, therefore, slow and tedious, while that of example is summary and effectual." Says Franklin: "None teaches better than the ant, and she says nothing." "Not the cry" say the Chinese, "but the flight of the wild duck, leads the flock to fly and follow."
"CHRIST NEVER WROTE A TRACT,"
says Horace Mann. "The people look at their pastor six days in the week," says Cecil, "to see what he means on the seventh." Says Dr. Johnson: "Those who attain any excellence commonly spend life in one common pursuit; for excellence is not often gained upon easier grounds," and the examples of a majority of the successful men will show this to be true. It seems to me, in conclusion, that
LIFE IS LIKE THE SYSTEM
upon which gamblers often stake their money. If they lose one, they stake two; if they lose, they stake four; if they lose, they stake eight; if they still lose, they stake sixteen; now if they win, they have, of course, won one more than they have lost altogether. The banker guards against this system by limiting their progression to a certain figure and thus breaking it down. But in the game of life we have no limit put upon our enterprises. We may redouble our efforts after every failure, and we find, upon the first success, that we have, in one stroke of prosperity, more than made ourselves whole for failures which may have extended behind us indefinitely. You cannot fail in life if you will stake an effort on each succeeding attempt twice as great as the effort which lost you your last desire.
man
A combination and a form, indeed,Where every god did seem to set his sealTo give the world assurance of a man.His life was gentle, and the elementsSo mixed in him, that nature might stand upAnd say to all the world "This was a man!"—Shakspeare.
W
hat a piece of worke is a man? How Noble in Reason? how infinite in faculty? in forme and mouing how expresse and admirable? in Action how like an Angel? in apprehension how like a God? the beauty of the world, the Paragon of Animals?" This is the exalted panegyric of the greatest mind so far vouchsafed to our race—this, then, was Shakspeare's ideal of a true man. Says Emerson: "O rich and various man! thou palace of sight and sound, carrying in thy senses the morning and the night, and the unfathomable galaxy; in thy brain the geometry of the city of God; in thy heart the power of love and the realms of right and wrong." "Man was sent into the world to be a growing and exhaustless force," says Chapin; "the world was spread out around him to be seized and conquered. Realms of infinite truth burst open above him, inviting him to to tread those shining coasts along which Newton dropped his plummet, and Herschel sailed,
A COLUMBUS OF THE SKIES."
"Man," says Carlyle, "has reflected his two-fold nature in history. 'He is of earth,' but his thoughts are with the stars. Mean and petty his wants and his desires; yet they serve a soul exalted with grand, glorious aims, with immortal longings, with thoughts which sweep the heavens and 'wander through eternity.' A pigmy standing on the outward crust of this small planet, his far-reaching spirit stretches outward to the infinite, and there finds rest." Then turning to the combined effects of individual lives, the same great writer says: "History is a reflex of this double life. Every epoch has two aspects—one calm, broad and solemn—looking towards eternity; the other agitated, petty, vehement, and confused looking towards time." "Man," says Sir William Hamilton, one of the greatest of true philosophers, "is not an organism: he is an intelligence, served by organs." Says Whately: "The heavens do indeed 'declare the glory of God,' and the human body is 'fearfully and wonderfully made;' but man, considered, not merely as an organized being, but as a rational agent, and as a member of society, is perhaps the most wonderfully contrived, and to us the most interesting, specimen of divine wisdom that we have any knowledge of."
MAN'S FAULTS.
So much in compliment of mankind. Now this same marvelous creature, man, has a critical spirit. He is endued with a quality of progression. The motive power in this progression is dissatisfaction. Let us listen to the sages when they drop eulogy and become out of conceit with themselves.
"MAN IS IMPROVABLE,"
says Horace Mann. "Some think he is only a machine, and that the only difference between a man and a mill is, that one is carried by blood and the other by water." Says Pascal: "What a chimera is man! what a singular phenomenon! what a chaos! what a scene of contrariety! A judge of all things yet a feeble worm; the shrine of truth, yet a mass of doubt and uncertainty; at once the glory and the scorn of the universe. If he boasts, I lower him; if he lowers himself I raise him; either way I contradict him, till he learns he is a monstrous, incomprehensible mystery." "Make yourself an honest man," says Carlyle sarcastically, "and then you may be sure there is one less rascal in the world." This remark sprang, probably, from a reading of
WHATELEY'S COMPARISON
of a rogue with a man of honor: "Other things being equal, an honest man has this advantage over a knave, that he understands more of human nature: for he knows thatonehonest man exists, and concludes that there must be more; and he also knows, if he is not a mere simpleton, that there are some who are knavish. But the knave can seldom be brought to believe in the existence of an honest man. The honest manmaybe deceived in particular persons, but the knave issureto be deceived whenever he comes across an honest man who is not a mere fool." "Man is
TOO NEAR ALL KINDS OF BEASTS—
a fawning dog, a roaring lion, a thieving fox, a robbing wolf, a dissembling crocodile, a treacherous decoy, and a rapacious vulture." This was the poet Cowley's opinion. "Of all the animals" scolds Boileau, "which fly in the air, walk on the ground, or swim in the sea, from Paris to Peru, from Japan to Rome, the most foolish animal, in my opinion, is man." People must be very bad, indeed, who get opinions as low as the two last quoted. That rapacious vulture George Peabody! that dissembling crocodile William Cowper! that robbing wolf Girard! that thieving fox Charles Sumner! that fawning dog Napoleon Bonaparte! and those most foolish animals Louis Agassiz and Isaac Newton! It does not well become the weakest links in a chain to boast that they gauge that chain's strength, for the chain can be greatly strengthened, upon this easy discovery of those weak links, by simply dropping them out of connection.
And now comes the query: "What is man?" He has always been more or less at a loss for some striking and succinct statement of his peculiar characteristics—of the mark that separates him from other animals. Diogenes Laertius says that Plato having defined man to be a two-legged animal without feathers, he (Diogenes) plucked a cock, and, bringing him into the school, said "Here is Plato's man." From this joke there was added to the definition "With broad flat nails." Even this definition is just as faulty, as it does not exclude many species of the monkey. Again it was thought that man was the only being who laughs. Says Addison, poetically: "Man is the merriest species of the creation; all above and below him are serious." But scientists refuse to accept this distinction as accurate. "Man is an animal
THAT COOKS HIS VICTUALS,"
says Burke. "So does the buzzard" (in the sun) say the learned men. "Man uses tools," says another. "So does the beaver—the ourang-outang hurls stones, and fights with clubs," say the scientists. Finally, says Adam Smith, in his "Wealth of Nations:" "Man is an animal that makes bargains; no other animal does this—one dog does not change a bone with another." We must be satisfied with this, I suppose, but it is a very faulty declaration, for I have seen one dog change a bone with another, in which instance a big dog traded with a little dog, and impressed the little dog with the desirability, under the circumstances, of the smaller of two bones! And I am not sure but that
ALL BARGAINS, WHETHER HUMAN OR CANINE,
are of that stripe, wherein the superior of two bone or money getters acquaints the inferior with the good points of a bad bargain. Buffon, at the beginning of his Natural History, is unable, even, to give any line of demarcation between vegetable and animal substances, and perplexes the mind with an infinitude of faulty attempts, in turn showing the weak spot in each. "For man is a plant,"
SAYS PLUTARCH,
"not fixed in the earth nor immovable, but heavenly, whose head, rising, as it were, from a root upwards, is turned towards heaven." "A man ought to carry himself in the world," says Henry Ward Beecher, continuing and building on Plutarch's thought, "as an orange-tree would, if it could walk up and down in the garden,—swinging perfume from every little censer it holds up to the air."
Know then thyself, presume not God to scan;The proper study of mankind is man.
This is the declaration of the great poet Pope, and a glance across the world's literature will show that the mandate was unneeded. For ages before the birth of the celebrated "wasp of Twickenham," mankind had been at study on the subject. "The burden of history" says George Finlayson, "is what man has been; of law, what he does; of physiology, what he is; of ethics, what he ought to be; of revelation, what he shall be." "Man is the product of his own history," says Theodore Parker. "The discoverer finds nothing so grand or tall as himself, nothing so valuable to him. The greatest star is that at the end of the telescope—
THE STAR THAT IS LOOKING, NOT LOOKED AFTER,
nor looked at." "Man is greater than a world, than systems of worlds; there is more mystery in the union of soul with the physical than in the creation of the universe." This sentence is by Henry Giles. To the first portion of it I give unqualified belief. I believe, too, with John Ruskin, that "the basest thought possible concerning man is that he has no spiritual nature; and the foolishest misunderstanding of him possible is, that he has, or should have, no animal nature. For his nature is nobly animal, nobly spiritual—coherently and irrevocably so; neither part of it may, but at its peril, expel, despise, or defy the other." "Man is the metre of all things," says Aristotle,
"THE HAND
is the instrument of instruments, and the mind is the form of forms." The remark of the great Athenian regarding the hand, while no truer than that one touching the mind, is yet easier of demonstration to the unphilosophical reader. For instance, the printers of the finest engravings to this day use the palm of the hand to apply the ink; the type-setting machine is so far a failure for the want of the human fingers; the most perfect performance of music on a machine yet lacks thatsympathyand exception to mathematical rule which the human fingers, highly trained, impart to the keyboard, and the violin, that thing most nearly in communication with the soul of man,—pays no allegiance whatever save to the human hand well practiced in its mastery; the hand skilled in love soothes the aching brow; the whole framework of this instrument, the hand, filled with gold coins, almost without volition spurns the spurious piece; the false bank-note is lifted with suspicion; across the signature the deft fingers run to aid the eye; over the letters the mind of the sightless pushes its loyal touch, and the signal comes faithfully back to the dungeoned intelligence!
OUR OPPORTUNITIES
are the greatest of those of any living beings. It follows, it seems to me, that our responsibilities should be greater, both in justice and in reason. Every opportunity is equivalent to a duty. We owe—with all these miracles of the living world centered and perfected in our bodies,—a duty equally grand and difficult. Let us ennoble ourselves. John Fletcher wrote a beautiful metaphor in very clumsy verse when he said:
Man is his own star, and the soul that canRender an honest and a perfect manCommands all light, all influence, all fate,
Nothing to him falls early, or too late.Our acts our angels are, or good or ill,Our fatal shadows that walk by us still.
HOLY WRIT.
The Lord has well loved man: "He found him in a desert land, and in the waste howling wilderness; he led him about, he instructed him, he kept him as the apple of his eye. As an eagle stirreth up her nest, fluttereth over her young, spreadeth abroad her wings, taketh them, beareth them on her wings, so the Lord alone did lead him." "The Lord hath sought him a man after his own heart, and the Lord hath commanded him to be a captain over his people." "When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars which thou hast ordained, [then] what is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him? For thou hast made him
A LITTLE LOWER THAN THE ANGELS,
and hast crowned him with glory and honor!" "I have set the Lord before me. Because he is at my right hand, I shall not be moved." "Thy rod and thy staff they comfort me." "I have been young, and now am old, yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging bread." "For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night." "For all our days are passed away in thy wrath: we spend our years as a tale that is told." "So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom." "Thy word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path." "He giveth his beloved sleep." "A man's heart deviseth his way, but the Lord directeth his steps." "One event happeneth to them all." "Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was; and the spirit shall turn unto God who gave it."
We perceive, upon a glance at this broad subject, that a book would be better fitted to its treatment than a chapter, and yet a chapter alone will aid in attuning the mind to the nobility of our destiny. A single thought entering the mind at the right time will turn the current of a life. Let us elevate and strengthen our present into the nobler foundation of a happier future on earth and a blissful eternity in heaven. We are endowed with shame. Let it keep us from meriting the stinging epigram: "God made him, and therefore let him pass for a man."
woman
She was a phantom of delightWhen first she gleamed upon my sight.And now I see, with eye serene,The very pulse of the machine;A being breathing thoughtful breath,A traveler betwixt life and death;The reason firm, the temperate will,Endurance, foresight, strength, and skill;A perfect woman, nobly planned,To warm, to comfort, and commandAnd yet a spirit still, and bright,With something of an angel light.—Wordsworth.
M
an is the image and glory of God, but the woman is the glory of the man," says the great Book. This is so true that most of the charities and mercies for which mankind gets credit in his own moral intelligence are inspired by the charitable and merciful attributes so characteristic of true womanhood. Campbell, in the "Pleasures of Hope," speaks thus of the Garden of Paradise:
The world was sad—the garden was a wild,And man, the hermit, sighed, till woman smiled.
And lovely woman has smiled forever. Into the lot of life she has put all that has endeared it or made it tolerable; into the hope of the hereafter she has ever breathed the breath of life and kept it a living force. Besides the charms she has for man as a thing of superexcellent beauty, woman has ever held him in the second greatest debt he owes. She teaches him, not less, a greater debt (to God), and brings him before that Chief Creditor with little thought of her own dues. Upon
A SUBJECT SO PLEASANT TO MAN,
it is not strange that he has spent his days in framing speeches to reward the admirable devotion of woman, and it is pleasant to believe the object of those encomiums has received them as the most desirable form of remuneration. She has listened to his praise with beating heart, and blossomed into greater loveliness. She has had no greed of money, save as it would array her in beauteous raiment, that she might better guard the love she has won; she has had little ambition, save as she might be of service to her mate, whose unquiet soul has never ceased its
PLUNGING INTO THE NIGHT OF DESTINY,
the storm of life. But she has had great powers of love, great powers of sacrifice, great depths of forgiveness, great fountains of tears—those still waters where bathes the human soul and rises clean before God's sight. "Women are the poetry of the world, in the same sense that the stars are the poetry of heaven," says Hargrave; "clear, light-giving, harmonious, they are the terrestrial planets that rule the destinies of mankind." "Man," says Washington Irving, "is the creature of interest and ambition. His nature leads him forth into the struggle and bustle of the world. Love is but the embellishment of his early life, or a song piped in the intervals of his acts. But a woman's whole life is
A HISTORY OF THE AFFECTIONS
the heart is her world; it is there her ambition strives for empire; it is there her avarice seeks for hidden treasures. She sends forth her sympathies on adventure, she embarks her whole soul in the traffic of affection; and, if shipwrecked, her case is hopeless, for it is a bankruptcy of the heart." "O, if the loving, closed heart of a good woman," cries Jean Paul Richter, "Should open before man, how much controlled tenderness, how many veiled sacrifices and dumb virtues, would he see reposing therein!" "Honor to women!" sings his brother-countryman,
SCHILLER;
"they twine and weave the roses of heaven into the life of men; it is they that unite us in the fascinating bonds of love; and, concealed in the modest veil of the graces, they cherish carefully the external fire of delicate feeling with holy hands." "Win her and wear her, if you can," says Shelley; "she is the most delightful of God's creatures—Heaven's best gift—man's joy and pride in prosperity—man's support and comforter in affliction." "Her passions are made of the finest parts of pure love," says Shakspeare. "Her commands are caresses, her menaces are tears," says Rousseau. "She was
LAST AT THE CROSS, EARLIEST AT THE GRAVE,"
says Barrett. "Her errors spring almost always from her faith in the good or her confidence in the true" declares Balzac. "She has more strength in her looks than we have in our laws, and more power by her tears than we have by our arguments," says the Duke of Halifax, a great statesman. "All the reasonings of men are not worth one sentiment of woman," says Voltaire, skeptic in all else. "Women in their nature are much more gay and joyous than men," writes Addison, "whether it be that their blood is more refined, their fibers more delicate, and their animal spirits more light and volatile; or whether, as some have imagined, there may not be a kind of
SEX IN THE VERY SOUL,
I shall not pretend to determine." "It is not strange to me" says Boyle, a good, sensible man, "that persons of the fairer sex should like, in all things about them, that handsomeness for which they find themselves most liked." Man reviles woman for her vanity. At the same time it is the particular delight of the man who will himself wear no decoration to load upon his willing wife the trinkets of his fancy as far as his purse will pay for them. Without woman's almost savage love of display, man would be robbed of nearly all the pleasure which
PERSONAL ORNAMENTS
now give him. He loves woman, just as she is. Just as she is she is much above the level of the thing he would love had he not her to claim his rapt attention. Man smiles at woman's weaknesses, but if he thought of his great meanness of soul when his mercy and fidelity are in the scale against her own, he would look grave and troubled. She dresses with expense and variety, because it is the first ordinance of her master. Her very love of dress is the sign and seal of her intelligence. If it be folly, arraign man at the dock! Says
STAID OLD DR. JOHNSON:
"We see women universally jealous of the reputation of their beauty, and frequently look with contempt on the care with which they study their complexions, endeavor to preserve or supply the bloom of youth, regulate every ornament, twist their hair into curls, and shade their faces from the weather. We recommend the care of their nobler part, and tell them how little addition is made by all their arts to the graces of the mind. But when was it known that female goodness or knowledge was able to attract that officiousness, or inspire that ardor, which beauty produces wherever it appears? And with what hope can we endeavor to persuade the ladies that
THE TIME SPENT AT THE TOILET
is lost in vanity, when they have every moment some new conviction that their interest is more effectually promoted by a ribbon well disposed than by the brightest act of heroic virtue?" Listen to the praise of practical John Ledyard, whose word has the solid ring of fact about it: "I have observed among all nations [that he had seen, the statement not being applicable to a majority of the savages] that the women ornament themselves more than the men; that,
WHEREVER FOUND, THEY ARE THE MOST CIVIL,
kind, obliging, humane, tender beings; that they are ever inclined to be gay and cheerful, timorous and modest. They do not hesitate, like man, to perform a hospitable or generous action; not haughty, nor arrogant, nor supercilious, but full of courtesy and fond of society; industrious, economical, ingenuous; more liable, in general, to err than man; but, in general, also more virtuous, and performing more good actions than he. I never addressed myself in the language of decency and friendship to a woman, whether civilized or savage, without receiving
A DECENT AND FRIENDLY ANSWER.
With men it has often been otherwise. In wandering over the plains of inhospitable Denmark, through honest Sweden, frozen Lapland, rude and churlish Finland, unprincipled Russia, and the widespread regions of the wandering Tartar, if hungry, dry, cold, wet, or sick, woman has ever been friendly to me, and uniformly so: and, to add to this virtue, so worthy of the appellation of benevolence, these actions have been performed in so free and so kind a manner, that, if I was dry, I drank the sweet draught, and, if hungry, ate the coarse morsel with a double relish." Woman may read
THIS CANDID TESTIMONY
with a blush of gratification, for there breathes no flattery in it—only the serious observations of an old man bent on getting knowledge by personal experience. "A man may flatter himself as he pleases," says Sir Richard Steele, "but he will find that the women have more understanding in their own affairs than we have." Man suffers in his loves for woman. She often casts him on the rocks like an angry unfeeling sea, but when, at last she has smiled upon him, he becomes a broader, better man. Without the companionship of woman, man is truly half-made up. He loses his self-esteem, he lives without laws, without churches, without hospitals.
THE WESTERN WILDS,
during the early period of their settlement by Americans, have furnished us with accurate views of society without women. And what has that society been? More a den of wild beasts than a congregation of the most reasoning of God's creatures! There we find men living in constant suspicion of their comrades, in constant danger of hazarding their lives for some sentimental canon of personal vanity that, if they were boys in civilized society, would be flogged out of their moral code.
THE WHOLE HISTORY OF HUMAN SICKNESS
is a continuous outcry of the goodness of woman. Wherever the red hand of war has risen to smite, there the white hand of woman has hastened to soothe. After the roar of the conflagration and amidst the ruins piled up by the earthquake ever has that sweet minister sought out the hungry and succored the suffering.
CRITICISM OUT OF PLACE.
One does not feel that he can do any good by criticising woman. We love fruit that is perfect. We do not describe, and we would have little thanks for a description of, those specimens of cherries, strawberries, or grapes which fail to realize our anticipations of a delightful product of the orchard, the garden, or the vineyard. But I have perhaps, by showing the respect in which men of intellect and honor hold a good woman, given needed encouragement to patient hearts, and testified my own humble regard for womanhood.
father
His hair just grizzled,As in a green old age.—Dryden.
T
he wordpapa, I believe, goes back, just as it is, through all the languages, to the Sanscrit, and even beyond to the unknown Aryan, the stock of our civilized tongues. The Pope ispapa, kind father, in Italian. How his name ever came to be twisted into the ugly sound we hear in English is a problem, for the difference on the feelings between the sounds of Pope, andpapa, kind father, cannot well be exaggerated. The kind father of a good man occupies an enviable place in that man's thoughts. It is no passing admiration; that father is no hero of to-day no study of to-morrow, no dim recollection when the future shall have come—but an active exemplar, an honored memory, a potent spur and stay combined—a spur to urge to all a man should do; a stay to curb unwisdom's flying feet. That father has toiled in weariness that his son might follow an easier path of life. Perhaps you now tread that path. How carefully should your steps be taken; how earnestly you should climb to reach the round which meets your self-denying parent's gaze! With him there have come few paroxysms of delight in his labor. He has not been endowed with that mysterious joy your mother has felt in all your existence. He has delighted in you because he hoped you would bring honor to his house; he would rather you had not lived than to see you in a prisoner's cell—far rather. This could not be said of your mother. She would be contented that you had lived at all, that you had looked into her eyes and laughed. Your father has taken care of you, dutifully. Repay him in kindness. "Honor thy father and thy mother, that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee." This was graven by the Lord in the marble tablets on Sinai, and has been in turn graven on the countless millions of hearts that have beaten "their short funeral marches" since that awful hour.
ALL SOCIETY
has at one time or another rested on the sustaining power of the father. The patriarch, in ancient times, protected and sustained his dependents, and, in return, received their entire allegiance, wielding over them the power of life and death, and thus initiating the first form of human government. Next came the cities where the government was formed by all the fathers together in council, and our village and city legislators are, to this day, called "the city fathers," although the reverence in which so august a body was once held has departed with the silent flight of the dignity of our modern convocations. Some one has said of
A FINE AND HONORABLE OLD MAN,
that he is in the childhood of immortality. "One's age should be tranquil," says Dr. Arnold, "as one's childhood should be playful; hard work at either extremity of human existence, seems to me out of place; the morning and the evening should be alike cool and peaceful; at midday the sun may burn, and men may labor under it." See to it, if it be within your power, that your father has the rest due to the evening of his days. Let him sit in the cool. Let him listen to the voices of his night—the crickets that cry out his mortality and the nightingales that sing of Paradise!
"GRAY HAIRS
seem to fancy," says Richter, "like the light of a soft moon silvering over the evening of life." "Old age," says Madame Swetchine, "is not one of the beauties of creation, but it is one of its harmonies. The law of contrasts is one of the laws of beauty. Shadows give light its worth; sternness enchances mildness; solemnity splendor."
EXPERIENCE.
"Old age was naturally more honored," says Joubert, "in times when people could not know much more than what they had seen." There are still many avenues of learning in which practical experience seems to be paramount in value. In business its great worth is never underestimated. You have heard of the partnership built on a contribution by one firm-member of the money, and by the other of the experience; and of the dissolution of that firm, leaving the one who put in the money with all the experience, and the one who put in the experience with all the money! The practices of law and medicine are famous for the need of age, which they harness anew with the labors and exertions ordinarily demanded of youth. "Tell me," says Shakerly Marmion, "what you find better or more honorable than age. Is not wisdom entailed upon it?
TAKE THE PRE-EMINENCE OF IT IN EVERYTHING—
in an old friend, in old wine, in an old pedigree." "I venerate old age," says the great and good poet Longfellow; "and I love not the man who can look without emotion upon the sunset of life, when the dusk of evening begins to gather over the watery eye, and the shadows of twilight grow broader and deeper upon the understanding." "It is only necessary to grow old to become more indulgent," writes Goethe; "I see no fault committed that I have not committed myself." "An aged Christian," says Chapin, beautifully enlarging on Goldsmith's and Dr. Donne's ideas, "with the snow of time on his head, may remind us that those points of earth are whitest which are nearest heaven."
OLD AGE
OLD AGE
"Age is the outer shore against which dashes an eternity."
"LIKE A MORNING DREAM,"
again says Richter, "life becomes more and more bright the longer we live, and the reason of everything appears more clear. What has puzzled us before seems less mysterious, and the crooked paths look straighter as we approach the end." "Time has laid his hand upon my heart gently," says Longfellow, "not smiting it; but
AS A HARPER LAYS HIS OPEN PALM
upon his harp, to deaden its vibrations." "I think that to have known one good old man," George William Curtis says, "one man who, through the chances and mischances of a long life, has carried his heart in his hand, like a palm branch, waving all discords into peace—helps our faith in God, in ourselves, and in each other more than many sermons." "He that would pass the declining years of his life with honor and comfort," says Addison, with fine opposition, "should, when young, consider that he may one day become old, and remember, when he is old, that he has once been young." On the principle that blessings brighten as they take their flight we come to love the sunshine and the birds and all God's glorious works just as we grow old.
"IF WE NEVER CARED FOR LITTLE CHILDREN BEFORE"
says Lord Lytton, "we delight to see them roll on the grass over which we hobble. The grandsire turns wearily from his middle-aged, care-worn son, to listen with infant laugh to the prattle of an infant grandchild. It is the old who plant young trees; it is the old who are most saddened by the autumn, and feel most delight in the returning spring." "Winter," says Richter, "which strips the leaves from around us, makes us see the distant regions they formerly concealed; so does old age rob us of our enjoyments, only to enlarge the prospect of eternity before us." Seneca says that there is nothing more disgraceful than that an old man should have nothing to produce as a proof that he has lived long except his years. I love Longfellow's picture of
THE VILLAGE BLACKSMITH,
the mighty man. It has been set to one of the best musical accompaniments that I have ever heard. When the verses below are reached, the key is changed to one where the sadness intensifies, until the honest old heart hears the "mother's voice singing in Paradise:"
He goes on Sunday to the church;And sits among his boys;He hears the parson pray and preach,He hears his daughter's voice,Singing in the village choir,And it makes his heart rejoice.It sounds to him like her mother's voice,Singing in Paradise;He needs must think of her once more,How in the grave she lies;And with his hard, rough hand he wipesA tear out of his eyes.
I wish, instead of merely printing these simple words, I could breathe them out to you, as some great tenor or baritone like Sims Reeves or Santley sings them—there is such a world of human life and feeling hidden there, ready to spring forth with the touch of sympathetic sounds!
NOTHING BECOMES A YOUNG MAN SO MUCH
as a respectful demeanor toward a reverend man. Nothing lowers a man so much as flippant speech concerning his elders. The young man with the most dignity has the most deference for age. He takes sincere delight in bowing before ripe years and wisdom. Alas! how sad that ever age should come to one who is not fitted for its honors!
I have known a son to thwart every dream of his father. I have seen the parent, struggling with adversity, yet succeed in opening before the child a career of honor and comfort; and I have seen the son clutch those opportunities as a highwayman seizes upon the wayfarer, and throttle them in the dust and ashes of failure and disgrace. How sad the picture!
A BRIGHTER VIEW.
I have seen a parent toil for years, carrying to his cottage the wages which should support his son in seven long years of careful education. I have watched that son in his ceaseless studies and found he thought only of gladdening his father's heart. I have seen him graduate second in a class of one hundred and fifteen, and then after two years of additional study, first in a body of eighty young men, each of whom was a scholar. The best men of a great city have given that young man encouragement. Their homes and their wives and their daughters have smiled at his approach, and his course has been upward without a fall, and with few pauses for rest. Has he forgotten his poor father? No. He still lives in the cottage, and will make the small house with a great man in it more hospitable and more honorable than a wide door that swings open to a narrow soul. How pleasant the picture!
picture
mother
A mother is a mother still,The holiest thing alive.—Coleridge.Not learned save in gracious household ways,Not perfect, nay, but full of tender wants,No angel, but a dearer being, all diptIn angel instincts, breathing Paradise.Who looked all native to her place, and yetOn tiptoe seemed to touch upon a sphereToo gross to tread, and all male minds perforceSwayed to her from their orbits as they moved,And girdled her with music. Happy heWith such a mother! faith in womankindBeats with his blood.—Tennyson.