W
hatever the number of a man's friends" says Lord Lytton, "there are times in his life when he has one too few." "Life," says Sydney Smith, "is to be fortified by many friendships." Says Bishop Hare: "Friendship is love without its flowers or veil." "A faithful friend is the true image of the Deity," said Napoleon, who never believed he had a true friend not a born fool. "A friend loveth at all times," says the Bible. Says Herr Gotthold: "with a clear sky, a bright sun, and a gentle breeze, you will have friends in plenty, but let fortune frown and the firmament be overcast, and then your friends will prove
LIKE THE STRINGS OF THE LUTE,
of which you will tighten ten before you find one that will bear the stretch and keep the pitch." "What an argument in favor of social connections," says Lord Greville, "is the observation that by communicating our grief we have less, and by communicating our pleasures we have more." Horace Walpole has given clear expression to one of the chief pleasures of friendship:
"OLD FRIENDS
are the great blessings of one's latter years. Half a word conveys one's meaning. They have memory of the same events, and have the same mode of thinking. I have young relations that may grow upon me, for my nature is affectionate, but can they grow old friends? My age forbids that. Still less can they grow companions. Is it friendship to explain half one says? One must relate the history of one's memory and ideas; and what is that to the young but old stories?" "Fast won, fast lost," says Shakspeare. Says Dr. Johnson: "If a man does not make new acquaintances as he advances through life, he will soon find himself left alone. A man should keep his friendships in constant repair!"
ALL THROUGH THE WRITINGS OF THE SAGES
on this subject there is a tinge of melancholy. "There are no friends!" says Aristotle. "There have been fewer friends on earth than Kings," says the poet Cowley. Why is this? Let us peer into the solemn question. The ideal of true manhood is easily formulated. Alas! what an abyss separates a man's daily life, as it is, from that high quality he has pictured in his imagination. We are all the time reaching for
THINGS WE DO NOT UNDERSTAND,
and could not assimilate with if they were placed at our disposal. In this way a weary, well-read novel-reader, worn out in all lines of light letters, enters a circulating library, and queruously asks: "Have you any new books?" She expects a negative answer, and in that case would suffer a keen disappointment. The man says "Yes," and brings out several new books. Every one of these is new in every sense. It may be the most trivial set of pages yet printed in this era of scribblers, or, yet, it may be a great work, worthy of the attention of the thoughtful, and the commendation of the pure in heart. Nobody can tell. Then, illogically, she asks: "Is this good?" or "Is that good?" and upon being reminded that she wanted something new or nothing, she asks for something by May Agnes Fleming, or Mary Jane Holmes, and goes off happy, to re-read those expressions which have so well pleased her in the past.
I think I espy in this exhibition of the working of the mind in a rude and unsatisfactory state
A GENERAL PRINCIPLE,
just as potent in the mighty brain of Sir Isaac Newton or of Louis Agassiz. Man idealizes the affair of friendship. He forgets whether he really wants it or not, and then persistently inquires for it. It is not in the library of possibilities. He therefore goes off angry and disappointed. Could he get a glimpse at it, I am afraid he would walk away satisfied with something more nearly en rapport with his nature and his habits. Let us view this golden word friendship as man idealizes it: Being a changeable thing, he views friendship (of which he knows nothing), entirely by comparison with something of which in its turn he knows but little. This something is always a mother's love for her son, notorious as the strongest affection shown by our species. He therefore doubles up this marvelous fact of a mother's love, and creates in his imagination a reciprocatory agency co-respondent to this mother's love. Now, with this magnificent product of invention, he goes forth into the world, seeking for some man upon whom he may bestow a mother's love (of which the "bestower" is entirely incapable), and who will, in payment, respond with a mother's love (of which that man would, of course, be also incapable). In the jargon of electricity a positive and a negative are absolutely necessary to electric energy.
A MOTHER'S LOVE
is a deplorably one-sided action, but it is the highest and noblest of the faculties of affection. Anything beyond it is ideal, made up of two positives, and a thousand years ahead of us. Is it any wonder that when man makes his experiments with the mother's love which he supposes himself capable of bestowing that a universal wail arises, or that Shakspeare, the greatest of mortal minds, brought in those awful verdicts against mankind—"Lear" and "Timon of Athens"?
I THINK THAT IS WHY
the very deepest philosophers grow sad when they touch the question of friendship. The problem is itself the saddest of commentaries upon the weakness of our higher faculties. Separate man from his wife and family and view him in his relations to other persons similarly placed, and the result is not only unsatisfactory, but distressing to a mind anxious to hold to a good opinion of humanity. Put to the right test the quality of human friendship is found to be highly strained—to be liable to curdle in the first thundershower—to sour upon the sensitive stomach. We at once behold mankind forced to flee to God's kind institution of the family and the home to escape a desolation of the heart which follows fruitless efforts to kindle a blaze out of the damp driftwood of life's general associations.
Now, what is possible? Spot friendship is possible, and delightful. "To-morrow do thy worst, for I have lived to-day." Man is a social animal. He "gregates," he flocks. Of nothing am I fonder than the sparkle of a friend's eye, and the gabble of half an hour, or three hours. But I ought not to build on any future gabbles, for, to-morrow, lo! my friend may have discovered my ignoble reality, whereas he has heretofore been shaking hands with my noble ideality.
ANOTHER THING
should always be considered: "Kindred weaknesses" says Bovee, "induce friendships as often as kindred virtues." Here is Herder's beautiful view: "As the shadow in early morning, is friendship with the wicked; it dwindles hour by hour. But friendship with the good increases, like the evening shadows, till the sun of life sets." "People young, and raw, and soft-natured," says South, "think it an easy thing to gain love, and reckon their own friendships a sure price of any man's: but when experience shall have shown them the hardness of most hearts, the hollowness of others, and the baseness and ingratitude of almost all, they will then find that
A TRUE FRIEND IS THE GIFT OF GOD,
and that He only who made hearts can unite them." Says the wise Lord Bacon: "It is a good discretion not to make too much of any man at the first; because one cannot hold out that proportion," and that is so, for some of the strongest bonds of friendship ever felt have been woven without thought of pleasure on either side at the commencement.
"Saul and Jonathan were lovely and pleasant in their lives, and in their death they were not divided." "I am distressed for thee, my brother, Jonathan: very pleasant hast thou been unto me: thy love to me was wonderful, passing the love of woman."
"Very few friends," says Sydney Smith, "will bear to be told of their faults; and, if done at all, it must be done with infinite management and delicacy; for if you indulge often in this practice, men think you hate, and avoid you. If the evil is not very alarming, it is better, indeed, to let it alone, and not to turn friendship into a system of lawful and unpunishable impertinence. I am for frank explanations with friends in cases of affront. They sometimes
SAVE A PERISHING FRIENDSHIP,
and even place it on a firmer basis than at first; but secret discontent must always end badly."
Let us love our friends for what they are to-day—not for what they will be when we come to make unreasonable demands on them. The sun is beautiful and delightful. It will not shine for us in the night nor, in the daytime shine for us alone. We were bereft of our minds did we, therefore, enter a cave and forswear all further pleasure in its genial rays.
IT IS EASIER TO RAIL
against friendship than to enact our parts in that drama of life which is to elevate the term. Thus we hear Goldsmith cry—
What is friendship but a name,A charm that lulls to sleep,A shade that follows wealth or fame,And leaves the wretch to weep.
Yet this same Goldsmith was a burden on his friends. He did his duty to posterity, in leaving them beautiful literature and song, but to his own associates he was unsparing in his good-natured demands. It is safe to say that he who tries to ennoble friendship is best worthy of the name of friend, and he who belittles it, has fewer claims to man's humanity. Everytime we deny the existence of a satisfying, friendship, we proclaim aloud our own baseness. Let us avoid it.
envy
Envy will merit as its shade pursue,But, like a shadow, proves the substance true.
Pope.—Essay on Criticism.
N
o passion has been more universally recognized than envy as the basest of all the traits that undermine the nobility of man; and yet there is no obnoxious quality so universal in men's characters. In the life of the good man it reminds one of the mice, in our houses, which eat their way to our attention and their own destruction; for there are few men who have looked into their own hearts who have not seen the small but odious traces of this gnawing evil. Again, the mind of the bad man, who has given himself entirely up to envy, is
A WOLF'S DEN—
a howling pandemonium, where no quarter is given, and where the merits of the deserving rather than the lapses of the blameworthy are torn as the most toothsome morsel in a furious feast. The Bible says that envy is the rottenness of the bones, meaning that utter corruption which has finally reached the framework of the structure. Society as now organized is really making progress toward the extinction of this hideous blemish. When, as in Æsop's fables,
A TAILLESS FOX
is found advocating the disuse of tails, he is at once suspected, and his influence greatly limited. For the world is waking up to the meanness of envy. The world, in its better moments, is rising above it. It is one of our principal duties, on entering the Temple of Life, to search our hearts for the little fox with the sharp tooth. When we find ourselves about to enter upon a course of action, either momentary or long continuous, which will be adverse to another of our fellow-creatures, let us ask: "Is there anything of envy in this act?" If there be, let us refrain from acting—the soul is not yet pure, the body fragrant.
Let us see how ignorant this contemptible quality of envy becomes under the lenses of practical life. "Base envy withers at another's joy." What has caused it? In nine cases out of every ten, it is simply the one-sided view of an ignorant mind, which sees only the bare result of unceasing efforts. Envy sees Fame on the peak. Envy therefore hates Fame, and declares that there are no crags, or rifts, or snows, or storms on the way up—that, the path is an easy one, over which all who ever went that way traveled in preference to all other routes!
I lay upon a boarding-house bed day after day, one summer, sick of a fever. On the one side, a building was going up, and workmen filled the air with mighty din. On the other side, a young man sang
"DO, HOORAY, ME, FAH, SOLE, LAH, SE, DO!"
I thought: "The one will be a grand house, and the other will be a great tenor, but oh the way is long. The feet grow weary!"
It has often seemed to me that this was my first true view of life, and nowadays, when—I am tired, especially,—I do not envy the truly great in any avenue of distinction. The walker has walked, the builder has groaned, the fighter has fought, the scribe has scribbled, the statesman has lied and betrayed. Any one of them will tell you his pay has been sadly inadequate.
TAKE A MAN LIKE THEIRS.
Born in an age still drunk with the glory of Napoleon, but himself infused with ideas of popular liberty; chained to the chariot of circumstances, and made to swell the sawdust-magnificence of unpopular kings and the ridiculous success of Napoleon III., the greatest impostor of all history, this Marie Joseph Louis Adolphe Thiers went through a life the bare retrospect of which would actually tire the mind. In his old age this little lover and critic of greatness—this man who could show the weaknesses of Napoleon Bonaparte so clearly that one would feel the critic must be the superior of Napoleon—this squeak-voiced orator, must have felt that whatever greatness might come to him in history was well-earned—that the way had indeed been long!
THE SAME OF GLADSTONE.
Who in his sane mind would be Gladstone living any more than Homer living? Of course, he survives those horrible crises in which public duty has made him the most pitiable object, and in the most dreadful complication of great interests shines forth as Venus fresh-lighted. But I would not have Gladstone's fame for the boon of rest eternal, from fear that his retrospect of inconsistency and apostacy would be its accompaniment, its deeper shadow. Yet who shall blame Gladstone? He was the executor and administrator of the policy of a parvenu Jew, one of the very bad men of the earth. He
REAPED ANOTHER MAN'S WHIRLWINDS.
Forced into geographical relations with the Irish, an unwarlike people with indomitable tongues, England has in the middle ages, naturally done to this unwarlike people just what a warlike people would do in the middle ages—taken everything. With painful volubility the unwarlike people has for centuries sounded its fate over the world, touching the heart of Gladstone and other good Englishmen, and tempting him and them to many struggles. Behold him at the next step, then, in the role of warring upon the unwarlike, of oppressing the oppressed, of answering an Irish clack with a British click! Is it not pitiful? Gladstone fell ill from it. He paid there and then for his illustrious name. And, next, of those brave Boers! God nerved their quick muscles and darted straight their wonderful eye; and when the single hand rose against the hundred hands of British Briarius they were not forsaken. Oh! how clearly that question seemed to an American! No geographical necessity was there—no race hatred, no hotbed to foment conspiracy against the sister country England. The independence of those Boers, if they desired it, ought to have been fought for by England, by Gladstone, willingly, irresistibly—in the very name of England's own love of liberty for herself. And finally Gladstone so saw it.
What a puzzle are those Hibernians!
HOW BITING THE WITTICISM OF CHIN LAN PIN,
the Chinese Ambassador to the United States, that they are able to govern every other country save their own! Behold a statesman like Gladstone, forced to change his policy toward them the moment he has the responsibility of governing them! Oh! what an opportunity for the little foxes! How easily Envy spears him with its jest! How truly Envy shines with the wings of that fly that passes all the sounder parts of a man's body to dwell upon the sores! In this rapid glance across two of the trials of a great man, across the path up to the peak where one clambering must bind himself with strong ropes to his companions, that if one sink into a snow-covered abyss the others may bring him forth—we get, perhaps, a truer view of
THE MEANESS OF ENVY.
Let us look at Gladstone as the great, wise, good, learned man he is, whose wreath of laurel covers a crown of thorns. And if we find an associate making those fatiguing efforts that ever precede the recognition of this cold world, let us glance rather at his efforts than at his fame, that no rust may gather on the brightness of our eye, and no withering cloud shut out the sunlight from our spirits.
I CANNOT CLOSE THIS CHAPTER
without imploring the reader to exterminate this characteristic of envy altogether. Because it is at first so little and so ridiculous, envy often escapes the hand of discipline. Yet the homely saying is a true one that "they which play with the devil's rattles will be brought by degrees to wield his sword," and the force of a nature given up to envy is truly a two-edged sword from the bottomless pit, cutting both the fiend who smites and the victim who smarts.
contentment
Mrs. Lofty keeps a carriage—So do I.She has dappled grays to draw it—None have I.—Alma Calder.
U
nquestionably, the baby-carriage of the poet, with contentment, was a far richer establishment than the gilded barouche and the dappled grays of childless Mrs. Lofty. Riches are often childless; poverty is often contented. Happiness is a golden spell inwoven with most of our lives at certain times, whether we be rich or poor. The first surprise of the newly-rich comes in the non-discovery of additional happiness. Additional cares and duties come thickly enough. The greed of the envious, and the demands of the poor who are likewise needy in thoughtfulness for their more fortunate neighbors, fall upon the wealthy like a mist. There is no escaping it. As James Russell Lowell says of a Scotch fog—an umbrella will afford no protection. They must give all, or accept the hatred of those who believe it to be easier to give than to receive. "Contentment is natural wealth," says Socrates; "luxury is artificial poverty." Contentment is generally a sign of a high class of character. "If two angels were sent down," says John Newton, "one to conduct an empire and the other to sweep a street, they would feel no inclination to change employments."
HUMAN GREATNESS
is at best such a little thing that wise men do not lament its absence in their own persons. Our main pleasures are free to rich as well as poor. What sight is so grand as the sun? What pleasure is greater than to breathe? What fluid is more grateful for all purposes than water? What music is sweeter than the singing of birds, the ringing of free school bells and the hum of machinery? The extra pleasures which the rich man, if he be foolish, tries to buy, almost invariably
END IN HIS EARLY DEATH,
and in his hatred of the whole world. Those noble men of wealth who gain the plaudits of their fellows, have earned those plaudits just as poor men would earn them—by service to their fellow-creatures. Man is not constituted so that he can "take his ease" and be happy. The prisoner in solitary confinement is forced to take his ease, and we are told that he suffers terribly under the ordeal. Of course you have heard of
THE PRISONER IN THE DARK DUNGEON
who had three pins, and who gave himself employment by throwing them into the air and then beginning the long search which should finally secure them. Sometimes a pin would be hidden for years in a crevice. In this way the prisoner preserved his mind from utter decay, and was almost happy—nay, was really happy when his arduous labor would result in the discovery of all three of the objects of his pitiful quest. Instances like this should impress upon us the fact that the principal sum of our happiness is inalienable. We cannot, in health, possibly lose it. The hale pauper is far better off than the invalid Duke. We breathe and eat and see and hear with ease. All of those offices of the body are unquestionably delightful, as is proven by the relative view we get when we are ill and can neither breathe nor eat nor see nor hear without great suffering. "There is scarce any lot so low," says Sterne, "but there is something in it to satisfy the man whom it has befallen." The reason of this lies in this same fact that when the tree of happiness loses superfluous wealth, it but loses its foliage.
THE POOR MAN CARRIES INTO HIS COTTAGE
all the great and marvelous blessings of life. He leaves outside only a lot of artificialities, the most of which are so-called pleasures, but are really miseries. If we cannot be contented without these artificialities, we certainly would not be satisfied with an addition so unimportant. "A tub was large enough for Diogenes," says Colton; "but a world was too little for Alexander." Alexander valued the true blessings of life as nothing, and the power of life and death over others as everything. His disappointment and the contentment of Diogenes, who viewed things more correctly, are matters of tradition. "Contentment," says Fuller, "consisteth not in adding more fuel, but
IN TAKING AWAY SOME FIRE."
Therefore, if you are spending so much money that you need more income, take away some of the fire. If you reduce your expenses two dollars a week, you have added nearly eighteen hundred dollars to your account in fifteen years. If you wear your boots one month after you could well persuade yourself to have a new pair, your new ones will not wear out a month sooner for that reason!
GOOD FORTUNE OF OUR LITTLE EGOTISMS.
We are all, fortunately, greatly disposed to contentment with our lot. We do not seem to realize it, but the importance of the pleasures of life which cannot be bartered in, has its noticeable effect on the mind. Horace remarked this ages ago, and Dr. Johnson has thus translated the thoughts hinging upon it: "Howsoever every man may complain occasionally," says he, "of the hardships of his condition, he is seldom willing to change it for any other on the same level. Whether it be that he who follows an employment, chose it at first on account of its suitableness to his inclination; or that when accident, or the determination of others, have pleased him in a particular station, he, by endeavoring to reconcile himself to it, gets the custom of viewing it only on the fairest side; or whether every man thinks that class to which he belongs the most illustrious, merely
BECAUSE HE HAS HONORED IT WITH HIS NAME—
it is certain that, whatever be the reason, most men have a very strong and active prejudice, in favor of their own vocation, always working upon their minds and influencing their action." Let us be thankful for that laughable egotism which is born with us, and within us, and which, in this natural and unobtrusive affair of contentment, becomes a true anchor, holding us inside the peaceful haven.
ambition
Marble may rise from crystal waters spannedBy other marbles: founts may plash on stone,And fashionably-branched trees may standAs thieves upon a scaffold. Yet, how cold!How cold!
W
e are made up of elements. These elements should be well balanced. The delicacy of equilibrium is what makes the perfect man, or, rather, the honorable man. Too much avarice makes a contemptibly mean man; not enough makes a foolish spendthrift, who is always appealing to his friends for help. Too much bravery in man makes a bully; not enough a coward. Too much speech in man makes a bore; not enough a "stick." Too much hope in man makes a speculator and a gambler; not enough, a hermit and a man-hater. So of ambition. It is a flame to be guarded—a willing slave, an unpitying master. In its full sway it is the very essence of self-conceit and selfishness,—two traits, a little of which goes a good way. You know that you do not put much blueing into a washtub full of water. Well, use ambition in the same sparing way. If you spill it in using it, you will have a difficult affair on your hands. It may be just possible, of course, that you have clothes to wash, so to speak, which require the whole box or bottle. If so, your chance of happiness is not great.
"HE WHO SURPASSES OR SUBDUES MANKIND,"
says Byron, "must look down on the hate of those below." "Who soars too near the sun, with golden wings, melts them," says Shakspeare. We all have upon us golden wings of happiness. Let us not soar near the sun. "Fling away ambition," mourns old Cardinal Wolsely in Henry VIII; "by that sin fell the angels; how can man, then, the image of his Maker, hope to win by it?" "It often puts men upon doing the meanest offices," says Swift, "as climbing is performed in the same posture with creeping." It has been aptly called by Sir William Davenant,
"THE MIND'S IMMODESTY."
Watch this petty man. He is consumed by a desire to be a little higher than he now is. He is driver on a street car, in a city. Unconsciously, he is an excellent driver. He has not become so by the silent care which befits a real climber. No! he was born a horseman. But he was also born ambitious. If he were private secretary to the President, he would want to be President, simply because his attention would be more closely directed to the Chief Magistracy than elsewhere.
BEHOLD HIM INSTALLED AS CONDUCTOR.
He rings the bell incessantly for a milk-wagon to get out of the road. The passengers expostulate. One of them is drunk, therefore extra-expostulatory. Our conductor beholds the moment arrived when he must "bounce" the passenger. The passenger is landed free on track, with only the conductor's badge in his mind, which he reports to the office. The next day the conductor tells a passenger to get his feet off that seat, or he will put him off. In a dispute which follows, the conductor loses a chance to get across a swinging-bridge, and a passenger who has thus missed a train, gets angry and reports the conductor. The driver is quietly asked about our friend, and our friend is thrown out of his place like a shot out of a gun. He is too proud to drive again, and takes a trip into the country for his health. This homely drama is played in all the hotels where head-waiters are employed, in all the departments of business where head-clerks are needed; in all the great stores where floor-walkers "strut their brief hour,"—everywhere that gives an opportunity for little Envy to peep, from
THE RIDICULOUS AMBUSCADE
of some incompetent subordinate, out upon the goings and comings of unsuspecting Merit. "There is a native baseness," says Simms, "in the ambition which seeks beyond its desert, that never shows more conspicuously than when, no matter how, it temporarily gains its object." So, to me, there has always seemed a real baseness in these attempts of unfit people, who have only their self-conceit for training and their cheek for capital. Half our failures in business come from men attempting something they know nothing about. A printer will open a drug store, and a country dry goods merchant will start a daily paper in a city! "Alas!" says Young, "ambition makes my little less."
Once in a while there is born, in every State, a soul which is to be "like a star and dwell apart." It is to be gifted with qualities of an exalted character. But it is also to be lashed with the scourge of ambition. It is to stand, as William Penn said,
"THE TALLEST TREE,
therefore the most in the power of the blasts of fortune." How little should we desire the dizzy niche in which it seats itself. Our little heads would swim in the sickness of our unfamiliarity. We would fall. "Remarkable places," said Madame Necker, "are like the summits of rocks; eagles and reptiles only can get there." Napoleon, possibly, never had a true friend in his life. He certainly never deserved one. Each year saw him surrounded by new associates, whom he meant to sacrifice, if he could.
UPON THE BLOODY FIELD OF ASPERN AND ESSLING,
he offered up Marshal Lannes. He was forced to stand by that brave dying man and listen to his awful reproaches. So, again, in the terrible carnage of Spain at Eylau, at Borodino, Lutzen, Bautzen, Dresden, Leipsic, Hanau, everywhere, he was compelled to hear the outspoken protests of the men who had held the ladder for him—to stamp his foot at the constant declarations of "Dukes," "Princes," and "Kings," that he was a monster whose thirst demanded only human blood. At last, the whole world cried out that it had had
"ENOUGH OF BONAPARTE!"
The expression became a war-cry, and the world escaped from the baleful sceptre under whose shadow it had too long suspired. "What millions died that Cæsar might be great!" cries Campbell. "None think the great unhappy but the great," says Young. They deserve their unhappiness. It is the mess of pottage to obtain which they have sold everything. Fame has always seemed to the philosopher like some mountain in a polar clime—cold, lonesome, inhospitable.
Tall mountains meet, and giddy greetThe clouds in their exalted homes;What may they show, save ice and snow,Unto the fleets that pass their domes?Their crests are bold with solar gold:Their charming cliffs enchant the eye;Yet earth shows not more dreary spotThan toilers in their heights descry.
There points a peak which mortals seek—Fraught are its crags with human woes;Shrill through its fasts shriek envy-blasts—Forever drift hate's blinding snows.Its towering height beams with a light—The wondrous blaze of Glory's orb;Still those who gaze feel most the rays,While they who climb no warmth absorb.Contentment creeps—Renown climbs steepsWhere consummations ne'er appease;Below, how oft, when Care's aloft,Unhappiness, distrusting, flees.
picture
Anchor
In ancient times the sacred plough employedThe kings and awful fathers of mankind.
A
work of this character—a book for the home—would be manifestly halt without some consideration of that grand subject, Agriculture,—the tilling of the continents of this wide earth, to whose fruitfulness the oceans apply their beneficent offices; to whose generosity the sun lends his quickening rays of brightness and beauty. "The awful fathers of mankind" to-day pay attention to the "sacred plough" as in ancient days, aye, thousands of times as much attention! The tribes which then wandered upon the globe have now increased until Nature must needs groan with the load of her gifts to sustain them, and the rulers must scan the sky, and send the telegraph out-riding the storms, to warn the husbandman that danger to his crops approaches—danger, which if not averted, were more deadly than the hatred of an enemy on a foreign strand.
The magnificent, conservative forces of our Republic live upon its farms. There is our safety in the hour of trial! Rome fell because
HER LOAFERS AND CITYITES
were the only voters. They had no homes to protect—they had only votes tosell. But here, with our mighty experiment in human government, we have an irresistible power, the elements of which are straight-thinking men, who want only the right to prevail, and who have wheat and corn to sell, but absolutely no votes! God be thanked for this! When the torch of Communism shall
BURN THE SENATE HOUSE
in the city, the swords which were yesterday plow-shares will surround the glaring pile, and steadfastly blot out of existence the conspiracy of the beer-saloon and the "dead-fall;" when the bayonet of the gaudy foreigner shall glisten on our coasts, the ranks of farmers will hurry, side by side with the metropolitans, to chase the adventurers back into the seas.
"Agriculture," says Zenophon, "for an honorable and high minded man, is the best of all occupations and arts by which men obtain the means of living." How true this is! One would think
"BUSINESS"
in the days of the Greek were carried on just as it is now—the concourse of a pack of men turned wolves, hungry for trade, and devouring each other in the absence of common sustenance. To succeed in business in a city in this epoch, and to be at the same time a high-minded and honorable man, is very rare—is usually the result of employing lieutenants to do the "business," and keeping the "dirty work" away from the knowledge of the principal. But when the farmer drives a bargain with
"THE GOOD GODDESS"
how clean is the transaction! There is no lying, no cheating, no treachery, no rivalry. How frank and open is the face of him who has concealed nothing! How hearty is his laugh—for has he not laughed with nature—with the twitter of the birds, with the low beating of the bells? Has he not faithful friends—friends of a life-time? When he has gone into debt has he not paid? Has he ever considered
FIFTY CENTS ON HIS NEIGHBOR'S DOLLAR
a full return, and has he walked into his neighbor's parlor (shabby for lack of the fifty per cent) and congratulated him on the return of the holidays? A spade is a spade with him. A thief is a thief. He does not like thieves. He says so. Neither does his city cousin like thieves. His city cousin is very careful not to say so. He does not like monopolies, he says so. Neither does his city cousin like monopolies. His city cousin would "turn off" any clerk who said so very loudly, let alone saying it himself. He does not like corruption and hypocrisy. On this point his city cousin has
POSITIVELY NO OPINION,
as "it really would ruin his business." Thus we see the farmer—free, ingenuous, independent. Thus we see the city merchant—smooth, prudent, sycophantic. Thank God for Agriculture! And now
CANNOT WE INSPIRE YOUNG MEN
with a little truer idea of life? Cannot we teach them that money in itself is not what they want above all things? How little wealth the really wise find necessary! On the farm is health, independence, high standing—all within the reach of any young man. He certainly sacrifices one or two of these objects when he enters a city. He can get money but he will lose his health. If he get true independence he will be
ONE OUT OF TEN THOUSAND,
all the rest of whom are slaves. With the new combinations forming in the business of the world, new experiences are constant. The man employing three hundred fortunate workers to-day, may be himself searching for work next year. The man getting $5,000 a year to-day may next week be trying to find labor at a dollar a day, and may absolutely fail. The financial panic has no such thing in store for the farmer. He will live on, just as his brook runs on, and when the sleek magnates in the hotel-parlor decree that he must lose his farm, as they need it for a "colony," he will rise up and smite them, and thereafter the sleek magnate will be an affair of the past. Young man, if you have not an absolute genius for something else, stay on the farm. Read books which will make you desire to be a pure man, just for the noble name it will give you. If you can get as great a desire to be a good man as you have to be a purse-proud man, you will be on the right track; for you will see that honesty is easier in the perfumed fields than it is in the polluted air of a city business-house. Read over the biographies, and see how certainly all our great men got their greatness in the open air of the country. Take a big city, for instance. Has it not surprised you to see how few great men New York or Chicago have furnished to the nation? The city levels men. It drags them down. Their individualities are put into a dredge-box, and the flour of mediocrity is scattered on all alike.
"IN A MORAL POINT OF VIEW,"
says Lord John Russell, "the life of the agriculturist is the most pure and holy of any class of men; pure because it is the most healthful, and vice can hardly find time to contaminate it; and holy because it brings the Deity perpetually before his view, giving him thereby the most exalted notions of supreme power, and the most fascinating and endearing view of moral benignity."
Farmers, you take pains to get two teams, so that the boys can take hold at the ploughing and in the corn. See to it that you also get the boys a light wagon, so that they can go to a picnic or a bee without discommoding you.
START YOUR BOYS OUT IN THIS WAY,
and they will not abuse their opportunities. Instead of going six miles on Sunday to a lake or river, they will "turn out" of their own accord and go to church with their heads up, self-reliant, perhaps just a little bit proud. Why? Because when they sneak off to a river, it is because they have nothing with which they are decently pleased for all their hard toil. Make your home a pleasant place for your sons, even if it be at great hazards. It will all come out right. Give the children some comforts before you take big chances on a short-horn herd. Rig up a bath-room, a swing, a sort of gymnasium. Buy games of recreation, such as your taste approves. Buy above all things good books and plenty of them. Remember some book in your own old childhood-home! What a gigantic influence that book has exercised on your whole life! It does not seem to you that your sons will pay so much attention to the books inyourhouse, but they will. Some one book will furnish a key to a life—will sway its reader while young, while old, until he goes over the bounds of its dominion into the next life. You and Society both desire your young people to
STAY OUT OF THE CITIES.
The safety of our Great Republic entirely depends upon the existence of a conservative class of independent individuals, unable to become crazed, through laziness, over some miserable idea unconnected with the business of living. When any great wrong is to be righted by absolute force it is necessary that the body exercising that force should be amenable to a sense of practical justice. If it shall be necessary to take the railroads away from their owners, or to close the boards of trade, or to go the other way and farm out the post-office and machinery of the government to get rid of the crime of office-hunting,—why then, the action of independent men is necessary—the doings of wage-workers are not satisfactory, and are almost always fatal to the order of things which was to be renovated. If this Republic have any vitality not enjoyed formerly by the democracies now buried in the yellow pages of history, it is the tremendous scope of her quarter-section farms. Not many years ago one of the largest business houses in Chicago put up a placard, just before election, stating that the proprietor considered his interests justly the interests of his clerks, and it was decidedly to his interests to have the Honorable Barnacle Bigbug re-elected. All employes were requested to note well. You see the crime of this dry-goods "prince" (how we all run to idiotic titles!) lay in subordinating the good of the State to the good of his particular millions. He totally forgot that the good of each clerk was as much to be looked after by the Government as the good of his own ambitious flesh and blood. He drowned every principle of democracy in the monarchical desire to "get it all and then give some away." The desire to give away is where the theory gives away. Now this can never happen on the farm.
The plutocrats must always tremble before the man with hay-seed in his hair. They cannot reach him. They cannot tempt or debauch him. Teach this to your sons. Teach it with horses, buggies, churches, picnics, schools, books, rest, and travel. Take the boys to the rank-smelling cities; show them the factories, the store-gangs, and the street gangs. Then they will go home with joy in their hearts, and when Old Brindle moos and Old Sorrel whinnies in recognition at their gate you may be sure that the greedy city will never swallow up your sturdy sons, the pride of your declining years. I have been somewhat earnest in this because my life on a farm was harder than circumstances make imperative nowadays. Clearing is heavy work. The culture of an Indiana opening among stumps that make a field look like a drag turned wrong-side-up leaves little chance for gymnasium or bath-room. But all that is gone by. I have been earnest, again, because
THE FOREIGNERS
are all getting our farms, while our own folk seem to think that a precarious existence as a rich man's slave in the city, is a more sensible thing than to take advantage of opportunities for which the people of other worlds tear out their heart-strings, leave native climate, language, habits, government, everything, and hurry hitherward. For shame upon ourselves!
My lord rides through his palace gate;My lady sweeps along in state;The sage thinks long on many a thingAnd the maiden muses on marrying;The minstrel harpeth merrily,The sailor plows the foaming sea,The huntsman kills the good red deer,And the soldier wars without a fear;Nevertheless, whate'er befall,The farmer he must feed them all.
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temperance
O thou invisible spirit of wine; if thou hast no name to be known by, let us call thee—devil.—Shakspeare.
O thou invisible spirit of wine; if thou hast no name to be known by, let us call thee—devil.—Shakspeare.
S
ociety has much to attend to. The whole wonderful mechanism by which those citizens who now do measurably right, can have blessings far beyond the totals of luxuries enjoyed by Kings a few centuries ago—this whole mechanism, I think, has been perfected by one law, the self-interest of the class wielding the force necessary to compel the change desired. To-day, among the evils which we suffer,—not as results of the new civilization, but as vestiges of the old barbarism,—is the abuse of stimulants. The effects of this abuse are, perhaps, next to atrocious crime, the most discouraging which menace the march of progress, and
EVEN THE ANNALS OF ATROCIOUS CRIME
so closely link the curse of strong drink with deeds of violence as to totally extinguish the mark of difference in the minds of many good men. Society as to-day organized, commits the keeping of a woman to the hands of a man, who in turn, is legally free to condemn her to the horrors of companionship with a man (that man being himself) bereft periodically or continuously of his moral motives of conduct. He is entitled by law to return to his wretched home with murder in his heart, and to vent upon a woman from whom he fears no defense, the anger which
IT WOULD BE UNSAFE TO MANIFEST
toward the person who may have originally inspired the passion. The point at which this cruelty becomes practically illegal is that limit which the wife puts to her own endurance, which in turn, is generally gauged not by her own powers, but by the personal safety of her children. So long as her own life seems to be alone in jeopardy, she waits to be killed—as in the notable case at Minneapolis, Minn.,—and Society permits itself to be called in simply to attend the funeral of the murdered woman, who, however, is often buried as a victim of some hypothetical disease, invented to take the blame off the prevailing order of things. Now while this is
ENTIRELY HORRIBLE IN THE ABSTRACT,
the abstract is notoriously a false way of getting the general drift of things. The abstract philosopher, the moment he is charged with the practical conduct of an affair, as a general rule, fails ignominiously, even in his own opinion. With regard to drunkenness, for instance, let us ask ourselves: "Is drunkenness less prevalent now than in olden times?" Yes. "Is the condition of the woman better, in addition to the improved habits of the man?" Yes. Therefore, it is evident Society,
THE GRAND MACHINE
(let us never say "Society" when we mean spike-tailed coats), has an eye on the scourge of Rum, and will eventually stamp it out. "But why," asks the Impracticable, "does not Society stamp it out at once?" "Why does not the sun shine twenty-four hours in America on the Fourth of July?" Simply because America is not the whole world. Neither is the subject of the murder of wives and the degradation of offspring the whole affair with which Society deals.
THE FIRST GREAT DUTY OF SOCIETY
is to feed and clothe her individuals. This burden is just beginning to sit on her shoulders without galling weight. The next effort is to protect the more industrious against the forays of the wicked and the mistakes of the unwise. This is the problem with which the past century has had most to deal. It is an immeasurably greater question than is that of drunkenness, and it is immeasurably far from solution. For instance, a foolish statesman can to-day plunge fifty millions of people into
WAR
—a thing represented among words by three letters, but which among events entirely fails to find complete expression, from the lack of any other misfortune worthy of comparison. An angry statesman, acting like a boy, may stop, not a game of marbles, but ten thousand grain-laden ships. But, notwithstanding, as an attendant in the betterment of her condition, Society is advancing rightly toward the rum-bottle. She does not hearken always to the voice of
THE PROFESSIONAL TEMPERANCE "WORKER"
because a betterment in Society is naturally and rightly the result of self-interest. The man who spends his time altogether in the bettering of others does not establish reforms on the surest basis. Society usually has to do his work after him, with considerable delay and additional cost. He is all right in the abstract, but he delays matters. What I would illustrate is this: The place for the reformer to deal with drink on a fair battle field is in the city. The place where the professional reformer finds it profitable to go is in the country, where the youth wear
THE BADGE OF TEMPERANCE
in their cheeks—not in the button-hole of their coats. In the country, surrounded by circles of persons as free from stimulants or the need of them as is their snow from the smut of soft-coal, they swear eternal "conversion" to the views of a man—usually a former victim of intoxication,—often a subsequent wallower in his same old gutters. Society sometimes looks upon this Peter the Hermit with little pleasure. The excitements, the passions and the commotions which he sometimes foments are pitiable from the very fact that
NO RUM CAN BE BLAMED
as having fired the unhappy brains that rush into the vortex of public confusion, like ships into the whirlpool. All the practical laws would be passed (and at a date earlier than that at which the public finally accept them in reality) without the sacrifices of the man who proudly calls himself a "horrible example" of the power of strong drink. How does Society do it? I am sure I do not know. All I know is this:
ON THE REAL BATTLE-GROUND,
in the city, where stimulant is often needed—whisky, iron, quinine, coffee, tobacco, opium, or tea—the men who waste the most nerve-tissue are more rigidly required to abstain from the abuse of stimulants than was the case fifteen years ago. To put it plainer, fifteen years ago, a smart man would be employed on a newspaper to "write" or "report". If he were brilliant, he was entitled almost by custom to "go on the war-path" once a week—that is, to be drunk that often, and to be totally unable or unwilling to do the current day's work.
NOW-A-DAYS,
if a man in the same position were to get drunk once a year he would be superseded. No matter how brilliant he may be, the drunkard at once sinks to the bottom. The "fat jobs" are filled by men as steady as clock-work. How has Society done this wonderful thing? Hard to tell. She has constantly tempted the steady man. In fact, she inclines to treat him a shade the better if he can drink some stimulant each day without unbalancing himself—some alcohol, some coffee or some tea—but
WOE TO HIM
if he transgress her limits. In the country it is asked "Does he drink?" In the city it is asked "Does he get drunk?" The two methods are essentially the results of two conditions. The mistake of the one locality is to apply its own preliminary to the other. Now, again, to this frightful question of woman-torture: Society knows all about woman. It knows that the wife must be the arbiter of her own sufferings. Her brother, being less wise than Society, separates the wife from
THE OCCASIONAL BRUTE
who married her, takes her ills and her children to his house, kicks the brute on the street, and, for all his pains, is eventually either assassinated by the wretch or anathematized by the wife. Having made matters much worse (by unanimous opinion), he abandons his reform, and then, with his valuable experience, joins Society and becomes a wave in the tide of events, instead of a presumptuous pebble rolling in small opposition on the beach of time. How will Society approach the wife-beater? Nobody knows. Probably she will exterminate the breed. The woman, like the newspaper proprietor, will at last awake. The man who gets drunk will not gain her affections—above all, he will not keep them. The "old soak" will be wifeless. Monsters will cease to propagate their species. When once the strong hand of Bread-and-Butter gets hold of Whisky, then whisky will be as useful for good as it now is powerful in evil. Society however deals with the affections cautiously, and wisely, because her experience is inconceivably great.
TRY PLAYING ON HEARTSTRINGS YOURSELF
to hear the music you make! Let us then pray for the day when the "drop too much" with the bottle will be as nefarious as a cut too much with the razor or a blaze too much with the torch.
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a good name