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HARVARD college LIBRARY
DRAMATIC COLLECTION
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GATHERED FROM WARIOUS SOURCES
LARGELY THE GIFTS OF
EVERT JANSEN WENDELL
AND
FRANK EUGENE CHASE





^ - x -e, 2
HARWARD COLLEGE LIBRARY
FROM
THE BEQUEST 9F
RVERT PANSEN WEND51.


It was my fortune to pass a portion of the
winter of 1854 in the island of Hayti, while
it was still under the imperial sway of the late
Faustin I. My own country, at that time,
was beginning to be seriously occupied with
the slavery problem, and one of my objects
in visiting a place then difficult of access, and
little frequented by tourists, was to inform
myself personally of the condition and pro-
spects of this struggling little empire which
had successfully defied one of the best armies
of the first Napoleon, and which for more
than half a century had managed to main-
tain its political independence without the
º, &
1


2
WIT AND WISDOM
alliance or even the sympathy of any foreign
State.
It is no part of my present purpose to set
forth the results of my observations in Hayti
farther than to give some account of the
most interesting, if not the only truly in-
digenous and original product of the Hay-
tian civilization of which I was fortunate
enough to find any trace. As a stranger in
cordial sympathy with the Haytian in his
determination to maintain the political inde-
pendence of his country, Inaturally sought to
bring away with me all the evidence I could
find there, of the capacity of the African race
for self-government.
The Haytian depends for his livelihood
exclusively upon the products of the soil,
the air, and the water. He manufactures
nothing for export. With the richest sugar
lands he imports all his fine sugar; he
smokes cigars made of Kentucky tobacco,
and eats salt fish cured in New England.
Though I searched carefully I found nothing
to bear away with me as a trophy of Hay-
:
*


of THE HAYTIANs. 3
tian civilization that was wrought with Hay-
tian hands, or was the fruit of Haytian
industry. -
What I did find, however, that was essen-
tially Haytian, and as much the specialty of
this island as the De Brie cheese, or the Wa-
lenciennes lace, or the Jersey cows, or Flo-
rentine mosaics are the specialties of the
places of which they bear the name, were
the proverbs with which the creole popula-
tion are accustomed to garnish their conver-
sation.
Proverbial forms of expression are used
quite freely by all classes, but most abound
in the mouths of the humble and unlettered
peasants, who not only can not read them-
selves, but who probably never had an an-
cestor who could. To them they hold the
place of books and libraries, in which they
hoard up and minister to each other the
wisdom and experience of ages.
Many of their proverbs struck me as so
novel and so finely flavored with the soil of
the island, or with the customs of its pecu-


of THE HAYTIANs. 5
France — not the least valuable relic of
French domination in the island — while
others, and to me the more interesting por-
tion, were obviously indigenous, and such as
reflected the sentiments likely to be upper-
most in the minds of people who were or
had been bondmen. Were any apology
needed for inviting the reader's attention
to these specimens of the proverbial litera-
ture of the Haytians (if the colloquialisms
of a people who neither read nor write may
be called a literature), it will be found, I
trust, in the fact that they are the highest
expression of the purely intellectual activity
of this people that exists, and are unques-
tionably the most interesting and charac-
teristic production of their beautiful but very
unfortunate island.
Victor Hugo, in one of his youthful pro-
ductions, which, though now pretty much
forgotten, predicted his literary eminence,"
seized very successfully this feature of Hay-
tian civilization. It has also attracted the
"Bug Jargal.


6 WIT AND WISDOM
attention of most foreigners who have writ-
ten about this island. Pamphile de la Croix
says that “Toussaint L’Ouverture, like all
men who reflect much, but with whom edu-
cation has not varied the language of gen-
isu,” had favorite sentences, which he often
used. “I have frequently found in his cor-
respondence,” he says, “the original apo-
logue which he used to excuse his refusals to
spend money. “Money,’ he would often say,
‘’is an evil spirit; as soon as you touch it it
disappears. Many precautions are required
in opening its coffers.’”
“In prostrating me,” he said, after his ar-
rest by General Le Clerc, “they have only
thrown down the tree of liberty in San Do-
mingo. It will yet repel them with its roots,
which are deep and numerous.”
When Toussaint burned Cape Haytian, to
prevent its occupation by Bonaparte's army,
he is reported to have used in his justifica-
tion an old French proverb thus Haytian-
ized: Pas capable faire omlet sans casser zef.—


of THE HAYTIANs. 7
One can’t make an omelet without breaking the
egg."
The late Emperor Faustin I, more com-
monly known by his family name of Sou-
louque, whose parents were both brought
as slaves from Africa, was much addicted
to the use of proverbs. A friend of mine
once heard him caution a rogue who, for
some service to his majesty, had been pro-
vided with an office in which he failed to
give entire satisfaction, by using a proverb-
ial locution at least as old as the days of
Richelieu. Mon fils, déplumez l'oie sans faire
crier.— My son, pluck the goose without making
it scream, another form of an equally feli-
citous exhortation to moderation in the ex-
ercise of power, of Latin extraction, Shear
the sheep; don’t skin it.
The following apologue, reported to me by
a Haytian merchant who chanced to hear
*It has always been a matter of controversy whether
Toussaint really did burn the Cape on the arrival of Le
Clerc's expedition. He persistently denied it, but Madiou
and most of the Haytian historians believe that it was
burnt by his orders, and that he was justified in giving


8 WIT AND WISDOM
it, is singularly characteristic of the way
events which impress the imagination of
these people — I may say, perhaps, all Afri-
cans — are translated by them into abstract
symbols:
In 1830 a Spanish frigate arrived in the
harbor of Port-au-Prince to protest against
the Haytian occupation of the eastern or
Spanish part of the island—now usually
known as San Domingo — which Boyer, the
then president of Hayti, had already held
for some nine years without opposition.
The old garde-magasin, or store porter, of
my informant, who had been a soldier in
the war for Haytian independence, and who
had been told and believed that the Span-
ish frigate at anchor before him in the off-
ing had been sent to conquer Hayti and re-
duce her again to colonial subjugation, as
he sat upon a stick of logwood and looked
them. Old Mr. Tassy of Cape Haytian, who had held
office under Toussaint, and who quoted this proverb to me
in 1866, with the addition of, “as Toussaint said when he
burned the Cape,” was evidently of this opinion.— Hunt.


of THE HAYTIANs. 9
out upon the vessel with an air compounded
of pity and contempt, began to soliloquize in
this wise:
“Hounſ avla za fait trop fort. Lion soti outi
li soti; livini pou devorer zos. Li tourné li man
toute sens, li pas capabe queté boute zos. Chien
tou té tombé sous zo li; te mordé li jousque lis
bouqué; li bligé allé chemin li tou. Avla pauvre
poule soti la bas et li cröe li capabe fair quichose
avec 20s. Cé trop fort.”
My informant, who chanced to overhear
the old negro, asked him to explain his
strange soliloquy.
“Main oui, monché,” replied the old sol-
dier. “Ou pas trouvéga trop fort? Comment!
Anglais vina pou pran pays la ; nous lé batié
Anglais. Français te vini tou; nous baie Fran-
cais nion caille yo paste jamain blie. Avla pau-
1 “Now isn't that too much? The lion he came and
tried to eat the bone. After turning it over every way,
he had to leave it. Then the dog fell on the bone; he
gnaws away on it till he is tired, and then he goes his
way also. And now here comes a miserable chicken,
and fancies she can do something with the bone. That
is too much.”


10 WIT AND WISDOM
vre Pagnol, qui vlé fair ga Anglais et pi Fran-
cais pas té capabe.”
The man whose private meditations took
such shapes, though he had never read a
book, nor, indeed, talked much with those
who had, must have possessed an under-
standing and an imagination not to be de-
spised, and when alone, at least, must have
“Why yes, sir. Don't you find this too much
The English came to take our country; we beat the
English. Then the French came ; we gave them a
skinning they will never forget. And now comes this
miserable Spaniard, who has got it into his head that
he can succeed where the English and French have
both failed.”
A person familiar with the French language will
have little difficulty in understanding the text of the
old porter's discourse, and other specimens of Haytian
patois which are to follow, though a few explanations
will render the task less difficult.
The article un, une, is pronounced nion, as nion caille
for une caille, nion poule for une poule.
The personal pronouns je, tu, el are mo, to, ly; and
for the possessives, mon, ton, son, the Haytian says, d
moue, d toue, d li, which, instead of preceding the nouns
as in French, follow them, thus, chien d moue, instead of
mon chien.
Z is frequently prefixed to nouns in the singular num-
ber, beginning with a vowel, as zos for l’os, zami for l’ami,
but more frequently takes the place of the plural article,
as z'aºufs for les aufs.


OF THE HAYTIANs. 11
dwelt in pretty good society. Who is the
poet or the statesman who could have put
the patriotic Haytian's case more effectively
in as many words? and what strikes one
in these days of fierce partisanship is the art
and majesty with which the picture is ab-
Conjunctive and demonstrative pronouns, instead of
coming, as in French, between the person and the
verb, usually follow the verb; for example, pauvre
poule li cröe li capabe, instead of se cröe, yoprend li,
instead of on l’a pris; allez voir lion la, instead of allez
toir le lion.
The present infinitive or participle passive is used
for the present indicative, as mo manger, instead of je
mange.
The imperfect indicative is formed by placing tá be-
fore the participle passive, as chien tê tombé sous zos, in-
stead of chien tombait sur l’os; Francais pas té capabe, in-
stead of le Francais n'était pas capable. The parti-
ciple is used to express any past tense instead of in-
flecting the verb. Pouvoir, the verb, is always rendered
by capable, or as it is pronounced, capabe. Mo pas capabe
faire, instead of je ne puis pas le faire. The present
indicative is the only tense of the verb wouloir in general
use among the Haytians, and that is pronounced vlé.
The negative pas precedes instead of following the
verb, as mo pas connais for je ne sais pas.
Baie is used in the sense of donner, as baie si ca for
donnez lui cela. So baie veni is used for apporter, and
baie allé for 6ter.
Gagner is the Haytian avoir, and does more service,


12 WIT AND WISDOM
stracted from whatever is local or savors of
mere individual or private grievance, and
lifted up to the level of universal truth and
justice. The gods of Homer did not color
the tales of their grievances with so little of
personal and purely selfish passion.
I have said that many of the proverbs
most current in Hayti are such as could only
have originated or be popular among slaves
or a people inured to oppression. I might
perhaps go a little farther, and say that
none are current among them that would be
out of place on the lips of a slave. Till
their emancipation every Haytian might
have said, in the language of an old Span-
ish poet, “When I was born I wept, and
every day I live tells me why.”
It has been observed that proverbs begin
I think, than any other verb in his vocabulary. Har-
vey, in his Sketches of Hayti, gives the following sketch
of its catholicity. An Englishman who had asked a
negro to lend him a horse received the following reply:
“Monché, mo pas gagné choual, main mo connais qui
gagné li; si li pas gagné li, li faut mo gagné li pour
vous gagné.”


of THE HAYTIANs. 13
to appear when man begins to suffer and to
envy; he then seeks consolation in his misery
by laughing at his oppressors. In this sense
proverbs have been poetically termed the
tears of humanity. It is certain that the
people who have been most dependent upon
the caprice of their fellow-creatures have
been, in all ages, most addicted to the use
of proverbs, and for an obvious reason. In
the form of a general truth we may give vent
to the bitterest personal feeling without
making ourselves responsible for its personal
application.
But without presuming to offer or discuss
any new theories in regard to the origin or
currency of proverbs, I will content myself
with laying before my readers such of my
collection as are most unequivocally of pure
Haytian, or at least of African, extraction,
leaving aside the much larger number
which have reached the island from other
lands in the ordinary commerce of civiliza-
tion, and which, as well as some of these,
may no doubt be found in other collections.


16 - WIT AND WISDOM
II.
D’ABORD vous GUETTÉ Poux DE BoIS MANGá Bou-
TEILLE, CR09 UEZ CALEBASSE WOUS HAUT.
When you see the wood-louse eat the bottles, hang your calabash
high.
The former is an invocation of charity
toward those who fall into temptation, and
this suggests precautions to be taken against
falling again. If you find yourself inclined
to any vice, try and put yourself beyond its
reach, avoid exposing yourself to its tempta-
tions, eschew society and amusements which
weaken your power or disposition to resist
it, following in this respect the counsel of
Niebuhr in the choice of books, that it is
best not to read books in which you make
the acquaintance of the devil.
And again, whatever is precious to you,
be it your sense of God’s presence with those
who try to do His will, your respect for His
word, your faith in prayer, hang it high;
that is, cultivate a respect for it not only in
yourself, but in others; place it where no


of THE HAYTIANs. 19
other proverb, which is probably of French
origin :
W.
Cá LHER venT CA VENTER MoUNE CA OUER LA
PEAU POULE.
It is when the wind is blowing that we see the skin of the fowl.
WI.
CÉ soul.IERS TOUT-SEULE SAVENT SI BAs TINI-
TROUS.
Shoes alone know if the stockings have holes.
There are vices and infirmities known
only to the most intimate; there are crimes
known only to their authors, and there are
weaknesses known only to one's familiars.
Nemo scit praeter me, said St Jerome, ubi soceus
me permit.” It is the sea only which knows the
bottom of the ship, say the Efik tribes of Western
Africa. There is another proverb quite cur-
rent, I am told, in the French Antilles,
though I never chanced to hear it, that A
man is not to be known till he takes a wife. This
"Nobody but myself knows where the shoe pinches.


20 WIT AND WISDOM
might be taken as merely a variety of the
two preceding proverbs, without an explica-
tion of its origin.
The buccaneers of San Domingo were
pretty much a law unto themselves, acknow-
ledging only an odd jumble of conventions
upon which they had from time to time
agreed. They had, in a manner, shaken off
the yoke of religion, and thought they did
much, in not entirely forgetting the God of
their fathers. Had they been perpetuated
until this time, the third or fourth genera-
tion of them would have had as little reli-
gion as the Caffres and Hottentots of Africa.
They even laid aside their surnames, and
assumed their nicknames or martial names,
most of which have continued in their fami-
lies to this day. Many of them, however, on
their marrying, which seldom happened till
they turned planters, took care to have their
real surnames inserted in the marriage con-
tract; and this gave occasion to the proverb,
that A man is not to be known till he marries."
* Jeffreys, Description of the Island of Hispaniola, p. 23.


of THE HAYTIANs. 21
VII.
RATTE MANGE CANNE; ZANDOLIE MOURRIE
INNOCENT.
The rat eats the cane ; the innocent lizard dies for it.
This is a creole paraphrase of two well-
known lines, one of Publius Syrus and the
other of Horace. “Judez damnatur cum
nocens absolvitur.” “Quidguid delirant reges,
plectumtur Achivi.”
The innocence, that is, the harmlessness,
of the lizard is almost as familiar a feature
of serpent life in the tropics as that of the
lamb among animals.
The Italians have a proverb which implies
that the lizard's good name is not confined
to the Antilles: Cui serpe mozzica lucerta teme.
Be who has been bitten by a serpent is afraid of
a lizard.
At Naples, “whose luxurious inhabitants,”
says Gibbon,” “seem to live on the confines
of Paradise and hell fire,” they have a joke
'Memoirs of his own life.


22 WIT AND WISDOM
upon their exemption from the misfortunes
of their neighbors of Torre del Greco." Na-
poli fa I peccati, e la Torre li page. Naples
commits the sins and la Torre expiates them.
The Germans have the same aphorism in
different forms. Bei grosser Herren Handeln
mussen die Bauern Haar lassen. Der Herrem
Sunden der Bauern Busse.
These proverbs will recall to the historical
student the story of Henry IV, when he
abjured Protestantism, sending two proxies
to Rome to undergo the chastisement which
the pope was to administer, and bring back
his absolution, also that of King James
I, when a lad, though subject in all other
respects to the discipline of Scotland, being
allowed a whipping boy, upon whose back
he could receive any punishment that his
own misconduct might merit.
"A village in the suburbs of Naples, which has been
already three times destroyed by Vesuvius.


of THE HAYTIANs. 23
VIII.
Want of charity for those who occasion-
ally succumb to temptation is finely rebuked
in a proverb, the application of which un-
happily cannot be limited to the transgres-
sions of slaves or heathen :
PETIT MIE TOMBE, RAMASSÉ LI; CHRETIEN
TOMBE, PAS RAMASSÉ LI.
If the millet falls, it is picked up; if the Christian falls,
he is not helped up.
This proverb conveys a merited rebuke
to those who assume that any amount of
spiritual growth diminishes our liability to
temptation, or that the greatest saint has
any less of it to contend with than the
greatest sinner, and who infer therefore that
the professing Christian, and especially the
clergy, who occasionally succumb to them,
are on that account altogether hypocrites
and impostors. It teaches a more profound
theology and a more divine charity than is
common even in the pulpit.
* A little grain largely cultivated in the Antilles.


24 WIT AND WISDOM
There are two other West Indian proverbs
of the same import. Acoma' tombe; tout moun
di c'e bois prourri. The acoma falls; all the
... world says, 'tis rotten wood.
LX.
CHITA CHICHE.
The sitter is mean.”
Chiche in creole is the equivalent of a
persistent sitter, who is naturally idle, and
therefore remains poor, not uncommonly the
synonym for inhospitality and meanness.
X.
That hope which, through a kind Provi-
dence, often saves the most abject and de-
pressed from despair, frequently finds its
expression in the following proverb:
* The acoma is the giant of the West Indian forest.
*Mr. Hogarth, an intelligent Haytian citizen who came
to Port-au-Prince from Maryland when a boy, once told
me that this proverb was to be translated, “The sitter
is selfish,” or “mean” as you have it; that is, a man who
has a seat is selfish and wont make room for one who
has none.— Hunt.


of THE HAYTIANs. 25
Joud UI POU OUs, DEMAIN POU Moi N.
To-day for you, to-morrow for me."
This is a slight modification of our old
English proverb. It is a long lane that has no
turning.
No one familiar with the Bible can read
this form of appeal from the present to the
future, which the human heart instinctively
makes in its hour of trial, without recalling
the memorable occasion when such appeals
may be said to have received their highest
sanction on earth. When the chief priests,
captains of the temple, and elders came out
against Jesus with swords and staves as
against a thief, he said to them, “When I
was daily with you in the temple, ye stretched
forth no hand against me: but this is your
hour, and the power of darkness.”
"The country people about Cape Haytian, the day
after the earthquake of May, 1872, which destroyed the
town, gave a slightly different version of this proverb,
when they rushed into the town for plunder, crying
“Bon dieu cai nous tous ca hier pou ous joudi pon nous,
the good God has given us all this (yesterday for you
to-day for us).- Hunt.


of THE HAYTIANS. 27
ster; I will leave him; I have no long
spoon.” " -
The devil has lost much of the personal
consideration, if not the influence, which he
used to enjoy in earlier ages, and hence the
comparative disuse of this proverb, except
among people where the belief in the actual
existence of a personal devil to be propitiated
prevails, as in Hayti and among all African
races, and among some Christian sects.
It is a caution to those who accept the
hospitality or favors of rogues. It does not
take the high and only safe ground, which
is to have no transactions with Satan; to
make no compromise with evil. If it did,
it would probably have lacked one of the
essential elements of a proverb–general,
popular acceptation; —for a proverb comes
to its shape like a cobble-stone, by long and
constant attrition. The average man thinks
himself a little smarter than Satan, and that
he can accept Satan's hospitality without
*Tempest, Act II. Scene 2.
:


28 WIT AND WISDOM
returning it; that he can have just one or
perhaps two transactions with the Prince
of Evil, or operate with him for a limited
period, and then stop. Einmal keinmal, say
the Germans: Once is never; that is, it is idle
to think of doing a wrong thing only once.
No one ever deliberately entered into a sin-
gle transaction with Satan that did not soon
enter into another.
The necessity, however, of great wariness
in our dealings with the Evil One, which
the length of the spoon imports, rather than
the wiser policy of rejecting all his overtures
and the still wiser policy of making flagrant
war upon them, expresses the popular sense
both of the danger of such dealings and the
occasional necessity for them.
No one has had much to do with slaves
or with any people whose social and politi-
cal liberties were seriously abridged, with-
out remarking a corresponding disposition
to seek a partial indemnification for their
privations through falsehood, or through
theft, which is a form of falsehood. It is


30 WIT AND WISDOM
tinction of such of them as depend on the
coöperation or forbearance of our fellow-
creatures, lying will become a more hateful
offense, and truthfulness a more indispensa-
ble condition of worldly esteem. So long,
however, as we are sustained in the dis-
charge of our duty only by a sense of
worldly prudence, the difference among us,
after all, is only a difference in the length
of the spoon which we use at the devil’s
table.
This proverb is also suggestive of another
that is more familiar, and which, Quintillian
tells us, was old in his day:
Liars should have long memories.
XII.
OUS PAS CAPABLE MANGER GUMBO AVEC NION
DOIGT.
You never eat gumbo with one finger.
Spoons and forks are luxuries with which
the Haytian peasants are not familiar, and
they eat their gumbo (we call it okra) with
two fingers. It would be as difficult to eat


of THE HAYTIANs. 31
gumbo with one finger as to eat peas with
a nut-picker. This proverb illustrates our
dependence upon each other in every stage
and condition of life." The Haytians have
another which is like unto it:
XIII.
NION DoIGT PAS SA Pou AND PUCES.”
A single finger can't catch fleas.
* Your observations are entirely correct so far as they
go, but it is worth while to remark perhaps that this is
strictly a practical slave proverb. This preparation of
gumbo was distributed to the slaves at their meals in a
couw (pronounced quee) or half a calabash and the part
which they could not drink, they were expected to take
out with their fingers and they made a sort of a spoon
with the first two fingers and thumb. Haytian women
in towns to this day, prepare for themselves a plate of
food and instead of drawing up a table, they sit down in
the door way and eat the contents of their plate in this
manner.— Hunt.
*The Haytian version differs from the Trinidad version
which you have given. It runs thus: “Ous pas capable
trapper puces avec une doight.” The “sa” in the
Trinidad version I do not understand.”— Hunt.
The “sa” is doubtless a form of the verb savior to
know, literally our judge (ne sait pas prendre puces), does
not know how to catch fleas.


32 WIT AND WISDOM
These are only variations of the old Greek
proverb.
Eiv avno, ové eiç avmp."
Or, as it comes to us through the Spanish,
One man and no man is all the same.
The Calabars of West Africa say,
A man does not use one finger to take out an
Q7°7'000.
Dr. Franklin compared an old bachelor
to the half of a pair of scissors which had
not yet found its fellow, and therefore was
not even half as useful as it might be.
The Spaniards also say,
Three helping each other will bear the burden
of six.
As the gods of the ancients were wont to
visit this earth in the guise of the humblest
peasants, so one of those everlasting truths,
which may be said to embrace the beginning
and end of human wisdom, lies enveloped
in the homely rhetoric of the rustic proverb
of which these are variations. They teach
* One man, no man.


of THE HAYTIANS. 33
that elementary sense of dependence among
men by which the most ignorant, as well as
the most learned, are unconsciously led to
comprehend and acknowledge their primary
and final dependence upon God, a convic-
tion which is the basis of all true religion;
and in the same degree to lose faith in their
own sufficiency, the basis of all idolatry.
The French have a proverb which, while it
seems to enlarge the significance of that we
are considering, is actually embraced by it:
Celui qui mange seul son pain est seul d por-
ter son fardeau.
He who eats his bread alone must alone bear
his burden.
Or, as the Spaniards say:
Quiem solo come su gallo, solo ensille su ca-
ballo.
Who eats his dinner alone, must saddle his
horse alone.
“Bear ye one another’s burdens, and so
fulfil the law of Christ,” so wrote St. Paul to
the Galatians.
“Two are better than one,” says the
3


34 WIT AND WISDOM
preacher, “because they have a good re-
ward for their labor; for if they fall, the
one will lift up his fellow; but woe to him
that is alone when he falleth; for he hath
not another to help him up.”
All the selfishness, wars, intolerance, per-
secution, crime, and disorder in this world,
and which seem to be most rife among those
nations which boast of being most civilized,
may be traced to a disregard of this univer-
sal law of dependence, the mother of hu-
mility, which the unlettered peasant of Hayti
has extracted from his daily necessity of
taking two fingers to his gumbo.
Heaven forming each on other to depend,
A master, or a servant, or a friend,
Bids each on others for assistance call,
Till one man's weakness, grows the strength of all.
Wants, frailties, passions, closer still ally
The common interest, or endears the tie:
To these we owe true friendship, love sincere;
Each home felt joy that life inherits here:
Yet from the same we learn, in its decline,
Those joys, those loves, those interests to resign:
Taught half by reason, half by mere decay,
To welcome death and calmly pass away.”
There is a proverb current among the
! Ecclesiasties, iv: 9, 10. *Pope's Essay on Man, 249.


of THE HAYTIANs. 35
Turks, and commonly supposed to be of
Turkish origin, though it is not, which makes
a corresponding recognition of the highest
of Christian duties, to serve, that is, to love
one another.
What I give away is mine.
It is a treasure laid away where moth
and rust do not corrupt, nor thieves break
through and steal. This noble sentiment
which embodies the very essence of Christ-
ianity was embalmed in the felicitous verse
of the Hispano Roman poet Martial, many
centuries before the name of the Turk had
been breathed among men.
OPEs SECURAE.1
Callidus effractà nummus fur auferet arcă,
Prosternet patrios impia flamma Lares.
Debitor usuram pariter sortémoue negabit;
Non reddet sterilis semina jacta seges:
Dispensatorem fallax spoliabit amica;
Mercibus extructas obruet unda rates.
Extra fort, unam est quidquid donatur amicis:
Quas dederis, solas semper habebis opes.
Our poet Byrant has renewed the youth
of these lines in a version which is likely to
* Martial, Book v, Epig. 41.


36 WIT AND WISDOM
survive the language in which they were
originally written.
Thieves may break in and bear away your gold;
The flames may lay your princely mansion low;
Your dues a faithless debtor may withhold,
Your fields may not return the grain you sow,
A spendthrift steward at your cost may live;
Your loaded barks may founder in the deep
But fortune has no power o'er what you give;
The wealth bestowed, and that alone you keep.
Swift has employed the same moral to
wing one of his most penetrating shafts at the
“Moderns'' in his famous battle of the books.
He represents an engagement between the
combatants at the point of commencing and
then introduces the following pregnant apo-
logue.
“Things were at this crisis, when a ma-
terial accident fell out. For, upon the high-
est corner of a large window, there dwelt a
certain spider, swollen up to the first mag-
nitude by the destruction of infinite numbers
of flies, whose spoils lay scattered before the
gates of his palace, like human bones before
the cave of some giant. The avenues to his


38 WIT AND WISDOM
shook. The spider within, feeling the ter-
rible convulsion, supposed at first that nature
was approaching to her final dissolution;
or else that Beelzebub, with all his legions,
was come to revenge the death of many
thousand of his subjects, whom his enemy
had slain and devoured. However he at
length valiantly resolved to issue forth, and
meet his fate. Meanwhile the bee had ac-
quitted himself of his toils, and, posted se-
curely at some distance, was employed in
cleansing his wings, and disengaging them
from the ragged remnants of the cobweb.
By this time the spider was adventured out,
when, beholding the chasms, the ruins, the
dilapidations of his fortress, he was very
near at his wits end; he stormed and swore
like a madman, and swelled till he was ready
to burst. At length, casting his eye upon
the bee, and wisely gathering causes from
events (for they knew each other by sight).
“‘A plague split you,” said he, “for a giddy
*Supposed to be the tutelar deity of the flies.


of THE HAYTIANs. 39
son of a whore; is it you, with a vengeance,
that have made this litter here? could not
you look before you, and be d – d? Do you
think I have nothing else to do (in the divil’s
name) but to mend and repair after you?”
“‘Good words, friend,” said the bee (hav-
ing now pruned himself and being disposed
to be droll), “I’ll give you my hand and
word to come near your kennel no more;
I was never in such a confounded pickle
since I was born.”
“‘Sirrah,” replied the spider, “if it were
not for breaking an old custom in our family,
never to stir abroad against an enemy, I
should come and teach you better manners.”
“‘I pray have patience,” said the bee, “or
you’ll spend your substance, and, for aught
I see, you may stand in need of it all,
toward the repair of your house.’
“‘Rogue, rogue, replied the spider, “yet,
methinks you should have more respect to
a person, whom all the world allows to
be so much your betters.”
“‘By my troth,” said the bee, “the com-


40 WIT AND WISDOM
parison will amount to a very good jest;
and you will do me a favor to let me know
the reasons that all the world is pleased to
use in so hopeful a dispute.”
“At this the spider, having swelled himself
into the size and posture of a disputant,
began his argument in the true spirit of
controversy, with resolution to be heartily
scurrilous and angry, to urge on his own
reasons, without the least regard to the an-
swers or objections of his opposite; and
fully predetermined in his mind against all
conviction.
“‘Not to disparage myself,” said he, ‘by
the comparison with such a rascal, what art
thou but a vagabond without house or home,
without stock or inheritance? born to no
possession of your own, but a pair of wings
and a drone pipe. Your livelihood is a
universal plunder upon nature; a freebooter
over fields and gardens; and for the sake of
stealing, will rob a nettle as easily as a
violet. Whereas, I am a domestic animal,
furnished with a native stock within myself.


of THE HAYTIANs. 41
This large castle (to show my improvements
in the mathematics'), is all built with my
own hands, and the materials extracted
altogether out of my own person.”
“‘I am glad,” answered the bee;-- to hear
you grant at least that I am come honestly by
my wings and my voice; for then, it seems,
I am obliged to Heaven alone for my flights
and my music; and Providence would never
have bestowed on me two such gifts, with-
out designing them for the noblest ends.
I visit, indeed, all the flowers and blossoms
of the field and garden; but whatever I col-
lect thence, enriches myself, without the
least injury to their beauty, their smell, or
their taste. Now, for you and your skill in
architecture, and other mathematics, I have
little to say: in that building of yours there
might, for aught I know, have been labor
and method enough ; but, by woeful expe-
rience for us both, it is plain, the materials
'The improvements in mathematical science were
(very justly) urged by those who contended for the excel-
lence of modern learning.


42 WIT AND WISDOM
are naught; and I hope you will henceforth
take warning, and consider duration and
matter, as well as method and art. You
boast, indeed, of being obliged to no other
creature, but of drawing and spinning out
all from yourself; that is to say, if we may
judge of the liquor in the vessel, by what
issues out, you possess a good plentiful store
of dirt and poison in your bréast; and,
though I would by no means lessen or dis-
parage your genuine stock of either, yet, I
doubt you are somewhat obliged, for an in-
crease of both, to a little foreign assistance.
Your inherent portion of dirt does not fail
of acquisitions, by sweepings exhaled from
below; and one insect furnishes you with a
share of poison to destroy another. So that,
in short, the question comes all to this;
whether is the nobler being of the two, that
which, by a lazy contemplation of four inches
round, by an overweening pride, feeding
and engendering on itself, turns all into ex-
crement and venom, producing nothing at
all but flybane and a cobweb; or that which,


44 WIT AND WISDOM .
In short, solitude is sterility; independ-
ence is selfishness.
XIV.
The Haytians have a proverb to express
the force of numbers which could only
have its origin among a people who had
inherited the notion that conspiracy and
assassination were among the legitimate re-
sources of statesmanship.
CoMPLOT PLUs ForT PASSÉ oUANGA.
Conspiracy(or combination) is stronger than witchcraft.
This proverb also reflects the condition of
the human mind when it is beginning to
emancipate itself from superstition. It be-
trays the dawning sense of the superiority of
plans and systematic combination of natural
forces over those supernatural resources
upon which the ignorant and the savage are
much accustomed to rely.
Providentially, only good motives and pur-
poses will thoroughly combine. The selfish,
* St. John, xii; 24.


of THE HAYTIANs. 45
which are the sinful and predatory motives,
are all distrustful, and therefore incapable of
acting in effective concert. Like Pilate
and Herod they may unite, but their union
will only last while in presence of a common
adversary. Hence all predatory and noxious
animals and insects are rendered, by their
very selfishness, comparatively harmless.
“It is a wonderful proof of the wisdom of
Providence,” said the late Lord Lytton,
“ that whenever any large number of its
creatures form a community or class, a secret
element of disunion enters into the hearts
of the individuals forming the congregation
and prevents their coöperating heartily and
effectually for their own common interests.”
“The flies would have dragged me out of
bed if they had been unanimous,” said the
great Curran, “and there can be no doubt
if all the spiders in this commonwealth would
attack me in a body I should fall a victim to
their combined nippers.”
But spiders, though inhabiting the same
region, constituting the same race, ani-


oF THE HAYTIANs. 47
XVI.
CoULEUVRE QUI vLÉ vIvRE LI PAS PRoMENER
DANS GRAND CHEMIN.
The snake that wishes to live does not travel on the highway.
Ovid, who often wrote more wiselythan he
acted, has less effectively presented the same
idea in a line written during his banishment.
Crede mihi, bene qui latuit bene viacit.'
So we say, Far from court far from eare.
The poet Tibullus went so far as to re-
commend usto keep our joys from the world:
- Qui sapit, in tacito gaudeat ille sinu.
Seneca thus expands the same idea in al-
most the same words:
Sic vero invidiam effugies, si te non ingesseris
oculis, si bona tua non jactaveris, si scieris in
sinu gaudere.*
Qui struit in callem, multos habet ille magis-
1 A life retired
Is well inspired.
* If you would escape envy, keep out of sight, do not
boast of your possessions, and taste your joys in private.


of THE HAYTIANs. 51
irresistible power, without once quitting that
modest seclusion which is comparatively
free from evil, which provokes no man’s
envy, awakes no man’s lust, but disarms the
one and starves the other!
XVII.
MAITRE CABRITE MANDE LI; OUS PAs CAPABLE
DI LI PLAINDA.
'Tis the owner of the goat reclaims it. You should not
blame him.
This is a proverb employed in the interest
of the lender, and to discourage ingratitude
toward those who have served us by loans
of any sort, whether of money or of any
other articles.
XVIII.
Zor EiES PAs Lou RD PASSÉ TfTE.
The ears never weigh more than the head.
That is, a man’s curiosity is the measure
of his intelligence. His interest in a thing
is limited to his knowledge of its properties
and attributes. To Peter Bell —


52 WIT AND WISDOM
“The primrose by the river's brink
A yellow primrose is to him,
And it is nothing more.”
The Germans also say:
Wereinen Froschmagen hat
Wird von Fliegen satt.”
Hence, by implication, the folly of talking
over people's heads, or in trying to influence
them by considerations which they don’t
comprehend. “All the wit in the world,”
says La Bruyère, “is useless to him who has
none. The man with no ideas is incapable
of profiting by the ideas of another.”
XIX.
The obstinate and insubordinate are de-
scribed as —
GENS QUITINIZOREIES YEAUX PLIS HAUTS PASSÉ
TÉTES YEAUx.
People who have their ears above their heads.
'He who has the stomach of a frog will fatten on flies.


of THE HAYTIANs. 53
XX.
TANG OU PANCOR PASSÉ LA RIVIERE PRIN GADE
oU Jouká MAMAN CAIMAN."
Till you are across the river, beware how you insult the
mother alligator.
To appreciate the force of this proverb, it
should be kept in mind that the Haytian
creole regards an insult to his mother as the
most inexpiable outrage he can receive.
Mungo Park also notices this as a trait, and
certainly one by no means the least credita-
ble, of all the African race. The Hindoos
say, What! dwell in the water and quarrel
with the crocodile 7
Don’t whistle till you are out of the woods, or,
*The insult to the mother referred to in this proverb,
relates among the Haytians, strictly to the source of life
in a woman. A pert boy one day at Cape Haytian, as he
passed a man he did not like, looked up at him and said
“Maman d ous,” and ran on. The man was bitterly
offended and I inquired of the boy's older brother what it
all meant. He said more was intended by the phrase
than was spoken, and gave me the full sentence, contain-
ing the Haytian's Creole word for uterus. This led me
to suspect that the proverb connects with some tradition
of the Phallic worship.– Hunt.


of THE HAYTIANs. 55
man’s favorable testimony of an unfriendly
neighbor.
There is a slight variation of this proverb
which is also current :
XXII.
ToRTUE QUI sorTI BAS DE L'EAU LI DI ou CAI-
MAN GAGNá MALSZIEUX, Cof R Ll.
If the terrapin that comes from the bottom of the water tells
us that the alligator has sore eyes, believe him.
No fear need be entertained of the alliga-
tor, says Père Labat," when he swims, for
his paws must be supported to enable him
to hurt anything. For this reason he in-
spires no apprehension in places where the
water is deep, only in those places where he
can put his feet on the bottom or on the
shore. When, therefore, a terrapin which
swims in the deep water, tells you any thing
about the alligator, it is evidence that the
latter is in deep water, and therefore not
dangerous. A similar lesson is taught by
another department of the animal kingdom
in the following aphorism:
* Nouveaua Voyage aua Iles d’Amerique, vol. VII, p. 201.


56 WIT AND WISDOM
XXIII.
QUAND Yo BAILLE ou Tſºte BEF Pou MANGá, N’A
PAS PEUR ZIEUX LI.
When they give you an or's head to eat, have no fear for
his eyes.
XXIV.
The vanity of the black, which frequently
tempts him to load his back at the expense
of his stomach, to purchase superfluities
while lacking necessaries, is perhaps no
more common among the African than the
Caucasian race, but its exhibition is apt to
be more absurd.
It is a weakness, however, which has not
escaped the barbs of Haytian satire. Their
contempt for such folly is compared to that
of the frog which, lacking water to drink,
asks for a bath, or wanting a shirt, calls for
drawers.
CRAPAUD LI PAS TINI L’EAU POUR LI BOIRE LI
VLá GAGNá POUR LI BAGNER.


of THE HAYTIANS. 57
|
XXV.
CRAPAUD PAs TINI CHEMISE ous vLÉ LI POTER
CALE90N.
The Germans draw the same lesson from
the cat:
Du willst andern Katzen fangen, und kannst
dir selbst keine Maus fangen.
You would hunt other cats, and can’t yet catch
0, 77000/S6.
Cicero' quotes from Ennius a line express-
ing the same sentiment, though as a pro-
verbial locution it has little save its age to
recommend it — Qui Sibi semitam non Sapiunt,
alteri monstrant viam.”
Goldsmith, in his Haunch of Venison,
has embalmed the best English paraphrase
* De Divinatione, 1, 58.
*Though not knowing the way themselves they pre-
tend to point it out to others; the blind leading the blind.
There is another Latin proverb which conveys a kindred
though not quite the same lesson: Alienos agros irrigas
tuis sitientibus.- You water others' fields, your own parched
by drought.


58 WIT AND WISDOM
of the two Haytian proverbs now under con-
sideration :
“There's my countryman, Higgins, oh, let him alone
For making a blunder or picking a bone;
But hang it, to poets, who seldom can eat,
Your very good mutton's a very good treat.
Such dainties to them their health it might hurt;
It's like sending them ruffles when wanting a shirt.”
XXVI. -
BEF PAs JAMAIN CA DIE SAVANNE, “MECI.”
The or never says to the pasture, “Thank you.”
This proverb not only rebukes ingrati-
tude for familiar favors or blessings, by
placing the ingrates on a footing with beasts,
which have no intelligent sense of obliga-
tion, and are strangers to the emotion of
thankfulness, but it also distinguishes be-
tween the ostensible good deeds which are
the result of accident, or which originate
in a selfish purpose, such as the feeding our
cattle or poultry that they may one day feed
us, from those which are the result of spon-
taneous and deliberate kindness.


of THE HAYTIANs. 59
XXVII.
Practical jokes and injudicious familiari-
ties have given form and currency to the
following caution.
BADIN EN BIEN AVEC MACAQUE, MAIN PRIN
GADE MANIER QUEUE LI.
Joke freely with the monkey, but don't play with his tail.
Jocko's sensitiveness about his tail, which
is notoriously his weak point,' serves admi-
rably to show that there is nothing so ami-
able, so low, so familiar, that has not some-
thing about him or it that must not be
trifled with. Every one has some sentiment
which to him is sacred, some point of dig-
nity, self-respect, or sensitiveness which may
not be outraged with impunity.
This proverb also contains a warning
against driving an adversary to extremi-
ties, against abusing an advantage. There
* The Haytians, also, when they wish to speak of one
who has been heavily fined or harshly treated, say:
Yeaua pāser la sous laché li. — They have pressed on his tail.


62 WIT AND WISDOM
portionate service. The poor fancy that the
wealth which seems far from giving happi-
ness to a neighbor, if theirs, would leave
them nothing to desire. When they acquire
wealth, power, or station, they either find it
involves corresponding duties and cares, or
that it tempts to self-indulgence, weakens
the moral energies, impairs the health, pro-
vokes jealousy and envy, and in a thousand
ways eats away the pleasure with which,
when seen through the spectrum of poverty
or obscurity, it seems so prolific.
“ Vois ce fleuve,” said Béranger, pointing
to the Loire, “plus il monte, plus illest troublé.” "
No one has turned his experience of life
to much account who has not realized that
happiness, like the yam, is nourished and
sustained by those providential restrictions
and limitations which grow with its growth
and strengthen with its strength, and which,
by revealing to us, put us on our guard
against, our besetting sins and infirmities.
! See this river (the Loire); the more it swells the
more it is troubled.


OF THE HAYTIANS. 63
XXX.
MACAQUE CONNAITE QUI BOIS LI CA MONTER.
The monkey knows what tree to climb.
XXXI.
CoCHON MARON CONNAITE QUI BOIS LI FROTTE."
The wild hog knows what wood he rubs against.
Both these proverbs no doubt owe their
currency, if not their origin, to slavery.
Such aphorisms would spring naturally to
the lips of the oppressed and dependent.
People are rarely insolent or overbearing to
those who can chastise them. Who expe-
riences this earlier or more frequently than
those “who have no rights which a white
man is bound to respect?” Unhappily,
when slavery shall cease in the world, there
is little chance that these proverbs will
* This proverb most likely orignated with the bucaneers
who knew the habits of the wild hog, the hunting of
which had mostly ceased before the slaves became nu-
merous in Hayti. It is still often used there in the
manner you describe, l'arbre being substituted for bois.-
Hunt.


of THE HAYTIANs. 65
for its population in all the slave states.
Now for miles around Charleston the land
is a continuous market garden.
The negro's plea for treating his master's
fruit as his own is the same as that which
the Hebrews may be supposed to have used
when reproached with appropriating to their
own use the jewelry of their Egyptian task-
masters. A garden, therefore, not under
the immediate and watchful eye of the mas-
ter, is apt to prove unprofitable property.
It is your own fault, says an English mor-
alist, if your neglected wife deceives you.
Poor Richard says:
The eye of the master will do more work than
both his hands.
Not to oversee workmen is to leave them with
your purse open.
He that by the plow would thrive.
Himself must either hold or drive.
The Italians have a proverb, borrowed,
however, from the Greek, which teaches the
same lesson:
The master’s eye makes the horse fat.
- 5


66 WIT AND WISDOM
“Perses being asked,” says Aristotle,'
“what is the best thing to make a horse
thrive, answered, “The master's eye; ’ and
Libys being asked what is the best manure,
answered, “The master's footsteps.”
Aulus Gellius tells of a fat man riding on
a lean horse who was asked why he was so
fat and his horse so lean. “Because,” he
said, “I feed myself, and my servant feeds
my horse.”
Plutarch, in his chapter on the training
of children, quotes the saying of the king’s
groom :
“Nothing made the king's horse so fat as
the king's eye.”
But the Haytian proverb has a wider ap-
plication than any of these. The garden
that is near to its master will receive the
labor and the thought of many of his spare
moments in the course of the day when
other employments are suspended, which
would not be the case if the garden were
! (Econom., II.


of THE HAYTIANs. 67
more remote. It is visited more frequently;
the growth of weeds and the presence of in-
sects and vermin are detected in season, and
before they work irreparable mischief.
There is also a lesson in the proverb for
that large class who are more concerned
about the faults of other people than about
their own, who are more occupied in evan-
gelizing the heathen than in grubbing up
the weeds and destroying the vermin that
infest their own hearts, who, as De Mainte-
non said of Louis XIV, “think to expiate
their own sins by being inexorable toward
the sins of their fellow-creatures.” Their
garden is so far from home that it is over-
run with the weeds and insects of self-right-
eousness, and what it yields is only fit to be
burned or fed to swine.
XXXIII.
LI MENE LI COMME HARENG MANE BANANE.
They are as inseparable as herring and banana.
To comprehend the force of this proverb
it should be borne in mind that the country


68 WIT AND WISDOM
people of Hayti habitually cook banana
with pickled herring, of which latter very
large quantities are imported annually. Be-
sides the obvious applicability of this pro-
verb to those who seem united to each other
socially or politically by ties of peculiar in-
timacy, it also corresponds in some measure
with a form of speech quite current in po-
litical circles, and which dates back at least
to the days of George III. “When Pitt
takes snuff,” the opposition would say, “Dun-
das sneezes.” It is applied to all who blindly
accept another’s leadership.
XXXIV.
ToUTE CABINETTE GAGNá MARINGOIN A Yo.
Every closet has its moscheto, or as we say in Northern
lands, Every house has its skeleton.
It is painful to notice the variety of forms
which this sentiment has taken, and the uni-
versality of its currency. For example,
Every gap has its bush,
Every bean has its black,
Every grain has its bran,


OF THE HAYTIANs. 69
Every man has a fool in his sleeve,
Every path hath a puddle,
Every day hath its night,
Every light hath its shadow,
Chacum a son marotte, etc., -
are only variations of the same theme.
What a grievous pity it is that this skele-
ton in every closet, this black in every bean,
this puddle in every path, the unavoidable
trials, sorrows, and embarrassments which
beset us through life, are not more generally
recognized and turned to account; that we
are so inapt to learn the lessons they are
mercifully sent to teach, and so unmindful
of the fact that when they are unnecessary
they are certain to disappear !


70 WIT AND WISDOM
XXXV.
CRoquEz MAcouTE' ou ou ETI MAIN ou CA RIVE.
Hang your knapsack where you can reach it.
In other words,
Cut your coat according to your cloth ;
In laying your plans, measure your resources;
Before you build, count the cost;
Stretch your arm no further than your sleeves
will reach. -
XXXVI.
GIRAMON PAS DONNE CALABASSE.
The pumpkin vine does not yield the calabash.
This is the creole’s way of saying:
You can’t make a horn of a pig's tail, or a
silk purse of a hog's ear;
Every man’s mose will not make a shoeing horn;
Non cuivis contingit adire Corinthum ; *
"The macoute is a sort of a knapsack or saddle-bag
made of flag or swamp grass, and which the Haytian
peasant throws across the back of his donkey; and in
it he carries every thing, from a baby to a piece of pork,
from a bunch of sugar-cane to a sack of flour.
*An allusion of Horace's to the exhorbitant price
which a famous courtesan of Corinth set upon her favors.


72 WIT AND WISDOM
never enjoys a fraudulently acquired for-
tune.”
There are few adult persons of any condi-
tion who have not had opportunities of ob-
serving how very perishable are apt to be
the immediate fruits of what is vulgarly
termed “luck,” how rarely wealth or suc-
cess, not the legitimate fruit of our own la-
bor, or the outgrowth of or complement to
our own maturing characters, abides with
us. It seems as if it were the order of Pro-
vidence that our capacities to enjoy and re-
tain wealth or any other species of worldly
prosperity are proportioned in no inconsider-
able degree to the trouble we have had in
acquiring them. Nothing is more unreliable
than a fortune won at the gaming-table, ex-
cept perhaps a fortune won by fraud. Every
thing in this world gravitates to the point
where it may be most useful in the order
of Providence, and no attempt by fraud or
violence to divert it from that channel can
be successful. “The unrighteous penny,”
say the Germans, “corrupts the righteous


74 WIT AND WISDOM
“An inheritance may be gotten hastily at
the beginning,” said the wise man; “but
the end thereof shall not be blessed.”
The Tuscans have two proverbs of sub-
stantially the same import:*
Bene di fortuna passano come la luna;
Farina del Diavolo riduce in crusca.
Chi confessa la sorte, nega Dio.
Seneca was accustomed to pay the post-
age of his letters to his friend Lucilius—the
portorium, as he sometimes termed it — by
quoting at its close something striking that
he had read in the course of the day. In
one of them he cites the following line from
Publius Syrus, which shows that the notion
that nothing we acquire is worth to us more than
it cost us is neither of modern nor exclusively
of Christian currency:
Non est tuum Fortuna quod fecit tuum.”
1 Proverbs, xx: 21.
*The gains of fortune change like the moon.
The Devil's flour to bran turns soon.
* That is not yours which chance bestows.
s


of THE HAYTIANs. 75
XXXVIII.
ToUT BoIS Cá BoIS, MAIN MAPOU PAS GAJOU.
All wood is wood, but mapou (a worthless sort of wood) is
not cedar.
All people are good for something, but
none are good for every thing. Every one
is a member of the state, but all are not
statesmen.
A’ are ma maidens that wear bare hair.
All are not hunters that blow the horm.
All is not gold that glitters.
All are not friends that speak one fair.
All are not saints that go to church.
All are not thieves that the dogs bark at, etc.
The Haytians have another proverb, which
if not a variation, may be regarded as a
corollary of the foregoing:
XXXIX.
CA QUI PAS BON POUR SAC PAS BON POUR
MACOUTE.
What is not good for the bag is not good for the knapsack.
This homage to the fitness of things is in
the following proverb restricted to the dis-
creet use of the tongue:


of THE HAYTIANs. 77
profounder strain, say, The evil which comes
from thy mouth falls into thy bosom." The
Hebrews say, If a word be worth one shekel,
silence is worth a pair.
Think what you please ; say what you ought.
Words written are male; words spoken are
female.
Verba volant; scripta manent.
The following inscription, which used to
decorate the refectory of a Franciscan con-
vent at Lyons, in France, includes discretion
in speech among the four cardinal virtues of
monastic life:
Garde toº—
De désirer tout ce que tu vois ;
De croire toute ce que tu entende,
DE DIRE TouT CE QUE TU SAIS,
De faire tout ce que tu peua."
I think my readers will not complain of
its want of pertinence if I here introduce a
* El mal que de tu boca sale en tu Seno se cae.
* Beware—
Of wishing all you see,
Of believing all you hear,
Of saying all you know,
Of doing all you can.


78 WIT AND WISDOM
memorable rebuke reported to have been
once administered to an Indian monarch, for
a hasty and indiscreet promise. The famous
Brahmin, Sissa once conceived the idea of
restoring to his senses a prince who had be-
come intoxicated with his power and was
disposed to disregard the advice of more
experienced counselors. Feeling that his
lessons would be ineffectual if the prince
discovered that he was being tutored, he
devised the game of chess where the king,
although the most important of all the pieces,
is powerless to attack, and even to defend
himself without the aid of his subjects and
soldiers.
The new game soon became famous; the
prince heard of it and wished to learn it.
Sissa was naturally chosen to teach it to
him and in explaining its rules and showing
with what art the other pieces had to be
used for the king's defence, he made the
prince perceive and realize the important
truths to which till then he had been inac-
cessible.


of THE HAYTIANs. 79
Sincerely grateful for what the game had
taught him the prince wished to testify his
gratitude to its author, and asked him to
name his recompense; whatever it might be
he should have it. To show the danger
of hasty and inconsiderate promises, and to
teach the supreme importance to a prince of
keeping his tongue under the control of his
judgment, he replied that all he should ask for
his recompense would be as many grains of
wheat as would go to the sixty-four squares
on the chess board, counting one for the
first, two for the second, four for the third,
eight for the fourth and so on, doubling every
time to the last. The prince, astonished at
the apparent modesty of the request, granted
it at once. When his treasurer came to
calculate what was to be paid to the Brahmin
it was discovered that the prince had en-
tered into an engagement which all the
wealth of the kingdom could not discharge,
that to contain the promised amount of
grain would require 16,384 cities having each
1,024 granaries, each stored with 174,762


80 WIT AND WISDOM
measures, and each measure with 32,768
grains." The value of it all would be over
twenty thousand millions of dollars; more
than all the wealth of the world. Sissa
profited by the occasion to make the prince
comprehend that no person is so powerful or
so high placed as to be able to keep all the
engagements which may be made by an in-
discreet tongue.
XLI.
CE LANGUE CRAPAUD QUI CA TRAHI CRAPAUD.
'Tis the frog's own tongue that betrays him.
We all know what sort of a character it
is desirable to be thought to have, but noth-
ing is so difficult to counterfeit successfully.
Those who talk much are liable, like frogs,
to reveal what they would prefer to con-
ceal. “There is nothing,” says La Bruyère,
“so inartificial, so simple, so imperceptible,
in our character that our manners do not
betray it. A fool neither enters nor leaves
a room, he neither sits nor rises, he does not
* Freret, tom. xvi.1, p. 121–140.


84 WIT AND WISDOM
of the march of modern science. Because
we have faculties which qualify us for use-
fulness in many callings, we are not there-
fore to attempt to master all callings, but
as the dog uses his four legs to walk in a
single path, so we are advised to use all our
faculties to attain the greatest proficiency
in whatever vocation we may reasonably
hope for the greatest success. Concentra-
tion is the secret of success. All might have
wealth if they would give as much thought
to acquiring it as they do to spending it."
XLVII.
MISERE FAIT MACAQUE MANGER PIMENT0.”
Hunger will make a monkey eat pepper.
Necessity has no law, or, as the Haytians
also say:
1 This slave proverb in Hayti was a simple protest
against being required to do too much. The version as
I remember it runs thus: “Chien dit li gagné quatre
pieds, mais li pas capable couri quatre chemins d la fois.”
Schoelcher gives the Martinique version as “Chiengagné
quattre pates, mais le pas capable prend quatre chemins” –
Hunt.
* There is a tradition that one of the four small quad-


of THE HAYTIANs. 85
XLVIII.
BonDIN PAS TINI zoBEILLEs.
The belly has no ears.
That is, there is no reasoning with starva-
tion. Jejunus venter non audet libenter, or, as
Seneca says, Venter precepta non audit."
The ancients also had a proverb analo-
gous to this, but applicable to another order
of ideas;
Venter ingenii largitor.
The belly (that is, hunger) develops talents.
There is a very old French Provençal pro-
verb to the effect that He who needs fire will
seek it with his fingers.
rupeds of Hayti was a monkey, but it became extinct
long before the arrival of the negro and all the monkey
negro proverbs originated elsewhere than in Hayti...—
Hunt.
* Epistolæ Lucillii, xx,


OF THE HAYTIANS. 87
out his plate, with the remark that he had
changed his mind.
“Nay,” replied the Quaker, “thee'll not
lie in my house.”
In other words, you make believe to be
modest, or indifferent to my offerings and I’ll
take you at your word. “You make believe
die, I make believe bury you.”
The poet Martial has put the spirit of
this proverb in an epigram on Coelius who,
to escape the distractions and exactions of
society, feigned so long and so faithfully to
have the gout that at last he was spared the
necessity of feigning."
Franklin stimulated the colonists of Penn-
sylvania to resist the encroachments of the
imperial government by using the Italian
proverb.
Make yourself sheep, and the wolves will eat
3/0w.
The French say, He who makes a sheep of
himself, the wolf eats; and the Spaniards say,
Make honey of yourself, and the flies will eat you.
Mart., Lib. VII, 39.


88 WIT AND WISDOM
LI.
CHIEN CONNAIT COMMENT LI FAIT POUR MAN-
GER ZOS.
The dog knows how to eat bones.
A modification of the vulgar, You can’t
teach your grandmother to suck eggs.
LII.
GUIDI GUIDI PAs FAIT VITE.
Making a fuss is not making haste.
LIII.
MoI wiNI Pou BoIR LAIT, MOI PAs VINI Pou
COMPTER WEAU.
I came to drink milk, not to count calves.
It is said of the pontifical court that it
does not seek sheep without wool — Curia
Romana non quarit ovem sine lana —a senti-
ment which, with many others, appears to
have been inherited from pagan Rome where
it was proverbial that —
Absque aere mutum est Apollonis oraculum —
Without his fee Apollo is mute.
The Germans say, Umsonst wird kein altar
geddekt.


OF THE HAYTIANs. 89
Of the same trempe is Martial’s epigram to
Sextus:
Wis te Sexte, coli: volebam amare."
You wish me, Sextus, to honor you; I wished
to love you.
The Haytians have another proverb which
is the logical correlative of the foregoing.
LIV.
MoIN PAS PREND DI THá POU LA FIEVE LI.
I don't take tea for his fever.
LV.
CA QUI DIT OU, ACHETÉ CHOUAL GR0s VENTE II
PAS AIDá VOUS NOURRIR LI.
He who advises you to buy a horse with a big belly will not
help you feed him.
The world is full of people more ready
with advice than money when we would
buy; with criticism than credit when we be-
come embarrassed; with indifference than
sympathy when we become poor.
* Epigrams, IV, book II.


of THE HAYTIANS. 91
LVIII.
CHIEN JAMAIN MORDE PETITE LI JUSquE NANs
ZOS.
The bitch will never bite its pups to the bone; or, as the
French say, The kick of the mare never harmed the
horse.
LIX.
PETITE QUE PAS CAPABE TfTE MAMAN LI Yo
TÉTÉ GRANNE.
The baby that cannot suck its mother, will suck its grand-
mother.
This may be regarded as the Haytian ver-
sion of the familiar line of Horace,
Naturam expellas furca, tamen usque recurrit.
LX.
ZIEUX ROUGE PAS BRULá SAVANNE.
Red eyes will not set the prairies on fire.
Rien ne seche plus vite que les larmes," say the
French.
Every language abounds in proverbs which,
like these, treat tears as one of the most ser-
viceable weapons of hypocrisy.
*Nothing dries quicker than tears.


of THE HAYTIANs. 93
LXIII.
LEPE DIT AIMſ. OUS PENDANT LI MANGE DOEGT
OUS.
The leprosy pretends to love you that it may eat your fingers.
The pliancy of courtiers, the sycophancy
of politicians and place-hunters, and the
servility of toad-eaters of all denominations
were never perhaps more justly character-
ized. It would seem to be scarcely more
extraordinary for persons to put faith in
the affection of a foul disease which is eat-
ing away their extremities than it is for men
of exalted rank and influence to tolerate
around them many who seem to be their
favorites. When flatterers meet, the devil goes
to dinner; his success is assured.
LXIV.
OU FACHE AVEC GAN CHEMIN QUI COTÉ OU voe
PASSÉ.
If you quarrel with the high-road, which way will you go?
This is usually employed in deference to
the presumptive wisdom of the majority and


94 WIT AND WISDOM
the good sense of manners and usages which
have been sanctioned by time and popu-
larity.
Descartes took many more words to say
the same thing. One of the four rules of
life which he prescribed to himself while
making his search for truth was: “to obey
the laws and customs of my country, adher-
ing to the religion in which God has given
me the grace to be educated from my in-
fancy, and governing myself in all other mat-
ters according to the most moderate and
least extreme opinions that are commonly
received by the more sensible of those with
whom I have to live. ... And among many
opinions equally prevalent I chose the more
moderate, as well because they are the most
convenient in practice, and probably the
best, all extremes being generally bad, as to
wander as little as possible from the true
course in case I had mistaken the road.”


96 WIT AND WISDOM
LXVI.
PAUVRE MOUNE BAIL DEJEUNER NANS’ CUIOR.
Poor people entertain with the heart.
Or as old Bishop Hall says in closing one
of his satires:
For whom he means to make an often guest,
One dish shall serve, and welcome make the rest.”
Or as Shakespeare puts it:
What my tongue dare not
That my heart shall say.”
LXVII.
CABRITE PAS CONNAIT Goumí MAIs CUI LI BATTE
LA CHARGE.
The goat does not know how to fight, but his skin may beat
the charge.
There is no one so humble or so infirm
that he can not in some way promote a cause
he has really at heart.
*Sat., III, book III.
*Groom in Richard 2, Act 5, Sc. 5.


of THE HAYTIANs. 97
LXVIII.
B£F PAS CA. JAMAIN LASSE POTÉ conEs LI.
The or is never weary of carrying his horns.
What flatters our vanity or gives us pro-
tection is never wearisome.
Marti arma non sunt oneri.
LXIX.
MoUNE CONNAIT CA QUA BOUILLI NEN CANARI
LI.
Every one knows what is boiling in his own pot.
LXX.
HAILLIONS MOI PASSÉ ToUT NU.
Better rags than nakedness, or half a loaf than no bread.
LXXI.
BUTÉ PAs ToMBá.
A stumble is not a fall; or, One error is not ruin.
The horse which draws his halter is not quite
escaped.
LXXII.
SI LI TÉ GAGNá MOUSSA LI TA MANGá GUMBo.
If he had mush, he would want gumbo.
A proverb applicable to the large class
7


98 WIT AND WISDOM
who are never sensible of their present bless-
ings, but always wishing something more or
different.
So the Hebrews say,
An ass is cold even in the summer solstice.
Luther, in his Table-Talk, is represented
as putting down a Misnian noble who had
stumbled into the category of men, who,
when they have mush want gumbo, and re-
jected the gospel because it paid no interest,
by telling the following fable:
“A lion, making a great feast, invited
all the beasts, and with them some swine.
When all manner of dainties were set before
the guests, the swine asked, ‘Have you no
corn ?’
“Even so,” continued the doctor — “even
so in these days it is with our Epicureans.
We preachers set before them in our churches
the most dainty and costly dishes, as ever-
lasting salvation, remission of sins, and God’s
grace, but they, like swine, turn up their
snouts, and ask for guilders. Offer a cow a
nutmeg, and she will reject it for old hay.”


100 WIT AND WISDOM
LXXV.
DENT MORDE LANGUE.
The teeth bite the tongue.
One of the uniform consequences of do-
mestic quarrels. -
LXXVI.
WoleUR PAS VLÉ CAMARADE LI PORTE MACOUTE.
The robber does not desire a comrade to carry his knapsack
for him.
Distrust is one of the qualities most cer-
tain to rule in the breast of a rogue. Whom
no one can trust is sure to trust no one.
An important corollary of this proverb is
thus treated by Seneca :
Nam quidam fallere docuerunt dum timent
falle; et illijus peccandi suspecando fecerunt.
Which Voltaire may have had in his mind
when he wrote the following line in his
tragedy of Zaire:
Quiconque est soupçonneux invite a le trahir.
Whether in his mind or not, this modifi-
cation of the jus peccandi shows that seven-
teen centuries of Christianity had not been


of THE HAYTIANs. 101
entirely lost even upon one who treated it as
a superstition.
The robber does not desire a comrade to
carry his bag, not merely from a healthy dis-
trust of his principles, but from the yet more
selfish motive implied, in the following pro-
verb, often in the mouths of court favorites
and political parasites.
Le moins de gens qu'on peut, d l'entour du
gateau.”
LXXVII.
DENTS PAs CA POTER DEI.
Teeth do not wear mourning.
Lightness of heart or innocence may not
always be inferred from teeth-displaying
laughter. Sad as well as treacherous hearts
may often be found behind faces wreathed
in smiles. “I laugh,” said Byron, “that I
may not weep.”
*The fewer the better around the cake.


of THE HAYTIANs. 103
“Drive on your own track,” is an old
Greek proverb which Plutarch quotes to dis-
courage the young from marrying abovo
their rank.
IXXXI.
TRAVAI PAS MAL; CE ZIEZ QUI CAPONS.
Work is not hard ; 'tis the eyes that are capons (cowards).
People are often discouraged from under-
taking the task which Providence has clearly
assigned them, in view of the magnitude
of the aggregate result expected of them.
They overlook the lesson taught them by
their watches, which count aloud over thirty
millions in a year by counting only sixty
times in a minute. Hence the curtain of
the future is always down. Had the loyal
people of the United States, when Fort Sum-
ter was fired upon in 1860, thought it would
cost from three to four milliards of dollars
and more than a million of lives to preserve
the Union, it may be doubted whether tho
voice of the country would not have pro-
nounced in favor of “letting the wayward


106 WIT AND WISDOM
“We came unto this land,” they said,
“whither thou sentest us, and surely it
floweth with milk and honey; and this is the
fruit of it. Nevertheless they be strong that
dwell in the land, and the cities are walled
and very great. * * We be not able to go up
against the people for they are stronger than
we. * * The land through which we have
gone to search it is a land that eateth up the
inhabitants thereof; and all the people that
we saw in it are men of a great stature, and
there we saw the giants, the sons of Anak,
which come of the giants; and we were in
our own sight as grasshoppers and so we
were in their sight.”
The result proved that it was not the ene-
mies that were so formidable, it was the eyes
that were cowards.
LXXXII.
VoyER CHIEN, CHIEN voyER LA CHá LI.
Send dog, dog sends his tail.
Another branch of Dr. Franklin’s aphor-
* Numbers, ch. xiii.


of THE HAYTIANs. 107
ism, that if you would have your business
done, go; if not, send. Your agent will be
apt to follow your example, and send.
LXXXIII.
SAC QUI vide PAs connAIT RíTÉ DEBOUT.
The empty bag can't stand-up.
This is the hungry slave’s reply when re-
proached for idleness.
The Haytian’s conversation abounds also
in aphoristic expressions, which need only
a slight change in form to be proverbs. For
example, if a man’s conduct justifies the
worst imputations of his enemies, they say:
LXXXIV.
BAie LENEMIS LAITE Poá BoßR LA-sous TftE OUS.
He gives his enemies milk to drink on his head.
If a man has a grudge against you, they
say:


108 WIT AND WISDOM
LXXXV.
HöMME LA TINi Yon TIT cochoN CA Nourri
Poſi ous.
That man has a pig feeding for you.
If a man turns a deaf ear to another:
LXXXVI.
LI CASSER BOIS NANS zoFEiES LI.
He broke wood in his ears.
Of one who brings his kindred to trouble
they say:
LXXXVII.
LI METTER D’LEAU NANS ZIEZ FAMiE LI.
He put water in the eyes of his relations.
Conversing they call:
LXXXVIII.
CE MANGER zoFEISS.
To eat with the ears.
To cheat a person unmercifully:
LXXXIX.
ENTRER NANS VENTE YON MoUNE.
To get into a person's belly.
To accommodate one’s self to the custom
of the place: -