HITS 
 
 AMERICAN WHIMS 
 
 HINTS FOR HOME USE. 
 
 BY FREDERIC W. SAWYER, 
 
 AUTHOR OF "A PLEA FOR AMUSEMENTS." 
 
 BOSTON: 
 WALKER, WISE AND COMPANY, 
 
 No. 245 WASIIISOION STREET. 
 
 1860.
 
 Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1859, 
 
 BY WALKER, WISE & CO. 
 In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. 
 
 Electrotypcd and Printed by 
 GKO. C, RAND & AVERT.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 HOW TO MAKE MILLIONAIRES, 5 
 
 WHIM AGAINST DANCING, 8 
 
 EDUCATION Sans MORALS, 13 
 
 THE LATE CAPTAIN FUME, 19 
 
 HINTS FOE PROMOTING JUVENILE DEPRAVITY, . . 28 
 
 CANONICAL AMUSEMENTS, 31 
 
 ELEVATING TENDENCY OF SOAP AND WATER, ... 35 
 
 STRAITS OF A MAN OF FORTUNE, 38 
 
 PARKS AND PROMENADES, 43 
 
 JURY TRIALS AND TRIALS OF THE JURY, 47 
 
 THE DRAMA, 53 
 
 JONATHAN ON THE ROAD TO GENTILITY, 59 
 
 RELIGIOUS CREEDS OF NEW ENGLAND, 62 
 
 HINTS FOR REDUCING THE MERCHANT'S SERVICE, . . 77 
 
 TWO-FIFTHS EDUCATED, 80 
 
 PRECEPT AND PRACTICE, 84 
 
 PUBLIC DRIVES, 86 
 
 SKIPPER SINKER, 90 
 
 MODERN VATICANS, 93 
 
 PHYSICAL CULTURE, 101 
 
 MANNERS, 106 
 
 ADORN, Ill 
 
 PROVIDED, HOWEVER, 114 
 
 MR. BLOT GORED BY BULLS, 118
 
 IV CONTENTS. 
 
 PILGRIMISM, 122 
 
 HOSPITALITY, . ' 127 
 
 HINTS TO STRINGENT LAW MAKERS, 132 
 
 PEEP INTO THE FORECASTLE, 138 
 
 JONATHAN'S REVERENCE FOR THE PAST, 141 
 
 AUNT DIADAMA, 145 
 
 ADORNMENT OF THE SANCTUARY, 151 
 
 HINTS ON THE ART OF LIVING, 156 
 
 FORTUNE MADE BY AN INVITATION TO TEA, . . . 160 
 
 GALLERIES OF ART, 163 
 
 LUCKLESS WIGHT, 172 
 
 MONT DE PIETE, 194 
 
 BEST TEMPERANCE AGENT, 201 
 
 PHILANTHROPY, 203 
 
 MR. BLOT'S ACCOUNT CURRENT, 207 
 
 MUSIC, 210 
 
 TO THE SOUTH GREETING, ' . . 213 
 
 A MODEL INSTITUTION, 219 
 
 FAMILY HOLIDAYS, 228 
 
 PUBLIC GARDENS, 237 
 
 HINTS ABOUT DWELLING HOUSES, 242 
 
 AN ALIBI, 246 
 
 TIME, 254 
 
 THE OLD STAGE TAVERNS, 258 
 
 WHAT OF THE NIGHT ? 263 
 
 LEISURE HOURS AND PUBLIC LIBRARIES, 271 
 
 AMBITION, 275
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 HOW TO MAKE MILLIONAIRES. 
 
 IT may be done at very little expense. Every 
 thing thrown open to the public adds so much to each 
 man's estate. The Boston Public Library has added 
 fifty thousand volumes to the library of each citizen 
 of Boston. There is not a poor man in Paris, who is 
 not, in the best sense of the word, a millionaire. Be 
 he rag-picker, laborer, student, invalid, clerk, or poor 
 annuitant, he has still a hundred or more old estates, 
 in and about Paris, that are worth their millions and 
 tens of millions. Has he an hour of leisure, he has 
 no motive to go to the dram-shop, or loiter away his 
 time in folly anywhere. He has as many sources of 
 pleasure at hand as any lord or lady in the land. 
 
 He has his Louvre, where he can while away his 
 hour, if he wishes, among miles in extent of objects 
 of vertu and art ; he can go to the academy and listen 
 to interesting lectures on the useful arts ; he can, if 
 he pleases, wander into the Garden of Plants, and 
 enjoy his collections of animals and plants from all 
 parts of the world; he may enjoy, if he likes, the 
 cooling shade of his Bois Bologne, a beautiful wood 
 near Paris, twice as large as all Boston, full of ponds, 
 lakes, flowers, statuary and fountains ; he may walk 
 on the Boulevards, or in the garden of the Tuileries ; 
 1*
 
 6 HOW TO MAKE MILLIONAIRES. 
 
 witness a review on the Champs Elysee; visit and 
 consult the great imperial library of Paris of over 
 800,000 volumes ; stray into the Luxembourg, or the 
 imperial observatory ; take a little trip to Versailles, 
 and enjoy its wonderful gardens, fountains and works 
 of art ; indulge his taste for the useful arts, if he likes, 
 in visiting the Sevres Museum, the Artillery Museum, 
 the Gobelin Tapestry Museum, the Museum of the 
 Mint, the Medical Museum, or the Military Museum. 
 
 If his mood of mind leads that way, he may find 
 food for quiet meditation in Pere le CJiaise, sacred to 
 the memory of the thousand distinguished dead ; in 
 the Church of the Madeleine ; in bending over the 
 Urn of Napoleon ; in the beautiful Chapel of Expia- 
 tion, sacred to the memory of Louis XVI. and Marie 
 Antoinette ; in the Chapel of the Due d' Orleans, built 
 and adorned to commemorate the place where he fell 
 mortally injured ; in the Holy Chapel of St. Louis ; in 
 Notre Dame, around whose massive walls have thun- 
 dered the tumults of seven centuries ; in the Hotel 
 d' Invalides, filled with commemoratives of a hundred 
 pitched battles ; in the Palais Royal, full of historical 
 paintings ; in the Place de la Bastile ; in the Palace of 
 Justice, from whence Hugh Capet gave law eight 
 centuries ago ; in the Hotel de Cligny, a museum of 
 Roman antiquities and medals ; St. Germain, the 
 palace where James II. lived and died in exile ; St. 
 Cloud ; the Champs de Mars, large as Boston Common, 
 and a score or two more of such places, filled with 
 curiosities appropriate to the place, curiosities in 
 history, art, science, and everything to interest and 
 instruct the mind of man. And all of those noble old 
 estates are his to use and enjoy, without fee or 
 reward.
 
 HOW TO MAKE MILLIONAIRES. 7 
 
 Every thing dedicated to the public is BO much 
 added to the private fortune of those whose situation 
 admits of their enjoying it. Does a city lay out a 
 park, then Mr. Trott, the hand-cartman, who rejoices 
 in just one room and an attic, has so many broad acres 
 added to his domicil, where he may take his family and 
 snuff the fresh air as well as any other landholder. 
 Is a library made free, then Mr. Trott's tenement is 
 enlarged ; he has a library room attached, where he 
 may go and loll on his arm-chair, and call for his book 
 and enjoy his property. Is a gallery of art added, 
 then Mr. Trott's tenement is enlarged again. He has 
 now his picture gallery, so that his house is quite a 
 castle, with its park, and its library, and its gallery of 
 art. Mr. Trott is a lord in all but name. 
 
 The demoralizing influences now prevalent in this 
 country can be better stayed by such public institu- 
 tions gymnasiums, baths, libraries, galleries of art, 
 museums, gardens of plants and of animals ; by adorn- 
 ing our churches with paintings instead of damask, 
 and having them open too; and by preserving our 
 old historical memorials, than by all the patent ethics 
 put together that are trundled yearly through our 
 land. There should be in every village in our land, 
 and in every ward of our cities, inviting public places 
 for old and young, rich and poor, male and female, 
 where they can see books and paintings, pictures and 
 statuary, and curiosities in art and science. And 
 thus let us outbid the dram-shops, the billiard-rooms, 
 and the saloons of vice and crime of every description.
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 WHIM AGAINST DANCING. 
 
 IT is seldom that you find a religious sect without 
 its religious whim ; and what is the worst of it, that 
 whim is generally the darling article of its "creed. If 
 you would rest in peace with your friend, never 
 attack his religious whim. His religious principles 
 will bear assault ; hence, when you attack those, you 
 give him no offence. Whether he be a sturdy dispu- 
 tant, or ever so much otherwise, he will be apt to 
 relish a quiet little encounter with you, on original 
 sin, the apostolic succession, or some equally knotty 
 point in theology ; and, however the argument may 
 wax and wane, will be most likely to think that he 
 has come off victor. At least, he will have some 
 weapons to show, and some skill to display, and will 
 ordinarily rather warm towards his opponent than 
 otherwise. But when you attack his whim, it is an 
 entirely different matter. You take him then unarmed 
 and at a disadvantage, and he feels that he has a right 
 to bluster and be offended. His passages of scripture 
 fail him, and Moses and the Prophets refuse to assist 
 him. 
 
 Indeed, almost every sect has its eleventh com- 
 mandment, to wit : " Thou shalt honor our whims." 
 One sect has its whim about meat on Friday, and
 
 WHIM ACAIN'ST DANCING. 9 
 
 another about pork at any time; one renounces narrow 
 brims ; another, matrimony ; another, dancing ; and so 
 on until half the catalogue of God's gifts are excom- 
 municated. 
 
 Of all the religious whims, there is not one in the 
 whole catalogue so entirely unscriptural as our modern 
 Puritan whim against dancing. Had the ancient Jews 
 been under Puritan church government in good old 
 scripture times, Miriam the prophetess, and her 
 women, who went out with timbrels and with dances, 
 would have been " disciplined ; " and even the pious 
 David, who danced before the ark, would not only 
 have had his tart spouse, but the whole church, 
 reproving him. That beautiful closing psalm of his, 
 where he exhorts all the living to " praise God with 
 the sound of the trumpet," " with the psaltery and 
 harp," " with the timbrel and dance," would have 
 been denounced and expunged as heretical. Solo- 
 mon, with all his wisdom, would have been cited 
 before the deacons for declaring that " there is a time 
 to dance ; " and as for that best of parents, who it is 
 recorded saw his own prodigal son afar off, instead 
 of welcoming him as he did, with " music and danc- 
 ing," would have had to greet him with a pic-nic 
 or a sewing-circle. A wiser than Solomon would 
 have lost caste with them, as he did with the Phari- 
 sees, by attending to the end, a Jewish wedding, 
 which was alwa} T s celebrated by dancing ; and as to 
 those who refused to " dance " when they were " piped 
 unto," it is clear they might have excused themselves 
 on the ground that it was wicked. 
 
 The origin of this whim lies veiled in obscurity. It 
 did not originate with the great reformer, for when
 
 10 WHIM AGAINST DANCING. 
 
 Luther's followers inquired of him if dancing was sin- 
 ful, he replied, " Was not dancing allowed to the 
 Jews? Dancing is a necessity of our state, like 
 dress with women, and like dinner or supper. And, 
 indeed, I do not see how dancing can be prohibited. 
 If people commit sin, it is not the fault of the dance, 
 which does not offend against faith or charity. Dance, 
 then, my children ! " Nor did it originate with the 
 great leader and apostle among our Puritan Fathers, 
 John Cotton for we find him in 1625 writing in reply 
 to similar inquiries from his friend Leavett, approving 
 of dancing, both " civil and religious," as he styles it, 
 and citing scripture in support. 
 
 The truth is, that the dance is an involuntary 
 emotion, like laughing or crying. Mankind in all 
 ages and among every people, have made use of it as a 
 testimonial of the highest joy. It is the first language 
 of the infant, waving its little hands and feet, in token 
 of and to denote its untold joy. Barbarians have 
 always used it to celebrate their victories. Civilized 
 nations, (as among the Jews and Greeks,) have used 
 it in celebrating their religious mysteries, but oftener 
 it has been used as a pastime and exercise in the 
 family and social circle. And it is worthy of remark, 
 that the people who have been sneered at for centu- 
 ries by all Anglo-Saxondom, for their fondness for 
 the dance, now stand out the foremost in all Chris- 
 tendom, foremost in science, in art and in arms. That 
 is mentioned, not for the purpose of crediting it to 
 the dance alone, but to credit it to that system of 
 physical and social culture, of which the dance is a 
 leading element, and of which France is the present, 
 and Greece the ancient model and exponent, and
 
 WHIM AGAINST DANCING. 11 
 
 America the most conspicuous for ignoring and oppos- 
 ing them. 
 
 This whim of ours is clearly a remnant of asceticism. 
 The Pharisees, I will bo bound, never danced. 
 Monks and nuns, the world over, have repudiated 
 it. All those sects that have aspired to earn heaven 
 in that good current coin called self-denial, mortifica- 
 tion, and self-infliction, have always abjured it. It 
 never has had any friends among those who " wear 
 long faces," " fast often," and " make long prayers." 
 Whatever else may be said of the dance, it cannot 
 be accused of ever being found in such company as 
 that. It is a penance. Other sects have harder 
 penances than this of ours, but the difference is only 
 in degree, not in principle. The pious Hindoo throws 
 himself under the wheels of Juggernaut, or hangs 
 himself on a hook ; the Mussulman makes a pilgrim- 
 age to Mecca ; the Catholic can have his choice all the 
 way from peas in his shoes to a hundred stripes ; tho 
 Quaker puts on the broad-brim ; the Shaker discards 
 his wife ; and the Orthodox renounces the dance and 
 the fiddle-bow. It is a penance, but a real Yankee 
 penance ; for if you look at the list of penances the 
 world through, you will find that the Yankee one 
 involves as little self-denial as any, and then it costs 
 nothing, but rather makes a saving. If heaven were 
 to be bought by a penance, the Yankee, as usual, 
 would take the premium for the sharpest bargain. 
 
 But this whim has had its day, and is passing away. 
 Premium tracts, and ponderous articles in a few 
 religious papers, have been tried, but they have 
 proved " flat, stale and unprofitable." Indeed, few now 
 feel as they did towards it. They see that it was a
 
 12 WHIM AGAINST DANCING. 
 
 whim and a very injurious one. That it drove 
 children from their own homes to other and worse 
 places for amusement. That it deprived them of an 
 innocent source of family enjoyment ; of one source 
 of healthy exercise ; and of a great source of improve- 
 ment in the way of ease and grace of manner. The 
 tables are now turned. Heretofore, the unco guid 
 would not reason on the subject of dancing, but con- 
 tented themselves with frowning it down ; now, when 
 they are willing to reason, the perverse public good- 
 naturedly laugh at them.
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 EDUCATION Sans MORALS. 
 
 hear on every side, now-a-days, astonishment 
 expressed at the number and frequency of the crimes 
 committed in moral, Puritan New England ; and great 
 numbers now seem to be really losing that self-com- 
 placency ordinarily so apparent among us concerning 
 everything American. But there ought to be no 
 astonishment at American preeminence in immorality. 
 It is no more than what may naturally be expected 
 from our system of education. If we go on as we 
 have heretofore, doing those things that we have done, 
 and leaving undone those things that we have left 
 undone, there is no reason in the world why our 
 countrymen should not take the lead in every branch 
 of public roguery. 
 
 Our system of education is a fractional one. "We 
 do not take into account the necessity of cultivating 
 alike all the faculties of the body, mind and heart ; 
 but we select one or two, and spend all our energies 
 upon those. Our forefathers early turned their atten- 
 tion to two things intellectual and religious culture, 
 to the total neglect of physical, social and moral 
 culture. As in the beginning, so it has been ever 
 since. From the day the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth 
 until the present moment, our system of education 
 2
 
 14 EDUCATION SCim MORALS. 
 
 has been one with moral culture left out. I do not 
 mean to say that the rising generation, through all, 
 or any of this time, have been left Avithout moral 
 admonition. 
 
 On the other hand, I am ready to admit, that in the 
 family, in the church, in the school, and everywhere, 
 there has been a becoming desire on the part of 
 every one to have the young grow up alive to the 
 importance of correct moral deportment, and that in 
 all those places, the youth have been admonished 
 daily not to lie, not to steal, not to do any wrong 
 thing. But what I mean to say is this that in all 
 our history there has been no public or even private 
 instruction, cultivation, teaching of morals in the fair, 
 reasonable sense of the word. There has been no 
 teaching of morals as a science. We are a nation of 
 people wholly undisciplined in ethics. If any one has 
 any doubt of that proposition, let him attempt to call 
 to mind, if he can, where in all our educational system, 
 past or present, our youth are taught, trained, in- 
 structed and cultivated in morals, as they are intellec- 
 tually and religiously. 
 
 None of those branches of study that are to aid in 
 obtaining a livelihood, are treated as we treat this 
 branch, which is to aid in developing, establishing 
 and sustaining a good moral character. We have 
 teachers and classes and schools for almost every 
 branch of human knowledge, except the most difficult 
 of all that of knowing good from evil, right from 
 wrong, and just from the unjust. We fit a boy by 
 apprenticeship and study for the acquisition of prop- 
 erty, as a merchant, or a trader, or as a manufacturer, 
 or as a mechanic, or as a physician, lawyer, ship-
 
 EDUCATION 8(in8 MORALS. 15 
 
 master, or other special calling ; but when and where 
 and how, and under what masters and tutors do we 
 fit him to decide aright the thousands of moral ques- 
 tions that must necessarily come up in his business ? 
 Suppose him to possess by nature a mind and heart 
 all alive to the claims of truth and justice and 
 equity ; how is he to know just the boundary lino 
 between right and wrong, where honesty stops and 
 dishonesty begins ? It takes study and discipline to 
 make one a ripe scholar or a good merchant, physician 
 or mechanic. Why should it not take study and dis- 
 cipline to give him a knowledge of good and evil, and 
 make him circumspect and honest ? 
 
 I know that there is a popular idea that children 
 get their moral culture, and enough of it, at home, at 
 their own firesides. But that theory will not stand 
 one moment's honest examination. %There is not one 
 family in a thousand where the moral culture goes 
 one step beyond admonition. The child is admon- 
 ished of the pains and penalties of dishonesty, and 
 falsehood, and violence, but is in no appreciable 
 degree instructed as to what does, and what does 
 not, constitute those offences. Suppose those same 
 parents should teach their children the other branches 
 of knowledge in the same way admonish them to 
 be good readers, and correct in spelling, and by all 
 means expert with figures, and yet provide them with 
 no books tending to teach in those branches and 
 put them under no tutors ? But how comes it that 
 parents, one and all, are supposed to be apt and com- 
 petent teachers in moral philosophy, and nothing else ? 
 If their child is to bo taught to read or spell, write or 
 cast accounts, a teacher bred to the business is sup-
 
 16 EDUCATION Sans MOEALS. 
 
 posed to be indispensable ;, but if the same child is 
 to be instructed in his whole duty in life, as between 
 man and man, what is right, what is just, what is 
 true, each parent in the land is supposed to be a pro- 
 ficient in that science in which many contend that 
 even Archdeacon Paley failed. 
 
 Then there is another popular idea, and that is, that 
 religion and morals are all one substantially, and that 
 the church and pulpit are ample for both. But no 
 fallacy could be greater. Religion concerns our duties 
 to God; morals concern our duties to one another. 
 Properly speaking, the minister has nothing specially 
 to do with the discussion of moral principles and 
 precepts. And as a matter of fact, he seldom does 
 come down to such discussions pure and simple. If 
 morals are treated upon, it is generally by incidental 
 allusion, and not as the substance and burden of the 
 discourse. A man might attend church all his life- 
 time, and never get so well-defined and accurate- an 
 idea of his moral duties and obligations as could be 
 given him in one week by a competent tutor devoted 
 to that branch only. 
 
 Few consider how vast and complicated is the 
 whole subject of morals. Every act of our lives has, 
 to some extent, a moral bearing, not always or often 
 perhaps clearly perceptible. When we take into 
 account the complex nature of human life, how many 
 and how conflicting the principles and practices, 
 manners, customs, laws, rules and precedents of those 
 that surround any one of us, and how each person's 
 duties are modified by his particular circumstances, 
 it will be seen that no other branch of study in the 
 world takes precedence of it, in breadth and impor-
 
 EDUCATION SttHS MORALS. 17 
 
 tanco ; and it is a science that must grow with the 
 growth of the world. Each age, with its improve- 
 ments and progress, gives rise to new duties and new 
 responsibilities. 
 
 There are a thousand situations in which one may 
 be placed, for which the education of the school-room 
 and of the church and family affords no direction. It 
 is not to be believed for a moment that the parties 
 who have in so many instances of late proved default- 
 ers, took the first wrong step with the intention of 
 doing any wrong in the end. Nor is it at all certain 
 that they entertained any clear conviction that that 
 first false step was one really dishonest. On the 
 other hand, without doubt, most of those who have 
 fallen have no conception that their first error began 
 so far back. They had, no doubt, the greater part of 
 them, been pursuing a wrong course, until escape 
 was impossible, before they once awoke to the con- 
 sciousness that they had been guilty of any wrong. 
 And most of them now, I have faith to believe, 
 looking back, can hardly see how they could have 
 done otherwise than they did, so did one step in 
 error prepare the way for the next. What is wanted, 
 is such public instruction in all the contingencies of 
 human intercourse that no one need err for lack of 
 knowledge. 
 
 Another singular feature in this matter of moral 
 culture, is the fact that the subject has not enlisted 
 public attention as a theme any way, to any very 
 great extent. There are less books on it than on 
 almost any other subject that can be thought of, how- 
 ever insignificant. I apprehend a learned bookworm 
 could find more works to-day on the habits of the 
 2*
 
 18 EDUCATION Sa?lS MORALS. 
 
 bee or the butterfly, than on moral philosophy, pure 
 and simple. 
 
 It must be clear that if we omit moral culture 
 entirely, then the more we do to cultivate our people 
 in other respects, the worse it will be for us. "We 
 open their eyes to a thousand wants, we give them 
 all the means and appliances that knowledge can give 
 to acquire and satisfy them, and then leave them to 
 adapt their morals to their circumstances and tastes. 
 Could anything in the world promise more disastrous 
 results ? It is in view of the energy of our intellec- 
 tual educational system over that of most other 
 countries, that I fancy that I see our country making 
 hitherto unheard-of strides in immorality and crime, 
 unless we link with it public moral instruction in 
 our schools, one and all.
 
 CHAPTER IY. 
 
 THE LATE CAPTAIN FUME. 
 
 MY first experience in travelling by steam was in 
 the boat first established on the eastern route, com- 
 manded by Captain Fume. The captain was what 
 is called a " very smart man," and believed that there 
 was nothing like making a little stir when he had 
 anything to do. The getting his steamboat under 
 way was generally made an event to be remembered 
 by all mere landsmen. The captain then felt in 
 duty bound to work himself into something of a 
 passion, be all over the boat, and make himself heard 
 in all directions. There was running to and fro, 
 and shouting down below, and hailing fore and aft, 
 and a tremendous excitement all around. Meanwhile 
 the affrighted passengers drew themselves into by- 
 places and held their breath, believing that everything 
 depended on Captain Fume ; and that if he should 
 stumble, or his voice fail him, the boat must inevitably 
 be blown to atoms. For a long time it was thought 
 that no one but Captain Fume could run a steamboat ; 
 and that the whole business on the eastern waters 
 would die with him. In due time, however, the 
 gallant captain was gathered to his fathers, and an- 
 other reigned in his stead. Now you may make a 
 dozen trips on the route, and hardly know when the
 
 20 THE LATE CAPTAIN FUME. 
 
 boat gets under way ; and as for the captain, you will 
 scarcely be able to detect him by the most diligent 
 inquiry. He is the most unobserved man on board. 
 
 Since then I have seen a great many Captain 
 Fumes. Sometimes I see the Captain in trade, and 
 then how he prides himself on being always busy and 
 in a hurry, and turning corners quicker than other 
 people, and talking louder on 'change, and swearing 
 deeper. Sometimes he appears as a financier, and 
 then the world seems hardly able to wag without him. 
 Committees of corporations wait on him from all direc- 
 tions, beseeching him to accept of presidencies and 
 treasuryships ; and they detect a certain metallic ring 
 in his very coarseness ; and regard his chair tilted 
 back on two legs as an omen, that with him for presi- 
 dent, their corporation will be able to stiver on, as it 
 is, with half a foundation. The Captain has always 
 been a great railroad man, and is said to be the 
 inventor of preferred stock and mortgage bonds. 
 Sometimes I see him on the bench, brimful of wrath 
 and learning, carrying consternation and dismay into 
 whole ranks of young attorneys and timid suitors, or 
 clearing the docket at the point of the bayonet, and 
 calling it doing business. Sometimes the Captain 
 appears at the bar with his green bag and bushel of 
 papers, looking very fierce, and bent on doing some- 
 thing very awful. His great talent lies in denying 
 everything, badgering witnesses, talking loud, fight- 
 ing right on after he is soundly whipped, and getting 
 the most applause from outsiders as a smart lawyer, 
 when he is doing most damage to his own case. 
 Sometimes the- Captain takes to politics, and then 
 other people have little else to do but to stand one
 
 THE LATE CAPTAIN FUME. .21 
 
 side and hear his battle-axe ring on the thick bosses 
 of the Constitution and the Union. He is very de- 
 structive in that capacity, and generally goes for 
 staving something to pieces right away. Indeed, the 
 Captain may be found in almost all of the various 
 departments of business, ready to ignite at a mo- 
 ment's notice, and make a terrible ado, and run, and 
 shout, and hail, and really think that he is despatching 
 business. 
 
 Captain Fume is very popular with the multitude. 
 He is thought to be a tower of strength. He creates 
 a great impression on mere lookers-on. The very 
 best and wisest of men shake their heads knowingly, 
 and pronounce him " a very smart man." They be- 
 lieve in his rough points, it looks so much like 
 strength. His very wrath they look upon as so 
 much propelling power, and the noise and bluster as 
 conclusive evidence that things are moving. But so 
 much friction soon wears the Captain out. His 
 friends, one after another, get gored by his rough 
 points, and fall off. His oaths, after awhile, hardly 
 generate steam equal to pitch-pine, and he begins to 
 fall astern. His very protestations that he is over- 
 run with business, and his constant hurry operate 
 against him, as people learn at last to take him at his 
 word, and deal with others who have more leisure. 
 He goes off and goes up like a rocket; but then, 
 unfortunately the similitude holds good all through, 
 for he goes out like one, leaving his gaping admir- 
 ers in the dark, with a chance of a stick on their heads 
 in the shape of unpaid bills. 
 
 Your true business man is always quiet and well- 
 bred. He understands the science of physics ; that
 
 22 THE LATE CAPTAIN FUME. 
 
 there is nothing like lubricating a little where you 
 want things to move on smoothly. Agreeable man- 
 ners are in business what oil is to machinery. They 
 obviate a deal "of friction. The well cultivated man 
 conducts his business with so little noise that those 
 not specially dealing with him are apt to think but 
 little of him, and know but little about him until they 
 wake up some fine morning and find him clearly at 
 the head of his profession. It is wonderful to see 
 how little sound and fury there is in truly great men. 
 You have only to look around you, where you are, 
 and those who have won the race in their respective 
 callings, and have put off their armor, will almost 
 always be found to be as remarkable for their good 
 breeding and modesty, as for their success.
 
 CHAPTEE V. 
 
 VILLAGE AMUSEMENTS. 
 
 VIEWED in one light, there is nothing in history 
 more marvellous than the frightful progress that in- 
 temperance was making at one time in New England. 
 Our ancestors came here sober, industrious and pious. 
 They reared a population that could read, write and 
 cipher, and recite the Assembly's Catechism better 
 than the same classes could in any other country in 
 the known world. Yet, at the end of two hundred 
 years from the date of their landing here, their descen- 
 dants had become the greatest consumers of alcohol 
 in their drinks, of any people on the face of the globe. 
 Their schools, churches and free institutions had not 
 prevented that. In the sterling virtue of temperance, 
 they were then, beyond all comparison, below the 
 inhabitants of Spain, France and Germany, whom they 
 were in the habit of considering so far inferior to them 
 in general intelligence. 
 
 Yet there is, in reality, nothing strange in all that, 
 when we come to trace the early history of our New 
 England villages. The history of one is the history 
 of the whole. The model is a very gem of a village 
 to look at. Its leading feature is the village church, 
 supported on one side by the schoolhouse, and on the 
 other by the inn. Those are the only public edifices
 
 24 VILLAGE AMUSEMENTS. 
 
 
 
 in the place, unless you include the village hay-scales 
 and the town pound. It has no public library, read- 
 ing-room or mall. Its only village green is the plat of 
 land around the church, and that is a graveyard. 
 The church is closed six days in the week, so that for 
 that time the only place in the whole village open and 
 free to the public is the village bar-room. Yet the 
 little village is full of conscious importance. It scouts 
 the idea that there is anything wanting to fill up its 
 full measure of glory. It points to its church and its 
 schoolhouse as the sovereign remedies for all diseases. 
 It considers the drama a very sorry device of the 
 devil ; dancing, as heathenish and sinful ; and parties 
 and gayeties of all kinds, as vain and frivolous. Its 
 reigning powers, the pastor and his deacons, counte- 
 nance no such perversion of one's time and thoughts. 
 The happiness of this world is an abomination unto 
 them, and the world itself a deceit and a lie. Noth- 
 ing in the nature of amusements has any defined and 
 legal place in the economy of the village. In truth, 
 the little community are determined to brave the 
 world without them. It will neither harbor nor trust 
 them. 
 
 The dancing master that essays to raise a class 
 among them, is made to cJwisse out of the village in 
 double quick time ; and even the poor wight of a 
 music-grinder has to beat a speedy and ignomin- 
 ious retreat. As for those scapegraces, the circus 
 riders, their Shetland ponies and infant phenomena 
 find no favor there ; and it is only after serious 
 doubts and misgivings about the moral tendency of 
 such things, that they allow themselves the privilege 
 of looking upon those wonders of nature, the Bengal
 
 VILLAGE AMUSEMENTS. 25 
 
 tiger and the learned monkeys. Card-tables are a 
 proscribed piece of furniture on account of the name, 
 and no domestic amusement is countenanced of a 
 higher grade than blind-man's-buff and Tom-come- 
 iickle-me. It is true that the children do get up an 
 extempore u checker-board," as they call it, with red 
 and yellow corn, but then that exists only by suf- 
 france ; and does the pastor or deacon happen in 
 when that is about, the poor parents turn pale with 
 affright, and feel that they are verily guilty. The 
 speculative genius of a Yankee, who proposes a 
 bowling-alley, is frowned down at once as a wretch 
 totally depraved ; and even the venerable but chirp- 
 ing village cobbler is looked upon with distrust, as 
 little better than a heretic, merely because he will 
 persist in scraping away upon an old cracked violin 
 at a merrier pace than the jog-trot of Old Hundred. 
 
 The village grows, and its pastor and its people wax 
 and wane. The young men who founded it are pass- 
 ing on to old age, and their children are becoming 
 heads of families around them. They have lived with- 
 out enjoying or countenancing any amusements. But 
 human nature is weak in its best estate ; and men, as 
 well as sheep, are gregarious. Though cut off from 
 the drama, from dancing, from parties, and such fes- 
 tive enjoyments, they have had one comfort left. All 
 this time there has been no question but that a little 
 something stimulating was quite a necessary thing, it 
 helped so to keep the spirits up, and invigorate the 
 constitution. It was altogether legal, and almost 
 scriptural ; for the deacon dispensed it with his own 
 hand. So while their wives were having their even- 
 ing chat over their tea, the husbands betook them- 
 3
 
 26 
 
 selves to the village inn, and talked over the village 
 politics, and grew patriotic over their cups, and " re- 
 solved to stand by their country, when it was plain 
 that they could stand by nothing else." 
 
 In process of time their sons become emancipated 
 from birch and school, and they, too, soon follow in 
 the footsteps of their fathers. There is no amuse- 
 ment for them at home. They linger awhile about 
 the corners of streets, until, driven to do some- 
 thing to employ their leisure hours, they found a rival 
 establishment at the grocer's, and there the second 
 generation meet and sip and while away the weary 
 hours of stormy days and sleepy evenings. In the 
 meantime, one after another of the old standards at 
 the inn have ripened into sots, and others are ripening 
 like them. The family hearth-stone is becoming less 
 and less enticing. There has never been anything 
 that could be called light-hearted enjoyment there. 
 There has never been any effort by the parents to 
 make home a happy, joyous place. Hence, their 
 children have fled from it the moment they could. 
 There was no link that bound them to it. There were 
 no associations of happy, gleesome hours j no remem- 
 brance of festive enjoyments with friends and kindred 
 around the family hearth. Those that left had not 
 one sigh to heave on leaving their home and native 
 village, to wander away, never to return. Those sons 
 that remained, soon became the heads of other fami- 
 lies, to follow in the same routine, each succeeding 
 generation starting earlier in the race of intemper- 
 ance, and arriving earlier at the goal, a miserable 
 home and a drunkard's grave. 
 
 Under such a state of things the spread of intemper-
 
 VILLAGE AMUSEMENTS. 27 
 
 anco among our ancestors seems all natural enough. 
 Wo arc not even astonished that they thought no 
 moro of it, and felt no more alarm about it. They 
 had given up all the cheering influences of life; and 
 it would have been hard indeed if they could not have 
 one solace, even if it was poor one.
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 HINTS FOR PROMOTING JUVENILE DEPRAVITY. 
 
 SNUB Nature in every direction ; the more you 
 cross her, the better. Your children will persist in 
 being busy about something, but that is no affair of 
 yours. Your first and only duty is to call them up 
 to their meals regularly, wash their faces, see to their 
 clothes, send them to school, and end there. That 
 will be providing for, at least, half their waking 
 hours, and as to the rest, all you have to do is, to 
 doubt, object, oppose and hold back generally. Do 
 not, on any consideration, plan any amusements to fill 
 up their leisure hours, for that would be decidedly 
 vain and sinful. 
 
 Your first object should bo to exclude from home 
 all light and cheerful enjoyments. The home is no 
 place for such things. Besides, the ruling idea of 
 home, in a child's mind, should be that it is a place 
 of last resort and fearful reckoning. In that way you 
 make a fair division with your children, take to 
 yourselves the inside of the house, and give them the 
 outside, and teach them self-reliance. Their young 
 friends are not to be tolerated about your house on 
 any account, much less encouraged to come and 
 bounce round on your fine furniture. Set your faces 
 like flint against all that. It will save you a world of
 
 HINTS FOR PROMOTING JUVENILE DEPRAVITY. 29 
 
 anxiety about carpets and mirrors, and will serve to 
 inure your children to pursuing their sports under 
 difficulties, about doorways and on sidewalks, besides 
 adding to their stock of fancy phrases and deep and 
 mystical knowledge. 
 
 Take decided ground against amusements, every- 
 thing bearing that name being wicked. Besides, they 
 consume time that may so much better be employed 
 by your children taking airings on the backs of car- 
 riages, and facetiously ringing door-bells. Be espe- 
 cially particular about social amusements. Scripture 
 says somewhere that " it is not good that man should 
 be in company" so keep your children alone as much 
 as possible. It will improve their manners and 
 morals, and make them more gentle and engaging. 
 To that end, never do anything yourselves to secure 
 agreeable associates for your children, and be sure to 
 frown on any that they themselves may secure. That 
 may serve to thin out the timid and retiring, and thus 
 leave your children to a closer intimacy with those of 
 more decided traits of character. 
 
 Dancing is not to be tolerated on any terms; it 
 consumes precious time that may so much better be 
 employed lolling around or sky-larking. Besides, 
 what can be expected of young lads who spend their 
 time bowing and scraping and hopping around among 
 pretty young misses? Any one with half an eye 
 must see that it tends to destroy all independence of 
 character, so that they never could be depended 
 upon in an emergency to rob a house or pelt an apple- 
 woman. The thing is absurd. 
 
 Indeed, object to all definite modes of spending idle 
 time, such as singing-schools, swimming-schools gym- 
 3*
 
 30 HINTS FOR PROMOTING JUVENILE DEPRAVITY. 
 
 nasiums, and the like, especially if they cost money. 
 The great thing is to make your children apt schol- 
 ars and ready reckoners, so that they can cry news- 
 papers and peddle apples to advantage and save the 
 half cents. The doctrine that parents have anything 
 to do with the physical, moral and social culture of 
 their children, is all a whim, and was exploded long 
 ago. Manners and morals come by nature, and as to 
 health, it is time enough to look after that when it is 
 lost. 
 
 In a word beware of doing anything special 
 towards employing your children's leisure hours 
 and you need have no fear for the result. That 
 great pedestrian and contractor, who represents him- 
 self as " going to and fro and up and down in the 
 earth," is always short of hands, especially in the 
 children's department ; and when he finds them idling 
 around is always ready to take them into his employ. 
 He will thus kindly relieve you of the burden of 
 superintending their amusements, and leave you to 
 the more appropriate employment of founding prison- 
 er's friends societies.
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 CANONICAL AMUSEMENTS. 
 
 THE leading, and almost only way of entertaining 
 in New England, is through the medium of evening 
 parties. Breakfast and dinner parties are compar- 
 atively of little account among us. Technically, 
 these evening parties are supposed to be designed 
 for social enjoyment. But how seldom does the spirit 
 of the entertainment come up to the manifesto. Cer- 
 tain it is that as now conducted, they afford little 
 enjoyment to those who give them, unless they find 
 it in a total rout of everything about the house, and 
 a general surrender of the premises to the commis- 
 sary, followed by a dismal entailment of unsatisfied 
 and unsatisfying bills. "With most people here, a 
 party is seldom ventured upon without long and 
 patient meditation and family conference, nor perpe- 
 trated without being followed by hearty repentance. 
 The statistics of parties here, showing the relative 
 number of those having the ability who have ventured 
 one, to those who have dared a second or third, 
 would be very curious ; and show, I think, that there 
 are some things, after all, that are too much for Yankee 
 courage. 
 
 There are a good many things that have concurred 
 in bringing about this inhospitable, unsocial state of
 
 32 CANONICAL AMUSEMENTS. 
 
 things. In the first place, the popular prejudice 
 against enjoyments of all kinds, and against social 
 enjoyments in particular, early tended to make us an 
 unsocial people. Then, too, social culture was so 
 much neglected that when the people did come 
 together, few could enjoy it. It was under the 
 pressure of such a state of things that our present 
 practice of bounteous feeding at parties grew up. 
 Indeed, for a long time, there was nothing else that 
 one could do on such occasions that was really legiti- 
 mate. Few could converse with any enjoyment to 
 themselves or others; music, for a long time was a rare 
 accomplishment, while dancing and cards were taboo 
 and contraband altogether. But then, theologians, 
 however they differed about the propriety of music, 
 cards and dancing, all agreed that eating and drinking 
 were entirely canonical, and hence the supper soon 
 grew to be the leading feature in the social circle, 
 infusing new life into all the company. What was 
 wanting in joyousness, was made up in genuine 
 heartiness ; and what enjoyment social culture, wit 
 and taste did not furnish, the pastry cook did. 
 
 It is to be regretted that, now, when there has been 
 such a great improvement in our social enjoyments, 
 and we have so many other and better modes of 
 entertaining each other than our ancestors had, we 
 should still adhere to the supper table as the very 
 soul of the entertainment. It is very sure that the 
 more refined the society, the less is there thought of 
 it. The Hoosier greets his friends with a roasted ox ; 
 Pat, his, with a generous effusion of the tap; the 
 sturdy rustic, his, with a bounteous hot supper ; the 
 American cit, his, with champagne and oysters ; the
 
 CANONICAL AMUSEMENTS. 33 
 
 English gentleman, his, with more pomp and less 
 oysters; while the Germans and French pay but little 
 regard to all those, and rely on the social enjoyments 
 of the hour. Wherever social enjoyments are consid- 
 ered a part of every-day life, to be provided for as 
 they do for their other want:?, extravagant outlays for 
 what are sometimes quaintly called " creature com- 
 forts," are never made. The more people accustom 
 themselves to entertain, the less they think of those 
 things. 
 
 It is a common remark of well-informed strangers 
 who visit us, that we do not appear to be a happy 
 people. The remark is a just one. We are not a 
 happy people. The truth is that all our plans are 
 negative, not positive. All our energies are bent on 
 warding off evils, instead of attempting to promote 
 our own and others' happiness as a good in itself. 
 Our houses are so fortified round about with moats 
 and scarps and counter-scarps to keep out want, and 
 make them appear formidable to the world, that they 
 are little better than feudal castles that look down 
 defiantly upon the passers-by, and warn off all sorts 
 of guests, the sprightly, joyous and happy, as well as 
 the rest. Some one has described the Englishman's 
 idea of enjoyment as summed up in a " sea-coal fire, 
 and doors well bolted against intruders." Ours is not 
 much better. 
 
 Enjoyments are regarded too much in the light of 
 luxuries that are only to be indulged in quarterly or 
 semi-annually, rather than as something that belongs 
 to every-day life. The sums that are now squandered 
 in one of our annual parties, would, in the hands of a 
 Parisian lady of taste and refinement, defray the
 
 34 CANONICAL AMUSEMENTS. 
 
 expenses of a round of social entertainments for a 
 whole season. Our want of economy in those things 
 arises from the fact that we have been taught to 
 regard everything in the nature of enjoyment that 
 ranges beyond food and shelter, sleep and a Sunday 
 sermon, as something entirely useless, if not injurious, 
 whereas the best course to pursue to make people 
 better, is to begin by making them happier.
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 ELEVATING TENDENCY OF SOAP AND WATER. 
 
 IT has always been conceded that there is a very 
 intimate connection between cleanliness and virtue, 
 but still few quite comprehend, in all its fulness, the 
 troop of little family blessings, sweet smiles, cheerful 
 words and kind acts that lie concealed in the well- 
 filled ewer and basin, with the nice little cake of 
 Windsor, and neatly folded white towels by their 
 side, waiting to come out on call. And then what a 
 host of domestic enjoyments spring from that much 
 abused washing-day ! The Sabbath would be but half 
 a Sabbath without it. Tristam Shandy is by no 
 means the only person who has felt the elevating ten- 
 dency of a clean shirt. The mind will sympathize 
 with the body. One of the best preventatives of 
 Sabbath-breaking is a nicely-folded Sunday suit. No 
 boy ever carried off the prizes at school without that 
 " shining morning face," and as for men, there is no 
 amount of assurance that can stand up under the dis- 
 couraging load of soiled linen and a seedy hat. Few 
 realize the moral character of the toilet. Hundreds 
 feel irritable and peevish all day long, without once 
 dreaming that they put on their temper with their 
 reeking dicky, and stepped at once into their dusty 
 boots and a family jar.
 
 36 ELEVATING TENDENCY OP SOAP AND WATER. 
 
 A filthy people never were and never can be a 
 moral people. The cleanest cities are the most 
 orderly and moral, and so, too, the cleanest part of 
 any given city is the most orderly and moral part. 
 
 I cannot help looking upon our Croton Aqueducts 
 and Lake Cochituates as whole fountains of virtue, 
 and our soap-boilers as standing clearly at the head of 
 the moral reformers. In that point of view, each 
 hydrant in our streets, with its shining pewter cup 
 dangling lovingly by its side, like the keys to the 
 apron-string of some fond grandmother, suggestive of 
 good things in store, seems a stationary temperance 
 lecturer, crying at the top of his voice, " Walk up, 
 gentlemen walk up ; here is your fine liquor, fresh 
 from the vintner ; no adulterations here walk up ! " 
 And then the sight of the little group around it, wait- 
 ing for the "loving cup," old men and young children, 
 dusty, shaggy-brow T ed. laborers, and trig and trim 
 school children, taking a tiff of the invigorating bev- 
 erage, and then walking briskly away what is there 
 that affords a more pleasing picture? It is enjoy- 
 ment to look at them. One such hydrant ought to be 
 rated as equivalent to one good dozen of police, bright 
 buttons and all. 
 
 But there is another feature to this picture not yet 
 ready in this country for the canvas. There are 
 thousands of families in our cities that occupy only 
 one, or, at most, only two rooms. It will be seen at 
 once that those families are not in a situation to obtain 
 all the benefits that naturally belong to a full supply 
 of water. Common decency will prevent their availing 
 themselves of all the advantages of bathing; and then 
 their cramped room and insufficient means for heating
 
 ELEVATING TENDENCY OF SOAP AND WATER. 37 
 
 water will shut them out from obtaining all the good 
 it has in store for them, in the way of keeping their 
 clothes clean and tidy. For those classes there should 
 be in every ward of each city in our land, public 
 Wash Houses, where the needy can go and get their 
 bath, and carry their clothes, and wash, dry and iron 
 them, at a very slight expense. In London, Liver- 
 pool, Paris, and the other large cities of Europe, such 
 wash houses have been, within a few years, provided, 
 and they have been found to be great public bless- 
 ings. For a pennj or two, the poor woman has her 
 tub of hot water, with apparatus for drying and ironing 
 her clothes, or her bathing-room and tub of water for 
 a bath. It has been found that such accommodations 
 can be afforded at a very slight expense. The waste 
 steam from a boiler, such as can be found in every 
 ward of any considerable city, would be amply suf- 
 ficent to heat all the water wanted for an ordinary 
 wash house of that description. 
 
 It is not precept that is wanted to carry forward 
 moral works, so much as actual helps to make the 
 people more cleanly, more comfortable, and hence, 
 happier and better. The Old World is now far in 
 advance of the New in devising substantial helps for 
 the poor in their poverty ; the New far in advance of 
 the Old in affording the poor that liberty of thought 
 and action that may enable them to put poverty and 
 all its trials far away. What is wanted is a union of 
 both of those agencies in the good work. 
 4
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 STRAITS OF A MAN OP POETUNE. 
 
 As I was sauntering down Broadway the other day, 
 who should I see approaching, with hand extended, 
 but my old friend, Charles Bender, whom I had missed 
 from earth and classed with the lost pleiad long ago. 
 " How do you do, Bender ? " and " How are you, 
 Carl ? " with a good honest shake of the hand, fol- 
 lowed each other in rapid succession. 
 
 I had known Bender in former days, when he was 
 a good, hard-working, contented attorney ; but, poor 
 fellow, he had an unlucky, childless uncle, who died 
 one day, leaving him fortune enough to craze a com- 
 mon man. And what made it worse, was the fact that 
 the whole was so admirably invested that Bender had 
 nothing to do but collect and spend the dividends. 
 Very soon, it became apparent that his clients had 
 taken the hint, and voted him too independent to do 
 their business, and so his office was becoming quite a 
 solitude. Then Bender's friends were mostly brisk 
 business men, and soon it was clear that they, too, 
 were shying him, lest, being a man of leisure, he 
 should hold them too long by the button. I had seen 
 him pass from one stage of sadness to another, first, 
 a hanger-on at picture-galleries and rehearsals ; then 
 I had heard of him personating the Grand Turk at
 
 STRAITS OF A MAN OF FORTUNE. 39 
 
 the Springs ; after that came tidings that he was at 
 Washington, supporting the character of a Congres- 
 sional beau ; then came rumors that he had been seen 
 escaping from Paris in the midst of a revolution, in a 
 cab, and there all trace of him was lost. 
 
 It soon became clear that Bender and I had too 
 many exciting topics to discuss to be disposed of on 
 the pave, so it was moved and carried that we should 
 adjourn to a snug coffee-room, and make an afternoon 
 of it. Bender was evidently in high spirits, and 
 called on, and did the honors like a man who had the 
 world at- an advantage. Like an inveterate bachelor 
 as he was, while I was meditating how to probe his 
 history, and find out by what mighty magic he had 
 achieved happiness again, he had entered upon busi- 
 ness at once, and was cross-examining me, and tracing 
 down the history of a half score of his old flames, 
 before I could get in a word. As luck would have it, 
 they were a choice collection, and had taken well, so 
 that by the time Bender had reached his third cup, 
 they had all been duly married and settled happily ; 
 and then he was ready to go on with his story. 
 
 " My story is a short one," said Bender, as he drew 
 up to the fire, and lighted his cigar, " for a life of 
 leisure has little of incident. If it has few annoy- 
 ances, it has no blessings. I was wearied with it 
 before the first year had ended, and so sought refuge 
 in travel. I visited foreign countries without object, 
 wandered there without interest, and returned more 
 wearied and sad than I went. I then endeavored to 
 interest myself in works of benevolence. At first, I 
 had a mania for charitable societies. I was duly 
 appointed one of the ' Council of Universal Benevo-
 
 40 STRAITS OF A MAN OF FORTUNE. 
 
 lence,' that met once a week, and had in hand multi- 
 tudes of projects, that were one day to revolutionize 
 society, and carry happiness and content to every 
 heart. But I soon grew weary of vain babble about 
 schemes for the future, while we were losing sight 
 altogether of the present. At length, on being desig- 
 nated by my fellows to the presidency of the 'Epitaph 
 Society/ designed to furnish suitable epitaphs for the 
 victims of want, I gave up in despair, and retired 
 from the Council ; and ever since have been looked 
 upon by them as wanting in sympathy for the poor. 
 
 " Disgusted with sending relief, I tried what virtue 
 there was in carrying it. I sought out and relieved 
 the wretched and the destitute, and when I saw how 
 their eyes glistened with joy as I fed and warmed 
 them, and heard their devout benediction, I said to 
 myself, ' I have at last solved the problem of alms- 
 giving. Surely, there can be nothing but good in 
 following a life of charity like this.' In a short time, 
 however, as I was entering one of the dwellings of 
 the destitute, I overheard the mother of a family that 
 I had often assisted, declining her landlord's offer of 
 employment, and saying, 'And sure, do you think I will 
 let Johnny work for your dirty shilling a day, when 
 the good man comes wakely and pays the rint him- 
 self?" I turned away from further eaves-dropping, 
 to retrace my way home in sadness. Doubt from that 
 moment began to gather over my cherished theory. 
 I said to myself, ' And can it be that in attempting to 
 escape from indolence myself, I am fostering it in 
 others ? " and diligent observation soon compelled me 
 to believe that I was. Where at first a few shillings 
 had sufficed, a few months or a year later, as many
 
 STRAITS OF A MAN OP FORTUNE. 41 
 
 dollars hardly satisfied. None seemed to improve 
 under my bounty, and few seemed to aspire after it. 
 Those who had once felt my assistance, afterwards 
 relied on it, and took courage to be idle ; and even 
 the diligent took counsel from them to deserve charity 
 by being idle themselves. 
 
 " While I was thus pained and in doubt, the term 
 of credit on a great portion of my capital had expired, 
 and I was notified to attend and receive it. A new 
 era was opening upon me. Hitherto I had had no 
 experience in investing, and now I was to inquire 
 and doubt about securities. One day after I had 
 been on 'Change, considering and rejecting, as I was 
 wending my way thoughtfully home, in doubt what I 
 should do with my money, who should I see but 
 Uncle Ned and his wife staring very wishfully at a 
 little cobbler's stall, labelled in taking capitals, ' This 
 stock and stand for sale.' I had known them long as a 
 poor but industrious couple, and so stopped to inquire 
 whether they were thinking of making a purchase. 
 ' No,' said Uncle Ned, ' there is no such good luck, I 
 am afraid, in store for us ; but Nancy has just been 
 saying how happy we should be if some one would 
 come along and lend us the money to buy this stall, 
 and how soon we could save enough to return it with 
 interest.' 
 
 " His hint was well-timed. I was in the mood, and 
 so made him the loan without further parley. After 
 that, day by day, as I saw my industrious cobbler 
 plying the waxed end, and noted the evidences of 
 thrift about him, I felt that I had touched a new 
 chord. Before, I had given the poor bread ; now, I 
 was putting them in the way to earn it. Before, I 
 4*
 
 42 STRAITS OP A MAN OP FORTUNE. 
 
 had been bidding for indolence ; now, I was bidding 
 for industry. My new mode of administering alms 
 was so fascinating, and my industrious cobbler was 
 so grateful and loquacious, that you may suppose I 
 was not long in obscurity. Applicants for loans mul- 
 tiplied, all of whom were forewarned that aid was 
 only furnished to the honest and industrious, and then 
 only by way of loan, to provide them the tools with 
 which they were to achieve their own livelihood. To 
 be brief, what began in accident has now ripened into 
 system. I am now the creditor of hundreds of the 
 industrious poor. To one, I loan means to buy a 
 hand-cart, and to another, means to stock a little 
 toy or candy stand. But enough for to-day. Come 
 again, and let me introduce you to my loan office and 
 my debtors." 
 
 With many thanks, I took leave, promising to avail 
 myself of his invitation; and thus ended my first 
 interview with a happy man of fortune and of leisure.
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 PARKS AND PROMENADES. 
 
 COMMERCE may make a great city, but it must be 
 allied to taste and art to make a famous and a wealthy 
 one. Trade creates wealth, but it cannot retain it. 
 As soon as acquired, its possessor, if not the merest 
 slave to traffic, seeks a higher good amid scenes that 
 please the eye and gratify the taste. It has always 
 been so since the days of Babylon the great, with her 
 hundred gates of brass, and her wonderful towers and 
 hanging gardens. It was the beauty and splendor of 
 Jerusalem, enthroned like a queen on Mount Moriah, 
 with her unrivalled temple, that drew wealth and 
 travellers from afar, and made even the ships of 
 Tarshish tributary unto her. Alexandria, Thebes, 
 Athens all the cities famous of old for their wealth 
 and influence, were great centres of attraction for the 
 beauty of their squares and gardens, and their imper- 
 ishable monuments of taste and art. It was not until 
 Rome had plundered them, and enriched her forums, 
 squares and temples with their choicest works of art, 
 that she succeeded in supplanting them. So, in 
 modern times, it was not until Paris had laid all 
 Europe under contribution for the beautiful and 
 curious to establish her Louvre and adorn her public 
 edifices and places, that she became, as she is, the 
 capital of the world.
 
 44 PARKS AND PROMENADES. 
 
 It is in Paris more than anywhere else, that travel- 
 lers now congregate, and it is because she does the 
 most for their enjoyment. The stranger, the moment 
 he enters her gates, is, as it were, presented with the 
 freedom of the city. All her treasures of science and 
 art are laid at his feet. The Louvre, the Royal 
 Library, the Garden of Plants, the Museum of Natural 
 History, the lectures before all her learned societies, 
 and all of them the most perfect of their kind in the 
 world, are thrown open to him for his amusement and 
 instruction without fee or reward. "Wherever he 
 turns he finds something to admire. She is the capi- 
 tal, because she is the most beautiful city in the 
 world has the most to please the eye, improve the 
 taste, and interest the traveller. One fact alone will 
 suffice to illustrate the practical advantages of this 
 attention to the beautiful, and to the entertainment 
 of the stranger. It is estimated that there are in 
 Paris, on an average, at least one thousand of our 
 own countrymen all the time. At a reasonable esti- 
 mate, we shall find that we alone, are paying her 
 millions of dollars annually for mere entertainment. 
 Great Britain is paying her every year ten times 
 that sum for the same ; and other nations are paying 
 in greater or less proportion, according as they 
 have or have not similar works of taste and art nearer 
 home. 
 
 All the wealthiest cities in Europe are the most 
 beautiful. Not beautiful because of their wealth, 
 since even wealth cannot always create spacious 
 parks and promenades. Those have to be reserved 
 early, and are the cause, not the effect of wealth. 
 Fortunes made in the provinces are spent in the
 
 PARKS AND PROMENADES. 45 
 
 capitals. The cotton lord of Manchester to-day is the 
 retired capitalist of Belgrave Square to-morrow. Lon- 
 don is the most beautiful as well as the most wealthy 
 city in Great Britain. Her Hyde Park is almost as 
 large as the original limits of Boston, and makes one 
 of the most beautiful drives in the world. Then there 
 is Regent's Park, very spacious, filled with flowers 
 and shrubbery, and ponds and villas ; Kensington 
 Gardens, Lincoln Inn Fields, and more than eighty 
 squares, many of them containing from ten to fifteen 
 acres each. Then there are St. Paul's, "Westminster 
 Abbey, the Tower, the British Museum, and a thou- 
 sand other things to interest and delight. It is these 
 things that make her the centre of all the fashion, 
 wealth, genius and taste of the British Empire. 
 Sweep all these away, or coin them into gold, and 
 leave nothing but docks, and brick and mortar, and 
 Edinburgh, Dublin and Bath, with their parks and 
 promenades, and the sweet hills and valleys of Eng- 
 land, would rob London of half her wealth and fashion 
 in a twelvemonth. Most of the wealthiest men of 
 London never made a dollar by merchandise in their 
 lives. So it is in Paris and most of the capitals of 
 Europe. 
 
 We have yet a great lesson to learn in this country 
 and happy will it be for us if it does not come too 
 late.' When we compare our own cities with those of 
 Europe, one cannot help feeling sad. We have had 
 such opportunities, and we have so heedlessly thrown 
 them away. We cannot yet rival them in artificial 
 embellishments that cannot be expected. It takes 
 time for those. But where we might have even 
 excelled them, we have failed altogether. One would
 
 46 PARKS AND PROMENADES 
 
 have thought, where land is so cheap as it is with 
 us, especially in the early history of our cities, that 
 we might, at least, have laid out spacious parks, 
 gardens and squares. Yet even in that particular, 
 we are disgracefully behind every city of note in 
 Europe. London has more land in one of her parks, 
 than is to be found in all the parks united, in all our 
 cities on the Atlantic board, beginning at Bangor and 
 ending at New Orleans. 
 
 Paris, too, has more land appropriated to the public 
 enjoyment in her Tuilleries, Champs Elyssees, Boule- 
 vards, Bois de Bologne, and public places, than is so 
 set apart in all the cities of our Union put together. 
 The same is true, in a less degree, of all the other 
 great cities of Europe that claim the attention of the 
 traveller and the man of leisure and taste. They are 
 laid out and adorned so as to attract and not to repel. 
 St. Petersburg is a modern city, but it was laid out 
 by that truly great man, Peter the Great, with a view 
 to just what I have been inculcating here ; and by 
 making it a beautiful city as he did, he did more to 
 bring around him the whole wealth and nobility of 
 Eussia, than he could have done by all the navigation 
 acts or imperial edicts that he could have issued 
 during his entire reign.
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 JURY TRIALS AND TRIALS OF THE JURY. 
 
 LET no one accuse man of being fickle. Nothing 
 could be farther from the truth. He is the very pink 
 of constancy. He takes to things as he finds them as 
 naturally as a duck takes to the water. Old opinions 
 he adopts without a question, and old customs with- 
 out a thought. Be they good or bad, well or ill, wise 
 or simple, up to the times or a thousand years behind 
 them, it is all one to him. What was, is, and what 
 has been, must be. Grounded on a rock, or bedded in 
 the sand, the winds and floods are equally powerless 
 against them. There is nothing like the constancy 
 of the whole human race to the customs and opinions 
 in which they were educated, especially if they are 
 very absurd. Reason undoubtedly has something to 
 do with establishing national opinions and customs, 
 but how seldom does it have anything to do with their 
 continuance. 
 
 We have a case in point in our jury trials. When 
 they were established in England, general intelligence 
 among the people was at a very low ebb. The united 
 acquirements of the jurors on any given panel then, 
 would hardly have equalled those of a common Yan- 
 kee school-boy now; and as to independence of 
 character, there was none of it. The judge was a 
 lord, and the jurors, nobodies, They were clay, and
 
 48 JUEY TRIALS AND TRIALS OF THE JURY. 
 
 he was the potter. He always told them how they 
 ought to find, and generally how they must find, and 
 they did it. The case is not very different there now. 
 The rule requiring the assent of each mind on the 
 jury then might have been very well, because the 
 subserviency of the judge to the government, and of 
 the jurors to the court, was so universal and marked 
 in those days, that the only hope then was that there 
 would be one independent mind there to stand up 
 against wrong, if perchance any was attempted. 
 
 But what reason is there now for our rule requiring 
 unanimity on the jury, in any and every case, from 
 the larceny of a tea-pot to Sambo's claim for washing 
 a window? Who, now, outside of Bedlam, if he were 
 called upon to frame a mode for deciding disputed 
 questions, would pitch upon our present mode requir- 
 ing twelve full-grown, educated men, to agree to a 
 penny's worth, and on every point, for one or the other 
 party, before the dispute could be settled. If the 
 matter now was entirely new, not one man in a hun- 
 dred would believe that a disputed point could, by 
 any chance, be settled unanimously. 
 
 Unanimity 1 why, we have no such thing as una- 
 nimity now. That day is passed. We have reached 
 such a stage of general intelligence, inquiry and 
 wilfulness, if you please, that there is no unanimity 
 on any question that the parties care a stiver about. 
 It is only on subjects that they are wholly indifferent 
 about, that men now agree. The only reason why 
 our juries now ever agree is, that half the cases tried 
 are not worth disputing about, and it does n't matter 
 a pin's head to anybody but the parties, which wins ; 
 and that the claims of business and of the trencher,
 
 JURY TRIALS AND TRIALS OP THE JURY. 49 
 
 and of tired wives and sick children, drive minorities, 
 in other and more important cases, into concessions 
 inconsistent with their oaths, and that their hearts 
 condemn. 
 
 The same jury that has agreed to a penny, how 
 much Richard Roe ought to recover of the Smashum- 
 up Railroad, for that most difficult thing of all others 
 to estimate, a broken head, after marking all round, 
 some, one hundred dollars, and some ten thousand, 
 would, on inspection, divide on the color of his eyes, 
 disagree on the direction of the wind, wrangle on 
 politics, split on the modern drama question, and go 
 all to pieces on religion. And yet these same men 
 must be unanimous to a farthing on the value of a 
 sound head. Never was there any greater absurdity; 
 and yet to-day, let the absolute perfectibility of jury 
 trials, including the unanimity rule, be questioned, 
 and nine hundred out of every thousand of our peo- 
 ple shall turn up their eyes in holy horror ; and ninety- 
 nine of the other one hundred would see no use of 
 living if such fanaticism was to be tolerated. Such 
 is our love for old customs. 
 
 But let us think of it. The majority rule governs 
 now in almost everything. The law by which a 
 citizen is consigned to the gallows is passed by a bare 
 majority ; every award of referees may be settled by 
 the majority of the arbitrators. We make constitu- 
 tions to bind whole communities and their seed after 
 them, declare wars that deluge whole nations in 
 blood; and anything and everything, bad or good, 
 beautiful or awful, that man may do, man now does 
 by a bare casting vote, excepting to determine the 
 5
 
 50 JURY TRIALS AND TRIALS OP THE JURY. 
 
 price of pea-nuts, and the like, in a court of law ; 
 there we must have unanimity. 
 
 The worst feature in the unanimity rule is in the 
 fact that it begets a trimming disposition on the part 
 of all but one or two master spirits on the jury. To 
 be found in a minority is so uncomfortable a position, 
 that very soon the majority of the jurymen follow, at 
 once and without objection, the two or three leading 
 ones on their panel. Instead of parties getting the 
 independent judgment of a majority of the jury, on 
 their case, it is generally the judgment of some two 
 or three of the most self-willed and obstinate of the 
 number, not always men the most clear-headed and 
 of the soundest judgment. Often entirely the reverse. 
 What is wanted is the independent judgment of a 
 majority of the jury, honestly and fearlessly and 
 decisively expressed. 
 
 By adopting the majority rule in our jury room, we 
 should be quite sure to get the independent judgment 
 of at least seven out of the twelve men, where wo 
 now only get the judgment of some one, two, three 
 or four. Each juryman would then be remitted to 
 his native independence of character, and would .feel 
 entitled to stand by his own judgment in the matter 
 at issue. And what is better than all, he would not 
 be called upon from every quarter to make terms with 
 his conscience, and tamper with his oath. 
 
 How, then, does it happen that juries so often 
 agree? It comes from that facility that mankind have 
 for adapting themselves to circumstances. They 
 enter the jury box impressed with the difficulties of 
 their position. One of the first lessons they learn is 
 concession, and the importance, above everything, of
 
 JURY TRIALS AND TRIALS OF THE JURY. 51 
 
 coming to some agreement. The judge presses it 
 upon them in his charge ; the officers of the court 
 whisper it in their ears ; the witnesses and spectators 
 are proclaiming it in their hearing, and the tired and 
 worn-out litigants seem to be invoking it. Then 
 there is the close, uncomfortable jury room, the im- 
 portunity of the majority, the demands of hunger, the 
 thick-coming fancies of home, lonely wives and press- 
 ing duties all vociferating for agreement. Worn 
 out with fatigue, hunger, and watching ; exhausted 
 with answering objections, and with constant badger- 
 ing ; nervous, dispirited and sad ; in a strait between 
 duty and inclination, one after another of the minority 
 yields ; and at last, at half-past ten P. M., supperless 
 and sleepy, the last of the obstinate gives in, consents 
 to a verdict, and they separate. The next morning 
 it is recorded as the sworn judgment of twelve 
 men. 
 
 But sometimes the jury are at variance on the 
 amount. The case is assault and battery, slander or 
 some other case sounding in damages. The majority 
 of the jury perhaps have marked quite judiciously, a 
 reasonable sum, under all the circumstances. Three 
 or four have marked wild. One, say, has marked five 
 dollars, while another has marked a thousand. What 
 is to be done? They talk, they reason, and all to no 
 purpose. At length they agree to mark all round 
 add the whole number together divide the sum by 
 twelve and that the quotient shall be their verdict. 
 It is done, and a mean sum is hit upon, which is not 
 precisely the sum marked by any one man on the jury, 
 and yet they adopt it as the verdict of the jury. 
 Sometimes, and generally in such cases, it is the only
 
 52 JUEY TRIALS AND TRIALS OF THE JURY. 
 
 way an agreement can be brought about. But what 
 a commentary is it on the unanimity rule, requiring 
 the whole twelve to adopt a sum that was not the 
 judgment of any one of them. 
 
 But a worse feature of that mode is yet to be stated. 
 Sometimes, when that mode of arriving at a verdict 
 has been agreed upon, those persons who have marked 
 low, will mark much lower, so as to bring the average 
 nearer the mark ; and those who have marked high, 
 mark higher, so as to bring the average nearer their 
 mark. In that way it has often happened that the 
 average so struck was higher than the sum demanded 
 in the writ. And verdicts have often been rendered 
 tinder the operation of such, to a certain extent, neces- 
 sary proceedings in the jury room, that the attorney 
 of the prevailing party has been under the necessity 
 of remitting a portion of the verdict on the spot, to 
 save it from being set aside.
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 THE DRAMA. 
 
 ABOUT all the progress in civilization that has been 
 made in the world, has been the result of the training 
 and culture of the school-room, of which the theatre 
 is one. And the nations of the earth have taken rank 
 from age to age, just about in proportion as they 
 have fostered and employed it. 
 
 In most of the schools of the world, however 
 denominated, the pupils are only taught the rudi- 
 ments of knowledge, merely the names of the tools 
 with which they are afterwards expected to work 
 and achieve their several fortunes in life, while the 
 drama takes them far beyond all that, into the grand 
 old workshop of the world, there to look down upon 
 the workmen of every place and all time, to mark 
 just what tools they employ, how they handle them, 
 and with what success. 
 
 The lessons taught on the stage are entirely 
 
 different and beyond those taught in the ordinary 
 
 seminaries of learning. It is like passing from the 
 
 .lecture-room, from hearing of simples, of gases, of 
 
 crucibles and retorts, into the laboratory itself, to see 
 
 those agencies in use and those forces employed. 
 
 The ordinary schooling is as if the pupil should be 
 
 led along the Paris Louvre, gazing on and being told 
 
 5*
 
 54 THE DRAMA. 
 
 the story of the several pictures on its walls. But 
 the drama is as if each of those pictures should start 
 into life as he approached, the old warriors in one of 
 its battle-pieces once more seen buckling on their 
 armor for the encounter ; as if he should see the little 
 scene of the picture enlarge until it became a wide 
 extended plain, covered with armed men, could hear 
 the bugle note that sounded to the charge, the roar 
 of the cannon, the bursting of the shells, the shouts 
 of the victors and all the din and turbulence of 
 battle. 
 
 The ancient Greeks were the first to appreciate 
 this most striking and efficient mode of education, 
 and they were the first to found the drama and give 
 it laws. And it was while the drama enlisted the 
 talents of the most gifted minds among them, and 
 numbered among its patrons and pupils the whole 
 nation, that Greece rose to her greatest height, and 
 her people were accounted the most cultivated in the 
 world. The Romans never adopted the drama as a 
 part of their system of education, or as a leading 
 feature of their diversions. During all the dark ages, 
 when the Roman priesthood held gloomy sway over 
 all Europe, the drama was under a quasi prohibition, 
 and is to this day in the states of the church and in 
 other places more immediately subject to priestly 
 rule. After the Reformation the drama began to enlist 
 attention again, and in France, and afterwards in 
 England, dramatic literature soon took the first place 
 in the world of letters, and the dramatic art soon 
 stood forth as the first and chief of arts. For the 
 last century and more it has been steadily growing 
 in public favor, until it commands the approbation
 
 THE DRAMA. 55 
 
 and patronage of the most influential and cultivated 
 classes in all those countries where it has any foot- 
 hold whatever. The people of those two nations 
 where it has been most employed are now clearly the 
 most cultivated and refined people on the face of the 
 earth, and those two nations are clearly the foremost 
 nations of the world. The world is now governed, 
 and has been for centuries, by men taught in the 
 school of the drama. 
 
 "\Vhcn we consider the nature of man, how much 
 more he is moved by sight than by sound, by stirring 
 scenes before him than by hearing accounts of them, 
 and remember that the peculiar characteristic of the 
 drama is to teach by action rather than by words, by 
 appeals to the eye and ear both, instead of to one of 
 them only, the persistent and bitter hostility of the 
 church to its use is, to say the least, passing strange. 
 It seems almost like resisting a natural law ; like 
 refusing to use both of those senses, together, in re- 
 lation to all that is past. 
 
 It is as if the church should say to the eye, " You 
 are very well in your way, for present purposes, to 
 hunt a needle, or spy a moat, but very dangerous in 
 all past transactions. As to all those matters, the 
 battles of the Trojans, the wars of the Roses, the vir- 
 tues and crimes, the good and bad of former ages, 
 you are too sharp, and see too much, and we dare not 
 trust you." 
 
 It is as if the church should say, "We don't believe 
 in reenacting anything. Let by-gones be by-gones, 
 unless they are done up in verse by Homer, in history 
 by Macaulay, or in fiction by Sir Walter, and taken in 
 an easy chair by the fireside. We think very well of
 
 56 THE DRAMA. 
 
 the eye for present purposes, as aids to the other 
 senses, but in examining the past we will have none 
 of it." 
 
 If the natural tendency of the drama was towards 
 evil, and that only, it would entirely justify that hos- 
 tility; but there is no more propriety for so charging, 
 than for making the same charge against the pulpit, 
 the school-house or the printing-press. They are 
 each pliant instruments in the hands of man, ready to 
 do his will. He can mould them to his purpose at his 
 pleasure. 
 
 The idea that any good can come from the mere 
 cold frown of the Christian world, on such a living, 
 stirring, energetic engine of influence as the drama, 
 is all as idle as the wind. This is not the age for any 
 such sickly sentimentality. The times demand manli- 
 ness and courage. If any good is to be done now, it 
 is by action, and not by inaction. The church may 
 have a hand in directing the vast influence of the 
 drama, but can never annul it. Her clear and 
 bounden duty is to take her place in the ranks, as she 
 has in politics, literature, the arts and in arms, and 
 resolve to make the drama her ally and friend. 
 
 I do not see how any one can doubt that the 
 drama can be made a valuable auxiliary in the work 
 of educating us for honor, virtue and happiness. It 
 brings before us past scenes as nothing else can. It 
 brings before us, too, society past and present, giving 
 all an opportunity to see and know the habits, man- 
 ners, and customs of past times, as well as the present, 
 and of different places and classes, so that we may 
 seize upon whatever of theirs belongs to the beauti- 
 ful and true, and shun whatever of theirs is false and
 
 THE DRAMA. 57 
 
 ruinous ; and all of that it presents to our minds so 
 much more clearly than it can be done in any other 
 way. To contend that we should copy the false 
 rather than the true, is to contend for the recstablish- 
 ment of monkery, since if that doctrine be true, then 
 is the cloister, the safest place for us all on this side 
 of the grave. Then, clearly, ignorance would be 
 bliss. 
 
 What the church is to our religious natures, and the 
 school is to our intellectual, the theatre may be made 
 to our social and moral natures. It is there that we 
 can learn better than elsewhere, if they are rightly 
 conducted, the springs of action that govern the human 
 mind and heart, and the best mode of living and acting 
 to ensure permanent happiness. And the theatre, both 
 in its arrangement and the plays presented, is as much 
 subject to the popular will, as the lecture-room, the 
 concert-room, or the church. The public can have 
 any kind and description of the drama that it wants. 
 As it is, with the whole church banded against the 
 theatre, it is going on improving from year to year. 
 The most of all of the old plays are pruned to suit 
 the more correct taste of the present age. Indeed, 
 those who go to the theatre, and see plays acted, 
 instead of reading them at home, escape many of the 
 old impurities that the mere reader still encounters. 
 And what is a very hopeful sign, is the fact that the 
 best conducted theatres, those that are the least 
 liable to objection, are the most successful. 
 
 The theatre is now, and for years has been keeping 
 step with the great moral improvements of the times. 
 Time was when it had its liquor saloon, its coarse and 
 brawling pit, and its immoral gallery. But that was
 
 58 THE DRAMA. 
 
 when the deacon might have kept the liquor saloon, 
 and the parson might have drank at his counter, and 
 yet both have been in good standing; while their 
 religious brother within, listening to the mournful 
 speculations of Hamlet, or the facetious quirks of 
 Dogberry, should have been forthwith, thereafter, 
 excommunicated, as an utter and depraved heretic. 
 
 Under the fostering care of those who believe the 
 drama to be capable of being made highly useful, all 
 those offensive features of the theatre have been 
 entirely removed. Now, in those respects, the theatre 
 stands on the same level with the concert and lecture 
 room. And what has been accomplished in those 
 respects, is only an earnest of what can be done in 
 any and every other respect where reform is needed. 
 
 Time was, too, when there was good cause of com- 
 plaint against the plays put upon the stage, both on 
 account of language, sentiment and action ; but with 
 the more liberal and generous patronage of the stage, 
 has come improvement in all those respects ; so that 
 now plays are both pruned and written for the new 
 and more elevated demands of the audience. Indeed, 
 now, for elegance, chasteness and elevation of senti- 
 ment, as a whole, the stage is on a par, if not above 
 the lecture-room, while it is infinitely above the 
 caucus house and the legislative hall. 
 
 The history of the last twenty years has fully dem- 
 onstrated that the theatre stands ready to be moulded 
 into an engine of usefulness, in any way and to any 
 extent desired, but that it must be done by patronage, 
 and not by denunciation.
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 JONATHAN ON THE ROAD TO GENTILITY. 
 
 JONATHAN is clever at almost everything except 
 gentility. There, his usual luck fails him. In all the 
 ways, and even by-ways of business, politics and 
 religion, Jot is seldom found lacking. But when he 
 undertakes to sink the business man and affect the 
 genteel, it is the least happy of all his efforts. Ho 
 can easier achieve a poem or an oration. Indeed, it 
 is seldom that you can take a Yankee much beyond 
 his depth unless you take him into the drawing-room. 
 There he seems too often to bo entirely off soundings. 
 The American eagle seldom looks less formidable than 
 when hovering over the social circle. It is no more 
 than justice to say, however, that Jonathan, though 
 naturally a little vain and presumptuous, seems per- 
 fectly conscious of this, his principal weakness, and 
 makes those occasions of solemn duty as few and far 
 between as possible. It is seldom that the most 
 heroic can be tempted beyond an annual party, and if 
 he is doomed to put on the sable weeds, he does it 
 with the more sad satisfaction that it not only serves 
 to mark his present bereavement, but postpones for a 
 year his annual trial. 
 
 I was mentioning this to my friend Blot, the re- 
 tired accountant, the other day, as we were enjoying
 
 60 JONATHAN ON THE ROAD TO GENTILITY. 
 
 together our tea and toast. As usual I found him, to 
 use his own language, quite " posted " on it. The 
 whole matter had been before the statistical society, 
 of which Mr. Blot is an active member, and he imme- 
 diately drew forth from an ancient drawer near him, 
 a bundle of papers, from which he read me some 
 curious results of their inquiries. For instance, it 
 had been found that out of three hundred and sixty 
 families that had taken decided steps towards perpe- 
 trating gentility, two hundred and ninety-four had set 
 up on cash capital alone, thirty-one on ancestral 
 dignity, twenty-two on official station, and the remain- 
 ing thirteen only, on accomplishments of the head 
 and heart. Mr. Blot remarked that the society had 
 been the most struck with the prominence given to 
 houses and horses in the race of gentility, they having 
 found that ninety per cent, of all aspiring families 
 commence their career in new and very much more 
 extensive apartments, and that ninety-nine per cent, 
 take to gentility and a fashionable turn-out simulta- 
 neously. 
 
 The minutes of the society were very full on many 
 other points, and embraced a score of curious esti- 
 mates ; but, as I detest figures, I pass them over to 
 remark that, from all I could gather, our gentility is 
 an expensive commodity, having much to do with 
 those authors of so many accomplishments, uphol- 
 sterers and Paris milliners, and those pillars of fashion, 
 confectioners and colored waiters. The statistics of 
 the society seemed to fully substantiate that public 
 station without material guaranty, and distinguished 
 ancestry without a plentiful accompaniment of oysters 
 and salad, are of no account in the fashionable world.
 
 JONATHAN ON THE 11OAD TO CKNTILITY. 61 
 
 For all practical purposes, that it had been found that 
 a grand piano and the last opera in the parlor are 
 equivalent to any three of tlie graces, and that a 
 carriage and pair stands for the whole troop. 
 
 Mr. Blot proceeded to dilate upon this national 
 peculiarity of ours, and to deduce from it reasons for 
 much of our financial delinquency and embarrassment; 
 but, being myself a stanch protectionist, and bound 
 to trace all our troubles of that kind to the unnatural 
 license \ve give ourselves to trade where we can do 
 it to the most advantage, I bade him good-night, and 
 bowed myself out, fully convinced that making money 
 the mark of gentility, instead of taste and social 
 accomplishments, could have nothing to do with cor- 
 rupting and impoverishing a people. 
 6
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 RELIGIOUS CREEDS OF NEW ENGLAND. 
 
 WHEN we remember how little it is that we know 
 of the metaphysics of heaven, the history of religious 
 creeds affords one of the most sad and humiliating 
 lessons in the record of our race. Since the date of 
 the Apostles' creed, (falsely so-called) the shortest 
 and best of all the creeds that have come down to us. 
 the world has suffered more from religious platforms 
 of belief, than from all the horrors of pestilence and 
 famine, ten times over. But, however much of arro- 
 gance, presumption and pride we find in the ancient 
 creeds, they are as nothing in comparison with those 
 that are modern. For unparalleled rashness and 
 presumption, there is nothing that can compare with 
 an old-fashioned New England Orthodox creed. 
 
 What a modern prayer is to the Lord's Prayer, or a 
 modern sermon is to the Sermon on the Mount, a 
 modern creed is to the Apostles', or any other ancient 
 creed. Those latter are all very brief, and to a few 
 cardinal points the existence of God, the birth, 
 death, and resurrection of Christ, the resurrection of 
 the body, the forgiveness of sins, and life everlasting; 
 where in a modern creed would be embraced a whole 
 body of divinity and philosophy, minute and exact, 
 covering the whole plan of the universe, from the 
 date of the creation to the end of all things.
 
 RELIGIOUS CREEDS OF NEW ENGLAND. 63 
 
 The ancient fathers had a little modesty, and 
 seemed tacitly to admit that there were some things 
 not entirely understood by them, and so made their 
 creeds as brief, and to as few points as possible. But 
 not so with the authors of modern creeds, particularly 
 those made by our pilgrim fathers and their descend- 
 ants. The authors of our New England creeds seem 
 to claim to be perfectly familiar with all the mysteries 
 of heaven and earth. There is apparently nothing 
 hidden from them. While all the wisest and best of 
 mankind arc compelled to admit that they cannot 
 account for even the least of the operations of nature 
 why earth, sun and water should cause a blade of 
 grass to grow ; why the body obeys the will ; why 
 living things spring from inert matter the manufac- 
 turers of the ten thousand different New England 
 creeds, with the most surprising recklessness, without 
 the least expression of doubt or misgiving, pronounce 
 authoritatively on all the doctrines of the Bible and 
 on all the mysteries of the universe. And then, too, 
 in ancient times the adoption of a creed was an event 
 of solemn moment, the work of kings and princes 
 and prelates, and the whole church assembled again 
 and again in council, and after diligent and careful 
 study. But here, and with us, a creed is the work 
 of a single sitting of a parish church, and adopted in 
 gross by a hand vote. 
 
 The whole truth about religious creeds lies in a 
 nut-shell. A half dozen of village dignitaries have 
 just the same right to frame a creed and hold it over 
 a village, that a pope and council have to frame one 
 and hold it over a state or a kingdom. The difference 
 is only in degree, not in principle. The history of
 
 G4 RELIGIOUS CREEDS OF NEW ENGLAND. 
 
 one New England village is the history of them all. 
 A cluster of houses, then a half dozen mortal men, 
 mechanics, tradesmen and farmers, with their pastor 
 at the head, assembled of an evening to frame a creed 
 and organize a church. It is done. The creed 
 covers one whole quire of foolscap, decides all the 
 questions of theology raised since the days of Poly- 
 carp, and is intended to be final and conclusive in all 
 matters of theology for that village forever. 
 
 Time wears on. The village increases in population, 
 in wealth and in knowledge. The villagers find more 
 time for mental culture, and enjoy better means. 
 Here and there arises dissent from some of the stanch 
 old articles of the creed. Disputes and dissensions 
 arise, the creed is impregnable, unamendable, and 
 unendurable ; and a secession ensues. The authors 
 of the old creed are no more despotic than His Holi- 
 ness the Pope, for they simply serve the seceders 
 from their church as His Holiness did Luther and his 
 followers, excommunicate them, and denounce them 
 as heretics. That is all. And as for those who do 
 not subscribe to the creed at all, they are looked upon 
 as heretics any way. The seceders, with their follow- 
 ers and friends, found a new church, but unluckily, 
 still believing in the absolute necessity of creeds, 
 they construct one not much shorter, nor much less 
 dogmatic than the first. And so they go on ; each 
 new idea, each step in knowledge, brings division and 
 a new creed, until the village is filled with antagonis- 
 tic creeds and sects. 
 
 Population increases, and so do vice and crime. 
 Where there ought to be brotherly love, there is 
 nothing but strife. Where there ought to be a band
 
 RELIGIOUS CREEDS OF NEW ENGLAND. C5 
 
 of Christians worshipping ono God, in peace and 
 unity, the stranger and traveller shall look down on 
 a village, torn with religious dissensions ; with one 
 school-house, no library, no reading-room, no hospital, 
 no home for the destitute, no museum, no village 
 green, no rural games or sports, no May-day festiv- 
 ities, no Christmas, no harvest home, no academy of 
 music, no gymnasium, no conservatory, no public 
 garden, no public walks or promenades, no riding 
 school, no gallery of art, no holidays, no social 
 gatherings, no amusements. But in place of all those, 
 he shall find six hotels, twenty-four grog-shops, twelve 
 weak and discordant religious societies, and eight 
 light gossamer-looking meeting-houses, with not one 
 solitary word or thing, within or without, suggestive 
 of heaven or heavenly things. If the world had been 
 created without tree, shrub, plant or flower, with the 
 heavens one unvarying canopy of white plaster, with- 
 out star, cloud or sunset effulgence, and earth clothed 
 in a pure garb of white ; if the temple to the Most 
 High, erected by Solomon in obedience to the divine 
 command, had been built of white pine boards, and 
 adorned after the similitude of a well-finished barn, 
 there could be nothing more entirely natural and 
 scriptural than a New England meeting-house. 
 
 The most damaging things in all New England, 
 have been those interminable, irreverent and pre- 
 sumptuous religious creeds, deciding questions that 
 no mortal man is competent to decide absolutely, and 
 attempting to decide questions for others that no 
 prudent and wise man would attempt to decide for 
 any human being but himself. If creeds were neces- 
 sary, or even useful in any degree, there would be 
 6*
 
 66 RELIGIOUS CREEDS OP NEW ENGLAND. 
 
 some apology for them. But they are not. They 
 have been a curse upon the earth from the days of 
 Arius to the present time. And for the very good 
 reason that mankind have attempted to decide and 
 settle questions by means of creeds, that God never 
 intended should be settled this side the grave. The 
 world comes to a unanimous understanding very 
 readily on all questions that admit of absolute solu- 
 tion. While nineteen centuries have been spent in 
 acrimonious disputations over this and that- article in 
 the creed about which no man has any certain knowl- 
 edge, and about which no amount of knowledge could 
 be of any service whatever; while creed manufac- 
 turers have been growing more numerous and more 
 diverse in sentiment, the world has been going on 
 agreeing absolutely on everything placed positively 
 within man's knowledge. There is no controversy 
 between Rome and the first parish in Creeddom, but 
 the sea rises and falls, but that the earth turns on its 
 axis, but that there is such a thing as heat and cold, 
 wet and dry, light and darkness ; but let Rome and 
 the first parish aforesaid, attempt to tell how and why 
 those phenomena exist, the same as they attempt to 
 tell the how and the why in the heavenly mysteries, 
 and there would be variance at once and forever. 
 
 A creed to assist in loving God and your neighbor 
 as yourself, is just as necessary and just as useful, as 
 a creed is to assist a family of children to love their 
 parents and one another. If the inhabitants of a 
 village cannot assemble around the same altar, and 
 worship God acceptably, without first understand- 
 ing and adopting a creed as to all the mysteries of 
 Godhead, and all the purposes and plans of the divine
 
 RELIGIOUS CREEDS OP NEW ENGLAND. 67 
 
 government, how then can a family of children love 
 and servo their parents acceptably, without first 
 adopting a platform of principles as to who and what 
 their parents are, and all the ethics of parental and 
 filial piety? The last would be no more absurd than 
 is the first. Where is the sane man now living who 
 would not have just as much respect for the opinion 
 of the babe in its mother's arms, on moral philosophy, 
 as that of the pope and all his nuncios on the Immacu- 
 late Conception, or any other divine mystery ? 
 
 Of all things here below, the most sublime is the 
 immortal mind. It is the only one thing that is clearly 
 above and beyond all earthly things. While all our 
 other capacities have their limit, the human mind 
 may go on improving as long as life lasts. The most 
 cultivated mind can only be said to be filled with 
 knowledge as we say of the heavens that they are 
 filled with stars. And it is the work, and only work 
 of the religious creed to stop the growth of such a 
 mind. It is to the mind what an iron shoe is to the 
 foot, or a casement of mail would be to the child's 
 head. The sectarian the idolater of a certain 
 creed, seizes upon his victim when young, or inex- 
 perienced, claps on him his creed while warm with 
 religious fervor, and the poor prisoner is straightway 
 yoked and enclosed forever. New England is dotted 
 all over with people so yoked and penned like geese 
 in flocks. There is not, probably, one in ten of them, 
 who assents in mind and heart to one-half the articles 
 of belief statedly 'read to them. Without the courage 
 to break away from bonds that oppress them, they 
 struggle on, trying to persuade themselves that they 
 believe what they do not and cannot, quite willing
 
 68 RELIGIOUS CREEDS OF NEW ENGLAND. 
 
 that their children should file off in any direction, 
 rather than come under such thraldom. And the 
 second generation now seldom do continue in the 
 same fold with the first. 
 
 We have before us many notable instances of the 
 revulsion of the human mind to those old iron creeds. 
 We have it in the fact that of all the churches founded 
 in Massachusetts by our pilgrim fathers within the 
 first century, not one in ten remained in the hands of 
 the sect that originally founded them, at the end of 
 the second century. The old creed was impregnable, 
 but not so its authors and adherents. Its followers 
 dropped into the grave, and but few of the second 
 and third generation were willing to put on the yoke. 
 The old church dwindled to a handful, were outvoted 
 and forced to give up the old edifice and find lodg- 
 ment in a smaller one near by. The history of those 
 old churches and their total religious insolvency at 
 the end of the second century from their foundation, 
 is enough of itself to settle once and forever the 
 character and worth of such creeds. It settles the 
 point that the church must be left free to grow, in 
 knowledge as well as grace, or else meet the fate that 
 clearly awaits everything else that fails to keep step 
 with the progress of the world, to wit, impoverish- 
 ment and insolvency. 
 
 The time has clearly come when this whole matter 
 of universal and indiscriminate creed manufacture 
 and general creed idolatry should be brought up, dis- 
 cussed and disposed of, for discussion is to dispose of 
 it forever. The whole thing is unnatural, unchristian, 
 unscriptural, an outrage on individual rights, and 
 everyway unworthy of our age and people.
 
 RELIGIOUS CREEDS OP NEW ENGLAND. GO 
 
 Theology is centuries and centuries behind all the 
 other sciences; and well it may be, for in everything 
 else, schools are founded to learn, but in theology no 
 such thing is thought of. The only purpose of theo- 
 logical institutions is to maintain the dogmas of the 
 founders. In other institutions it is taken for granted 
 that the science is in its infancy, and new questions 
 are started to be investigated, and if true, adopted ; 
 but in theology, new theories and questions are only 
 to be combated and demolished. It is said that at 
 Andover the professors, once in five years, either 
 have to make oath that their opinions on doctrinal 
 points remain unchanged, or be dismissed. Churches, 
 too, with creeds, have nothing to do with growth in 
 knowledge. 
 
 For more than four thousand years, including that 
 whole age illustrated by those noblest, wisest, and 
 best of men who ever walked this earth Enoch, 
 Abraham, Moses, Elijah and the prophets the chil- 
 dren of God lived and walked with Him without the 
 sign or shadow of any religious creed. They obeyed 
 the divine command, and left the rest to their Maker. 
 There were no John Calvins and Jonathan Edwardses 
 in those days. There is to be found nowhere in all 
 the Old Testament any attempt to solve questions 
 clearly beyond man's comprehension. In that respect 
 those ancient worthies stand out sublime and beauti- 
 ful as the children of faith. They erected altars, 
 made burnt offerings, went up to Jerusalem, observed 
 numerous rites and ceremonies as commanded and 
 all without one word of questioning as to the why or 
 wherefore >as is dinned in our ears now-a-days, from 
 morning till night.
 
 70 RELIGIOUS CREEDS OF NEW ENGLAND. 
 
 When the brazen serpent was lifted up before the 
 sick and despairing Israelites in the wilderness, and 
 they were told to look on it and live they had faith 
 and obeyed. But when, centuries after, the Saviour 
 of men is lifted up, and sick and despairing Gentiles 
 are told to look on Him repent, believe and live, 
 they must first know just who and what this Saviour 
 is, whether divine or human, coexistent with the 
 Father, or how otherwise. That settled to their mind, 
 then they must further settle the point whether they 
 have the power in and of themselves to either look, 
 repent, or believe, before they can think of attempting 
 to obey. To be at all consistent with us, those 
 Israelites ought to have taken time to have settled a 
 host of questions before deigning to cast their eyes 
 on the fiery serpent thus lifted up; and their valuable 
 discussions should have been recorded for the edifica- 
 tion of man. Think, if you can, of Moses devoting 
 one whole book of the Bible to disquisitions on the 
 will, designed to show that those dying Israelites, 
 though commanded to look, yet had no power, heart, 
 or will to do so, until it was given them by miraculous 
 interposition. 
 
 If we turn from the old to the new dispensation we 
 find it the same. The gospel of Christ and his apos- 
 tles, as given by them, stands unprofaned with a creed. 
 Our Saviour lived, taught, and then commissioned his 
 apostles, and sent them forth to preach the gospel to 
 every creature, and all without a shadow of an 
 attempt to make and ordain a creed. The whole 
 apostolic age passed, and yet there were no religious 
 creeds. Churches were organized all over the then 
 known world, and all without religious creeds. It
 
 RELIGIOUS ( KKKD.S OF NEW ENGLAND. 71 
 
 was not until three hundred years had passed not 
 until the church had become demoralized and corrupt, 
 that we hear of the adoption of religious creeds; and 
 then, be it remembered, it was in that dark, blind, 
 corrupt fourth century, in company with asceticism, 
 monkery and all sorts of fooleries. 
 
 I have now before me a large number of written 
 creeds, of various churches, of the most ancient and 
 numerous sect in New England, and thus far I have 
 not found any two of them alike. If they were com- 
 pelled to differ by decree, it could not be more 
 uniform and complete. On what possible ground can 
 such a state of things be accounted for, except this 
 that the framers of those creeds have been attempt- 
 ing to determine questions entirely beyond man's 
 finite powers? Else, why not harmony and agreement 
 among some of them ? I do not suppose that any of 
 those churches, or the members of them, would be 
 willing to admit that religious truth was any other 
 than always one and the same ; nor would they be 
 likely to charge that the Scriptures, so far as they do 
 reveal facts, do it mystically and vaguely, or con- 
 fusedly and contradictorily. Then why this discord- 
 ance, if nothing is attempted but what is revealed and 
 known? Is it so in other things that we do know and 
 fully understand about ? 
 
 There lies the difficulty with creeds. Those who 
 make them are not content to take the Scripture 
 language word for word, and stop when and where 
 that stops; but they must go beyond, and draw 
 inferences and conclusions, and make deductions, and 
 guess at this and that, until the Scriptures are nothing 
 and creeds are everything.
 
 72 RELIGIOUS CREEDS OF NEW ENGLAND. 
 
 To show how the disposition to solve the unknown, 
 and explain the unexplainable, and determine the 
 undeterminable, has grown upon the religious world, 
 step by step, until it has become a load too great for 
 any church organization to bear, I cite, first, the 
 Apostles' creed, entire, as first in date, and if any 
 creed is necessary, least objectionable of any of the 
 well known and established creeds ; and then follow 
 with quotations from later, longer, and more objec- 
 tionable ones. 
 
 " I believe in God the Father, almighty maker of 
 heaven and earth ; and in Jesus Christ, his only Son, 
 our Lord, who was conceived of the Holy Ghost; 
 born of the Virgin Mary ; suffered under Pontius 
 Pilate ; was crucified, dead and buried. The third 
 day he rose from the dead; he ascended into heaven, 
 and sitteth on the right hand of God the Father 
 Almighty ; from thence he shall come to judge the 
 quick and the dead. 
 
 " I believe in the Holy Ghost ; the holy Catholic 
 Church ; the communion of saints ; the forgiveness 
 of sins ; the resurrection of the body, and the life 
 everlasting." 
 
 No one can fail to observe at once that the creed 
 just quoted enumerates nothing but clearly revealed 
 facts, without attempting to go beyond to inquire how 
 and why those facts came to exist, how and why and 
 to what end, and in what way the Father, Son and 
 Holy Ghost have and had being. Now from that 
 short and simple formula of divine truths, turn to a 
 short extract from the Athanasian creed, of much 
 later origin, and adopted in many instances by the Pro- 
 testant churches in the beginning of the Reformation;
 
 RELIGIOUS CREEDS OF NEW ENGLAND. 73 
 
 "The Father is neither made, created, nor begotten; 
 the Son is of the Father alono 'not made nor created, 
 but begotten ; the Holy Ghost is of the Father and 
 the Son neither made, nor created, nor begotten, 
 but proceeding ; and in this Trinity none is afore or 
 after another, none is greater or less than another." 
 
 No one can fail to mark the difference between 
 these two creeds. There is just the difference there 
 would be between announcing a belief in the existence 
 of the sun, and attempting to tell what the sun is 
 made of, and how and why it gives light. The first 
 feeling is to inquire how the framers of that creed 
 came by all their wonderful knowledge. There is no 
 such collocation of language in the Scripture. No 
 such knowledge is revealed in the Bible. Indeed, it 
 is not within the scope and design of the revealed 
 word to instruct man on any such points. 
 
 Now listen to an extract from a creed made much 
 nearer our own day : 
 
 " God from all eternity did, by the most wise and 
 holy counsel of his own free will, freely and unchange- 
 ably ordain whatsoever comes to pass, yet so as 
 thereby neither is God the author of sin, nor is 
 violence offered to the will of his creatures, nor is 
 the liberty or contingency of second causes taken 
 away, but rather established. Although God knows 
 whatsoever may or can come to pass upon all supposed 
 conditions, yet hath he not decreed this, because ho 
 foresaw it as future or as that which would come to 
 pass, upon such conditions. By the decree of God 
 for the manifestation of his glory some men and angels 
 are predestined unto everlasting life, and others fore- 
 ordained to everlasting death, These angels and men, 
 7
 
 74 RELIGIOUS CREEDS OF NEW ENGLAND. 
 
 thus predestinated and foreordained, are particularly 
 and unchangeably designed, and their number is so 
 certain and definite that it cannot be either increased 
 or diminished." 
 
 This citation is from the famous Cambridge platform, 
 adopted by our New England churches in 1680. That 
 creed is about fourteen hundred lines in length, say 
 one hundred times the length of the Apostles' creed, 
 and stands as godfather to about all the ancient ortho- 
 dox creeds in America. To be sure, it lost its ancient 
 prestige long ago, so that no church dares to adopt it 
 whole and entire at the present day, unless it is done, 
 as in one case before me of a Boston church, by 
 referring to it, and adopting it, as school-boys say, 
 " unsight, unseen." Take it all in all, it is probably 
 one of the most remarkable documents ever seen by 
 mortal eyes. It is safe to predict that its like will 
 never be seen again. For unparalleled presumption 
 it stands without a rival. Indeed, in that particular, 
 it may be said to be truly sublime. What the angels 
 desired to look into, the framers of that creed have 
 without hesitancy not only looked into, but very 
 pointedly decided. It may be safely said that they 
 were Christian heroes, if not savans and saints. You 
 cannot help admiring them for their daring, if you do 
 not for their discretion. If it be once admitted that 
 they really knew and understood all that their lan- 
 guage in the passages cited seems to imply, then it is 
 plain, that the only question now is, " what could there 
 have been left that they did not know?" After 
 penetrating to the very secret recesses of heaven and 
 announcing its fundamental laws, there would really 
 seem to be little, else for those respectable gentlemen
 
 RELIGIOUS CREEDS OF NEW ENGLAND. 75 
 
 to have clone, but to have made a world of their own. 
 It is perfectly clear that they were just as capable of 
 the one as of the other. 
 
 There can be no pretence that the passages quoted 
 are, either in text or substance, the revealed word. 
 No reverent mind would for a moment entertain any 
 such blasphemous proposition. They are neither 
 scriptural, nor philosophical, nor logical. They are, 
 however, most excellent gibberish, and undoubtedly 
 throw all the light upon the subject that the authors 
 of that creed had to bestow. 
 
 The best test of all these handiworks of man is 
 their ability to withstand the assaults of that ablest of 
 critics, father Time; and he has pronounced on all the 
 creeds cited. The Apostles' creed the creed of 
 facts, and not of dogmas, still lives ; not because it is 
 the creed of this or that church, but simply and only 
 because it is a creed of facts. The Athanasian creed 
 and the Cambridge Confession are not only dead, but 
 so completely buried and forgotten, that it is difficult 
 to find a copy of either, from which to frame an 
 epitaph. To be sure, from their ashes, as from the 
 ashes of an old ruin, there have sprung up ten thousand 
 others, mere briars and thorns, choking the good seed 
 that always and everywhere underlies the works of 
 man. The Cambridge Confession was not, however, 
 laid aside until it had well nigh laid in the dust every 
 church that had built upon it. And yet that old creed 
 only differed in degree, not in principle, from thou- 
 sands of creeds still in force in New England. 
 
 There are thousands making and ordaining creeds, 
 and treading the same old perilous path of the mem- 
 bers of the Cambridge Synod, daring to go beyond
 
 76 RELIGIOUS CREEDS OF NEW ENGLAND. 
 
 the Scriptures, daring to decide questions that they 
 know and can know nothing whatever about, and the 
 end is not yet. I end as I began that the most 
 damaging thing in all New England is her irreverent, 
 presumptuous and interminable religious creeds. 
 
 As not denunciation, but cure, in all these cases, is 
 the object, allow me to say in conclusion, that if this 
 disorder, or creed-mania, is not entirely incurable, one 
 copy of the Cambridge Confession, in each family, 
 with such other creeds as can be conveniently 
 obtained, faithfully conned, may be relied upon in 
 ordinary cases, where the mind is otherwise in a 
 healthy state, as an infallible cure.
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 HINTS FOR REDUCING THE MERCHANT SERVICE. 
 
 ENCOURAGE on shore the largest liberty. Abolish 
 stocks and whipping posts; discountenance corporal 
 punishment, and educate every one to resent as an 
 indignity the slightest blow upon the person. Add to 
 that, let the law step in and declare sternly and in- 
 flexibly, that no words of insult can justify the insult- 
 ed party in resorting to blows. When you have 
 educated your boys under that system, send them to 
 sea, and there, as variety is the spice of life, treat 
 them to a little change. 
 
 Let the young sovereigns, as soon as they have 
 tipped the anchor, feel that their country does indeed 
 extend only one league from the coast. Let the young 
 rogues, the first time that they forget to respond, 
 "Aye, aye, sir!" find themselves sprawling on the 
 deck, and, if they take offence at being knocked down 
 for so just a cause, seize them up and give them the 
 cat, and then they will know, practically, what a hand- 
 some bird a man is when, in sailor phrase, he is a 
 " spread eagle." As the officers cannot be employed 
 in that way all the tune, to destroy any illusion that 
 the youngsters might have that their vessel is a little 
 speck of their country afloat, when an order is given, 
 mind and tack something harsh and personal to it ; 
 it will make the young freeman feel like working live- 
 7*
 
 78 HINTS FOE REDUCING THE MERCHANT SERVICE. 
 
 ly, especially when they are bowsing up the anchor 
 for the passage home. If the master goes forward, 
 and the sailor does not rise to receive him, hit him 
 over the head; and if the master is on deck, and the 
 sailor passes to the windward of him, and thus comes 
 " between the wind and his nobility," let him have it 
 somewhere; it will teach him where he is, and that 
 old Neptune is no republican, but holds to strict eti- 
 quette and courtly manners. 
 
 Follow these things up strong, giving him a hit for 
 every miss, so that, let him sail under what flag he will, 
 he can still feel that his bark carries the " scars and the 
 stripes," and let the whole be well sustained in your 
 courts at home, and you will soon begin to see the 
 beneficial effects of it. For the very first class of 
 boys, one voyage will be a dose. The romance in 
 that time will be all taken out of them, and whatever 
 else may become of them, it may safely be predicted 
 that they will never come to their death by drowning, 
 falling from the mast-head, or other such marine 
 mishaps. Those of the second quality who do not 
 get promotion, and thus converted from floggees to 
 floggers, may be expected to fall victims to the se- 
 ductions of home and country, after the second or 
 third voyage, and go no more a-roving. The third 
 class may be expected to tough it out, some to find 
 promotion and get their revenge for a long list of 
 grievances, on the quarter deck, and the rest to do 
 duty sullenly, and waste away between the lash and 
 the land-shark, until summoned below to take their 
 place in Davy's lock-up. Under this course of treat- 
 ment you can depend on running out the best body of 
 seamen in the world in half a century.
 
 HINTS FOB REDUCING THE MERCHANT SERVICE. 79 
 
 If you want to close the thing up handsomely, and 
 reduce the native element in the service to the lowest 
 fraction, let a law be passed to abolish flogging in the 
 service. Then let the courts take a magnanimous view 
 of the act and hold that fogging is a technical word, 
 and that the act only abolished that punishment on 
 shipboard which consisted of seizing a man up and 
 whipping him, and that the inalienable right of ship- 
 masters and their subordinate officers to knock down 
 and rope's-end their crews, is left untouched, and the 
 whole thing may be looked upon as completed. You 
 can then man your vessels with the poorest class of 
 blacks and foreigners without being annoyed with na- 
 tive applicants. 
 
 No claim for any patent for these hints will be made, 
 since it is understood that a middle-aged gentleman, 
 familiarly known as Uncle Sam, claims to be the first 
 inventor.
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 TWO-FIFTHS EDUCATED. 
 
 WITHOUT at all intending to insinuate that we are 
 the most self-complacent people in the world, yet, I 
 imagine, the idea is pretty current among us, that our 
 educational system is just about perfect, and that 
 other nations and succeeding generations have little 
 else to do than to look on and copy. That we are in 
 advance of most other nations in respect to education 
 is very true, but that we are not yet doing all that we 
 ought, is equally true. Though it is little short of 
 rank heresy to say so yet I will venture to do 
 it our present system of public education does not 
 pretend to cover one-half the ground of a full and 
 thorough education, such as the varied and necessary 
 duties of life demand. All have physical, social, 
 moral, religious and intellectual capacities that need 
 cultivation and training, and one just about as much 
 as the other. 
 
 What may be accomplished by proper culture of 
 each of those capacities, has been abundantly illus- 
 trated in history. Greece affords us an illustrious 
 example of the happy results of good physical train- 
 ing, not only in improving the human form, but also 
 in raising up a brave, healthy, and noble race of men, 
 excelling as much in everything else as they did in 
 personal appearance. The period of her greatest at-
 
 TWO-FIFTHS EDUCATED. 81 
 
 tention to the physical culture of her sons, and when 
 her gymnasiums, and Pythian, Nsemean and Olym- 
 pic games were forming them for deeds of daring, 
 strength and agility, of all kinds, was also the period 
 of her greatest glory in poetry, music, oratory, the 
 sciences, in arts and in arms. Greece undoubtedly 
 owed more of her unrivalled celebrity for a long pe- 
 riod to her generous and constant public provision for 
 the physical cultivation and improvement of her 
 children, than to any or all other causes combined. 
 The world has been governed almost always by mili- 
 tary men, and it has arisen not a little from that 
 strength of mind, nerve and will, which accompanies 
 men having that good physical training that military 
 men are sure to get. Coming nearer home, our Mil- 
 itary Academy at "West Point is the only public insti- 
 tution of learning in our country that I know of 
 where good physical culture is made a definite and 
 leading part of education, and it not only sends out 
 graduates that have no equals in personal appear- 
 ance, in any other of the colleges of our land, but also 
 sends them out more thoroughly educated. 
 
 France, Belgium, Bavaria, Tuscany, and most of the 
 southern states of Europe have demonstrated the ad- 
 vantages of the social culture of the people. There, 
 those wants of the inhabitants are provided for just 
 as we provide for intellectual culture. Public prom- 
 enades, gardens, fountains, libraries, galleries of art, 
 lectures, theatres, and numberless holidays and festi- 
 vals, are either encouraged or wholly supported, with 
 the express design to bring the people together so- 
 cially, soften and refine their manners, and make 
 them more contented and happy. The result of all
 
 82 TWO-FIFTHS EDUCATED. 
 
 those aids to social improvement has been to make 
 the people of those countries a well-bred people, 
 easy, polite and affable, and so attached to their 
 homes and country, though suffering under intoler- 
 able burdens, that they seldom emigrate in such 
 numbers as they do from other parts of Europe. 
 
 In relation to the moral culture of the young, few 
 nations have ever done anything, in a public way, and 
 as a permanent and distinct branch, at all worthy of 
 the importance of the subject. The Scotch alone, so 
 far as I know, have made it a distinct and prominent 
 part of their educational discipline. 
 
 Our system of public education provides for our 
 religious and intellectual culture, and there it ends. 
 There is no definite provision for either our physical, 
 social or moral culture. Our children, so far as public 
 education is concerned, are just two-fifths educated, 
 and no more. They are just two-fifths prepared for 
 the highest usefulness and the highest happiness. Is 
 not this so? Our churches give us good religious 
 culture, and our public schools give us good intellec- 
 tual training. But what provision do you find in 
 either of those for physical, social or moral culture ? 
 Neither of them pretend to have either of those ends 
 in view. Strengthening and cultivating the intellect 
 is one thing, cultivating our hearts and manners and 
 improving our tastes, is another. The feeling is too 
 prevalent that our schools and churches as at present 
 constituted, are quite sufficient for all useful purposes 
 in the way of educating our children. But how ut- 
 terly groundless is this supposition. Purely intellec- 
 tual culture is just about as likely to unfit as to fit one 
 for social happiness. It is well known that great
 
 TWO-FIFTHS EDUCATED. 83 
 
 scholars seldom make happy companions. On the con- 
 trary there are abundant instances of intellectual 
 giants, who, socially, were mere bears, and carried 
 consternation into every circle they entered. We 
 have been periodically for the last ten or twenty years, 
 thrown into a fever of excitement by some European 
 traveller who has called in question the purity of our 
 taste, and the elegance of our manners. It has never 
 entered the heads of half of us, that while we have 
 been educating ourselves intellectually, they have 
 been cultivating themselves socially, and that they are 
 as much in advance of us in the latter, as we are of 
 them in the former. 
 
 If good bodily health were of no account in this 
 life whatever, if the mind were entirely independent 
 of the body, and never under any circumstances sym- 
 pathized with it, if good morals came by nature, and 
 taste, grace, and all the social amenities were always 
 on hand at the furnishing stores, to be had on call, 
 our New England educational system would be, 
 clearly, well nigh complete.
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 PRECEPT AND PRACTICE. 
 
 THIS is an age of precept. Our land is overrun 
 with patent ethics. They are peddled from door to 
 door, and lecture-room to lecture-room. Periodically 
 whole tribes of dealers in ethical nostrums go up into 
 convention. " The noise of them there is like the 
 noise of many chariots." The very air around them 
 becomes charged with their peculiar moral precepts. 
 Ethics are exploded about your ears like fire-crackers. 
 The mercer measures them off to you with your stuffs, 
 and the grocer weighs them out to you with your tea. 
 You cannot, then, draw a long breath without taking 
 down a dose of patent notions. And so much of this 
 peddling is done in so coarse and one-sided and fero- 
 cious a manner, that many get quite alarmed about it, 
 and tremble lest the world should be turned topsy- 
 turvy by mere talk. But there need be no fear of 
 that. Precept is a Very mild medicine. Indeed, 
 without example to give it point and force, it is of no 
 account whatever. Precept is instruction written in 
 the sand the tide flows over it and the record is 
 gone. Example is instruction graven on the rock. 
 Ages may pass away before that lesson is lost. 
 
 Almost everything worth having in the world is the 
 product of long-continued example. The world was 
 not made, as many modern reformers seem to suppose,
 
 PRECEPT AND PRACTICE. 85 
 
 by passing a series of resolutions, nor were printing 
 presses and steam engines discovered in convention. 
 Precept alone could no more make a good child than 
 it could a good watch. It has about as much to do 
 with mending the morals of a people as the school 
 bell has with educating the pupils. A good son left 
 behind is the parent's best epitaph. An erring man 
 will bear the brunt of an army of reformers vocif- 
 erating against his sin, better than the counter exam- 
 ple of one good neighbor. 
 
 There have been thousands of writers and orators, 
 who have lumbered libraries with their precepts, who 
 never influenced the world for good so much as so 
 many industrious honey bees. The cotton planter, in 
 his field, is ten times the pacificator between this 
 country and Great Britain, that the peace agitator is 
 in his field. There was more precept in Prynne, the 
 courageous old Puritan in the time of the cavaliers, 
 and the author of some forty volumes of writings in 
 favor of liberty, than in all of our pilgrim fathers put 
 together ; and yet, his influence on the world, as com- 
 pared with that of any one of them, was only as a 
 drop to an ocean. Our country, as it is, united and 
 prosperous, is to-day doing more for the cause of 
 freedom, without uttering a word, than it could do if 
 every man in our land was a Garrison, and bellowing 
 at the top of his voice for universal freedom, and 
 doing nothing to make freedom seem desirable. 
 Thrones can stand republican logic well enough, but 
 crumble before its life. Fret not thyself because of 
 mere loud talkers ; the world will wag all the same 
 with or without them.
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 PUBLIC DRIVES. 
 
 MOST of the capital cities of the old world have one 
 source of healthful recreation entirely unknown among 
 us. I allude to what may be called their PUBLIC 
 DRIVES. The Romans have theirs on the Corso, one 
 of their principal streets, about two miles in length, 
 enclosed with public buildings and splendid palaces. 
 The Viennoise have their favorite public drive on the 
 Prater, a beautiful wood near Vienna, tastefully laid 
 out for the purpose, and commanding fine views of 
 the neighboring mountains. The Berliners have their 
 public drive in their Unter den Linden, one of their 
 principal streets, one hundred and seventy feet wide, 
 and adorned with stately lime-trees. The Parisians 
 have their drive in the Bois de Bologne, a beautiful 
 wood near the gates of Paris, adorned with lakes, 
 jets, fountains, statues and flowers. The Londoners 
 have their drive in Hyde Park, one of the finest drives 
 in the world, situated in the very heart of London. 
 The Havanese have theirs on their beautiful Passeo, 
 just outside of the city, and the Mexicans have theirs 
 on their Alemada, a long, wide and splendid avenue, in 
 the city of Mexico. 
 
 Those public drives do for the whole body of the 
 people of a given city, what the drawing-room does 
 for only a very small and a very select part of them ;
 
 PUBLIC DRIVES. 87 
 
 it brings them together at stated periods of the day. 
 The public drive is a citizens levee in the open air. 
 Instead of the usual cake and wine, there is air and 
 exercise. Instead of the accustomed cards and com- 
 pliments, the guests look out upon the sky, and 
 venture or not, at the beck and call of the sun and 
 the clouds and the winds. 
 
 All the principal families in those cities, make it a 
 point to appear on the drive, at a certain time or times 
 in the day or evening. Every conceivable style of 
 jaunty and elegant equipage and turn-out may then 
 be seen, from the cabriolet of the humble cit, to the 
 coach and four, footmen and outriders of the duchess, 
 and the courtier, or of royalty itself. 
 
 On many of the best planned and conducted of 
 them the carriages move up the way quite slowly on 
 one side, and return on the other; so that friends and 
 acquaintances on the drive, are quite sure to meet 
 and find an opportunity to salute, if not to exchange 
 congratulations with each other. The space between 
 is occupied by equestrians, who are privileged to pass 
 from carriage to carriage where they happen to have 
 friends, paying their respects, and greeting each 
 other. Where those public drives have become one 
 of the social and recreative institutions of the people, 
 as in the places that I have named, they constitute 
 decidedly the most striking, the most pleasing, and 
 apparently the most popular, cherished, healthful, and 
 invigorating source of enjoyment in the whole city. 
 
 It is said that a Roman family of patrician blood, 
 would sooner give up one meal a day, and keep to 
 their beds all the morning to save firewood, than 
 forego their drive on the Corso. The Viennoise, from
 
 88 PUBLIC DRIVES. 
 
 the Emperor down, every evening flock in crowds to 
 their beautiful Prater, over-looking the Danube; some 
 in carriages, some on horse-back, and more on foot. 
 The drive in Hyde Park is peculiarly the show place 
 of all England. There the stranger will see in one 
 day, more of the beauty and fashion of Great Britain, 
 more of her statesmen, orators, poets and divines, 
 more illustrative of her wealth, and her social cus- 
 toms, than he could see elsewhere, with the aid of the 
 best of introductions, in a month. It is a grand drawing- 
 room of the privileged classes of the whole realm, 
 with its windows thrown wide open to observers. 
 
 Nor do these drives constitute a source of recrea- 
 tion for the independent and privileged classes alone. 
 Most of those public drives are lined with wide and 
 well-shaded side-walks ; and those at the same time 
 are usually well filled with pedestrians who seem to 
 enjoy the pagentry as well as the best mounted and 
 provided on the drive. 
 
 It can readily be conceived that those public drives, 
 where social union is added to healthful exercise and 
 sweet air, should draw out daily very many of the 
 invalid and the indolent, who would hardly avail 
 themselves of the privilege, if that air and exercise 
 was to be taken, as with us, without the savory salt of 
 sociability. There is no one thing in all the world 
 that so charms and cheers the heart of man, as the 
 sight of the human face, and the sound of the human 
 voice. For those he will leave instantly all other 
 sights and sounds in the universe. But if, as on those 
 great public drives, it is a place and occasion where 
 acquaintance meets acquaintance, and friend meets 
 friend, where notabilities congregate, and where man
 
 PUBLIC DRIVES. 89 
 
 and woman both appear in their best estate and hap- 
 piest mood, it is easy to see that it must constitute a 
 most efficient aid and incentive to healthful recreation. 
 Now, while our country is young, while our cities 
 are growing, and what is now the suburbs of the 
 town will soon be the centre, is the time for our citi- 
 zens in every part of our land to move in this matter. 
 No city should be without its great public drive. 
 The time will come, and soon enough, too, when it will 
 be life almost to the infirm and the invalid, length of 
 days to the man of leisure, health and cheerfulness to 
 the confined and weary, and a great and ever increas- 
 ing public blessing to each and every one of her 
 citizens, as well as the stranger within her gates. 
 8*
 
 CHAPTEE XIX. 
 
 SKIPPER SINKER. 
 
 MANY years ago, the favorite line of boats for fishing 
 excursions was kept by Skipper Sinker, a veteran 
 fisherman of the old school, who had outlived all of 
 his contemporaries of the hook and line, and retired 
 on three sail-boats and a dory. Many are the hours 
 that I have laid in the stern of the Roving Polly, and 
 listened to the Skipper's long yarns about boats 
 struck down in sudden squalls ; of long and hard 
 pulls against wind and tide ; of black and gusty nights, 
 and foundered boats and missing comrades. And yet, 
 the Skipper's faith in Old Ocean was as confiding as 
 ever. For every disaster he was prompt to assign a 
 cause. This comrade was rash, and carried too much 
 sail ; and that one was careless, and let his running 
 rigging get foul. One was stubborn, and always at 
 war with the winds and tides ; and another was heed- 
 less, and hence always in their power. Indeed, the 
 Skipper charged all the mischances of life to rashness, 
 heedlessness or obstinacy, and was quite sure that 
 his lost comrades would have fared no better on the 
 land, but met shipwreck sooner or later there. So, 
 for every nautical instruction he had a nautical disas- 
 ter to give it point. 
 
 But when he was about to entrust us with a boat 
 alone, then his admonitions came thick and fast. With
 
 SKIPPER SINKER. 91 
 
 tho groat and little generals there came also a 
 good and generous outfit of sage counsel and advice. 
 It might then be truly said of him, that he gave line 
 upon line, and precept upon precept. " Don 't carry 
 too much sail, boys," he would kindly charge, as he 
 was handing in the canteen ; " mind and improve the 
 tide, for it's the best oarsman about," he would hint, 
 with a wink, as he was casting off; and " trim your 
 s;iil.s well to the breeze, my hearties, and keep your 
 running rigging free," ho would shout to us from the 
 wharf as we were putting off. 
 
 Since then I have often thought that the sage 
 Skipper's parting charge was as good for one meridian 
 as for another, whether of the land or of the sea. 
 For all along the voyage of life, wherever made, the 
 fresh winds are constantly blowing, now filling the 
 well trimmed sails of the watchful and prudent, and 
 now flapping and flouting the half bent canvas of the 
 heedless and indolent. And that there are indeed 
 " tides in the affairs of men " is no more poetry than 
 history. 
 
 When, therefore, I have seen ambitious young 
 tradesmen extending their shops until they could 
 hardly see from end to end without a telescope, I have 
 felt tempted to shout through the keyhole, " Don 't 
 carry too much sail, boys, or you will run your craft 
 under." And when, too, I have seen your heedless 
 men loitering away the young flood of their lives, and 
 evidently dooming themselves and their families to a 
 hard pull by-and-by against the current, I have felt 
 half inclined to hint to them kindly, " Mind and im- 
 prove the tide, for pulling up against it is hard 
 business." And then again, when I have seen your
 
 92 SKIPPER SINKER. 
 
 men of business entering into entangling alliances, 
 exchanging notes and kiting, I have often thought 
 what a kindness it would be if some one would hail 
 to them, " Beware of squalls, there, my fine fellows, 
 and keep your running rigging free." 
 
 And so, too, when I have seen your wilful politicians, 
 theologians, and philanthropists, with hearts set on 
 carrying some darling object, obstinately refusing to 
 take note of attendant circumstances, but with sails 
 set just one way, and helm lashed, doggedly standing 
 on the same tack day after day, without regard to 
 change of winds or set of currents, I have felt 
 tempted to shout to them at the top of my voice, 
 " Trim your sails to the breeze, my hearties, or you 
 will make Dead-man's-land before you know it." 
 
 Indeed, I seldom pass a day without seeing some 
 one who seems to need a kindly hail from some safe 
 and sagacious Skipper Sinker.
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 MODERN VATICANS. 
 
 IN my strolls about town, I am pleased to observe 
 evidence of growing trust and confidence in the gen- 
 eral right-heartedness of the people. I see it every- 
 where and in every place, save one. I see it in the 
 piles of goods displayed within reach and unguarded, 
 on sidewalks, in door ways and on counters. I see 
 it in beautiful and elaborately wrought monuments 
 and other works in marble, conspicuously exposed 
 beside our public streets, within reach, uncovered 
 and unprotected night and day. I se'e it in the almost 
 total abandonment of the old fashioned system of long 
 lines of counters between the purchaser and the com- 
 modity for sale. Particularly have I seen and enjoyed 
 it in our book stores, where we are now admitted face 
 to face with the books, with no provoking counters or 
 other obstacles in the way, to prevent us from taking 
 down a volume here, chatting a little while lovingly 
 with an author there, and holding sweet converse 
 with them generally. 
 
 But there is one place where that trust and confi- 
 dence has not yet penetrated. A few days ago, hap- 
 pening to be in New York, I strolled, very naturally, 
 into Appleton's new book store. And there I found 
 what all along I had been observing here. There 
 were acres of books, (more, probably, than in any
 
 94 MODERN VATICANS. 
 
 library in this country,) lying in piles on the several 
 floors, which the customers and visitors walked 
 among and examined at will, as freely as did the pro- 
 prietor and his assistants. From there, I went to the 
 great Astor Library, the largest and most splendidly 
 endowed institution of the kind in all North America. 
 The edifice, the hall, the books, everything, except 
 one, was imposing. It was a bright, sunny spring 
 afternoon; the streets of the city, the saloons, the 
 galleries of art, were full of people ; every other 
 place that I had entered seemed to be crowded. But 
 in the grand hall of the Astor Library, around which 
 clustered one hundred thousand volumes of books, 
 collected and stored at a cost of near half a million of 
 dollars, there were just four people. And yet, when I 
 took into account the manner in which that great 
 library was administered ; when I observed its rules, 
 that no book could be taken from the public hall; 
 that no person could enter where the books were, but 
 must apply in writing for the particular book he 
 wanted, before he could see and consult it ; that there 
 was no conveniences for lighting the building ; it was 
 plain that the New York people were estimating the 
 Astor Library at its true value. It is a show institu- 
 tion. It sounds well. It looks pretty in the papers. 
 A photograph of its great hall would be splendid. 
 The people understand it, talk of it, boast of it, show 
 it, but never use it. When I left the hall, half an 
 hour afterwards, the number in enjoyment of that 
 vast bounty, had been reduced to three individuals, 
 and they had the look of persons who felt fearful 
 lest they were intruders. The New York editor who 
 has lately written home from Rome, that ho wandered
 
 MODERN VATICANS. 95 
 
 for miles through the library rooms of tho Vatican 
 without seeing a book, was just as profitably employed 
 as if he had been wandering around the great hall of 
 the Astor Library. In the first, they have each vol- 
 ume enclosed in a little cell of its own ; in the latter, 
 they have a hundred or a thousand of them impris- 
 oned in a little alcove of their own. In both cases, 
 they are guarded just the same as if it was conceded 
 that they were golden guineas, and each visitor 
 known to be light-fingered. 
 
 That same want of confidence in the people, is 
 painfully prominent in all our public libraries. The 
 great Cambridge library is not of one-tenth part the 
 use to the public of a well-appointed book store. For 
 twelve weeks in each year, that library, with its one 
 hundred thousand volumes, enjoys equally with the 
 professors and juveniles its vacation, except on Mon- 
 day of each week, it is open four hours. For all the 
 rest of each of those weeks, its doors are closed tight 
 and strong against intruders ; and the fathers, histori- 
 ans, poets and novelists, wearied with the toils and 
 perplexities of term time, are left to undisturbed 
 repose. The librarian, broken down with the exhaust- 
 ing labor of four hours attendance daily, has time to 
 recuperate ; and books and man are prepared to re- 
 sume their wonted and laborious duties at the end of 
 the season, refreshed and invigorated. Besides, 
 where 's the need of books when the College dis- 
 bands? Shall not all nature nod when Harvard 
 sleeps ? 
 
 Taking it for granted that librarians are a race of 
 mortals requiring unwonted quiet and repose; that 
 books of all things should be preserved unspotted
 
 96 MODERN VATIC ANS. 
 
 from the world, and that the less people have to do 
 with either . the " better, and it admits of positive 
 demonstration that the Harvard Library is one of the 
 best managed in the world. That of the Vatican has 
 heretofore been supposed to take the lead in those 
 particulars, on account of each book having a separ- 
 ate cell, with separate lock and key, and no catalogue ; 
 but the Cambridge library may be described as the 
 Vatican in miniature, with this improvement, that it 
 has a catalogue, and cells well locked, but no keys. 
 
 Then how admirable the arrangement in term time. 
 The library opens at the genial hour of nine, A. M., 
 when pupils are rung into school, and business men 
 are one and all off to their several posts, and it is 
 closed again securely at one, P. M., before those above 
 mentioned pests of your ancient and quiet librarians 
 have been released again from duty. The Dartmouth 
 professor, who invented the art of opening the library 
 of that College at dinner hour, may take the first pre- 
 mium; but the trustees of the Harvard library are 
 clearly entitled to the second. How truly Alexander 
 Selkirkian must the librarian of Harvard appear dur- 
 ing those morning hours. How it must wake up the 
 echoes of the old pile to hear a fly buzzing on one of 
 its dim window panes ; how unearthly must be the 
 sound of the librarian's pen as it goes scratch, scratch, 
 scratch, as he makes up his daily record ; and then 
 the creak of the shoe of some mousing book-worm in 
 a distant corridor, must be too awful for endurance. 
 
 Then how secure everything about the Harvard 
 library. The authors seem to each and all to have 
 turned revolutionists, and erected barricades. St. 
 Paul, and even Father Ladd, stand behind entrench-
 
 MODERN VATIC ANS. 97 
 
 mcnts, and you can only hold parley with them on 
 special application. They must come out unto you 
 you cannot go in unto them. The doctrine of total 
 depravity does not seem to be abandoned in the Har- 
 vard library, however it may be in the College. The 
 definition of man there seems to be, a being who nat- 
 urally steals books. One alcove, that of the novelists, 
 is left unguarded. The theory is, that we were cre- 
 ated with power of resistance against all the allure- 
 ments of romance and rhetoric, in paper covers, but 
 that human nature cannot withstand bindings of real 
 calf. 
 
 The Boston library, so far as its great hall is con- 
 cerned, where are stored the great body of its books, 
 is modeled on the same plan. Its alcoves are all 
 closed tight and strong. The banker's specie basis is 
 not more absolutely protected. 
 
 There has been a good deal of congratulation of 
 late, occasioned by the discovery, by J. Wingate 
 Thornton, of the long lost Governor Bradford Manu- 
 script. While the literary world are rejoicing, mere 
 mortal men, who do not belong to historical socie- 
 ties, are no antiquaries, and never wrote a history 
 in their lives, are wondering how it could happen 
 that by far the most valuable manuscript connected 
 with our Puritan and New England history, could lie 
 undiscovered in a public library so long, say more 
 than three-quarters of a century. In all that time 
 antiquaries were supposed to be mousing for it, 
 learned historical bodies delving after it, and pro- 
 found historians ready to scent it afar off. The 
 fact that Prince, Morton, and Hutchinson, had used 
 it freely in compiling their histories, gave our hi0r 
 9
 
 98 MODERN VATICANS. 
 
 torians familiar acquaintance with it, so that its 
 loss, its value, its style and character, were well 
 known, and furnished a ready and sure means of 
 identifying it. 
 
 Our wonder, however, is modified, when we remem- 
 ber the peculiar mode of administering libraries in 
 this country, as well as in England. The Bishop of 
 London's library, where this manuscript lay embalmed, 
 is probably a fair sample ; access to it very likely 
 being about as easy as to the Queen's bed chamber. 
 "When this valuable manuscript was added to his 
 library, it was equivalent to being respectably buried. 
 And what are most of our libraries but literary sepul- 
 chres? On a late examination of the library of 
 Dartmouth College, it was found that the students for 
 the year past had taken only thirty books from the 
 library. On inquiry it was found that one of the 
 professors was librarian; that by the rules he was 
 only required to have it open an hour on certain days, 
 and that he had hit upon the wise expedient of making 
 that opening at the students' dinner hour, thus pre- 
 venting a great deal of noise and confusion, and 
 rendering the duties of hia office quite quiet and 
 comfortable. 
 
 There is hardly a book store in New York, Bos- 
 ton, or Cambridge, that is not a public institution 
 and a public convenience, in a far better sense of the 
 word, than either the Astor, the Boston, or the Cam- 
 bridge library. There are ten books consulted daily 
 in many of those book stores, where there is one 
 consulted in either of those libraries. And that that 
 comes entirely from that exclusion of the visitor from 
 the books, is evident from the fact, that in the Boston
 
 MODERN VATICANS. 99 
 
 library, whore there is a room where there are two or 
 three hundred magazines and books, that the visitor 
 may consult and read at pleasure, that room is 
 crowded with visitors, when the great hall is compar- 
 atively empty. 
 
 Previous to the discovery of the art of printing, it 
 was all very natural and very right that the manu- 
 scripts composing any given library, should be 
 guarded with pious care. So, too, after printing 
 became general, most of the works published were in 
 very small editions one or two hundred copies and 
 at such extravagant rates, that but few could hope to 
 see, much less own a copy. The loss of a book then 
 was irreparable. The second edition seldom followed 
 the first in less than a quarter or half a century. It 
 hence continued to be quite prudent if not entirely 
 necessary, that great care should be observed in pre- 
 serving books, especially of the older and scarcer 
 works. It was under that state of things that the 
 Vatican library was instituted and has grown up, with 
 its cell and lock and key for each work. Under that 
 same state of things the libraries of the old Spanish 
 monasteries, so difficult of access, came into existence. 
 
 Most all of those ancient libraries were begun, and 
 have been continued by ecclesiastics. As it was in 
 the beginning of those institutions, so it has been up 
 to the present day. In Spain and in Italy, they have 
 vast libraries full of manuscripts and old works, many 
 of them, perhaps, of surpassing interest, but they are 
 of no practical use whatever. The student of history 
 finds it an endless toil to get permission to explore 
 among them at all, and then when he has obtained the 
 permission, they have no catalogues. It was with
 
 100 MODERN VATICANS. 
 
 those models before them, that the more modern 
 libraries of Paris and London, Munich, Dresden, Ber- 
 lin and Vienna were established. But it is perfectly 
 clear that a public library now, should have no 
 correspondence whatever with a public library then. 
 "With very few exceptions a public library now is 
 made up of books that can be duplicated at any 
 moment. The loss of a book now is the loss of just 
 so much money, and nothing more. The reason for 
 cells and closed alcoves, exists now only to protect 
 bindings, save the librarian trouble in arranging, 
 and to guard against losses by pilfering, so trifling, 
 that it is entirely disregarded by the most churlish 
 and suspicious in the book trade. 
 
 The management of the principal libraries in 
 America is now at least one whole century behind the 
 age. If the present mode is to be continued, do pray 
 give us ecclesiastics in gowns and cowls for librarians.
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 PHYSICAL CULTURE. 
 
 AMONG the Greeks, physical culture laid at the 
 foundation of their whole system of education. From 
 the earliest period of their history we find them train- 
 ing their youth in manly exercises, and rewarding 
 proficiency in that branch of education with the very 
 highest honors. In the lives of their great men we 
 are told under what masters they were taught in 
 gymnastics, as much as in philosophy and rhetoric. 
 Plato and Aristotle, and all their great philosophers 
 lectured and taught in gymnasiums. They walked 
 and talked with the pupils as they rested from their 
 games and sports, and carried along mental, together 
 with their physical culture. Their whole system of 
 training was based on the idea that a perfect educa- 
 tion must embrace the whole man, body as well as 
 soul. Indeed, that the tenement is to precede the 
 tenant the nominative to precede the verb. Hence 
 the attentive student of Greek history cannot fail to 
 see how philosophy, poetry, oratory, music and 
 sculpture, all seemed to follow in the train of their 
 manly sports and exercises their Pythean, Naemean 
 and Olympic games and, grow up and flourish 
 with them. 
 
 And what was the result of their educational system? 
 for that is the best test after all. We find that the 
 9*
 
 102 PHYSICAL CULTURE. 
 
 golden age of Grecian history was just when the 
 greatest attention was given to physical culture, so 
 that even such philosophers as Plato and Aristotle 
 taught their students at those very games. It gave 
 them the finest race of men that the world ever saw. 
 It gave them philosophers and poets and orators and 
 sculptors that never since have been equalled. It 
 gave them, too, martial courage and prowess that 
 made them for a long time the most formidable nation 
 in the world. The Romans adopted the Grecian sys- 
 tem, and established gymnasiums throughout her 
 dominions, and while Rome continued that system of 
 education, she too, rose in power, and attained her 
 highest eminence in arts and in arms. 
 
 Now look at our own vaunted system of education. 
 Two hundred public schools in this city, and not 
 one public gymnasium some scores of private 
 schools and only two private gymnasiums ; and those 
 latter with a scale of prices calculated to exclude 
 forty-nine out of every fifty of our youth. Here are 
 some fifteen or twenty thousand pupils, all under the 
 forcing system of birch and Lawrence prizes, with 
 their little minds going for six or eight hours in the 
 day like little steam engines, and all without the 
 slightest reference to physical culture. No public 
 provision for it. No private provision for it. In- 
 deed, no one seems to think that physical culture 
 as a system, is at all necessary. So far from it, 
 one-half of our citizens look upon anything in the 
 nature of it as quite questionable, especially if it takes 
 the form of hopping about to the sound of music. 
 
 Now I venture to say that our children cannot stand 
 this exclusively mental culture two generations
 
 PHYSICAL CULTURE. 103 
 
 longer without its breaking down the physical and 
 mental health of our population. I allude more par- 
 ticularly to our cities, for in the country, children can 
 always find opportunities for healthy exercise to a 
 certain extent. We are already doing something 
 handsome for the nostrum-mongers, doctors, and 
 insane asylums, and the cause of nervous irritability, 
 and general disorder, with highly promising prospects 
 for the future. Some people wonder that our old 
 Commonwealth should send forth so many queer 
 geniuses with their queer heads full of quirks, and 
 all sorts of mad-cap fancies. But when you consider 
 our system of education, there is nothing marvellous 
 about it. The wonder is that there are so few of 
 them. You cannot expect harmony from a poor, sickly, 
 cracked, rickety instrument, let the ivory and cat-gut 
 be from the hands of ever so great a master. You 
 must have a sound body if you would have a sound 
 mind. Mental aberration, be it little or much, one- 
 ideaism, fanaticism, or total madness, all may generally 
 be traced to physical causes. Our bracing and invig- 
 orating climate is bearing up against our one-sided 
 system admirably, but it cannot do everything. We 
 must have physical exercise and training, regular and 
 systematic, with our intense mental culture, or we 
 shall get so full of crochets that there will be no living 
 with us. 
 
 We must have public gymnasiums ; either connected 
 with our schools or distinct from them. We must 
 give more attention to the tenement, even if we give 
 less to the tenant. If we would have the highest 
 style of sculpture, we must have the highest style of 
 men for models, for the artist never improves on
 
 104 PHYSICAL CULTURE. 
 
 nature. If we would have our people with minds 
 truly rational and sound, we must look to it that our 
 children are well physically educated. What is often 
 called genius, which often means only eccentricity, 
 may inhabit any sort of a tenement. The more rickety 
 and tumble-down the better: but you will remark 
 that that sober wisdom, that is the very warp and 
 woof of truth and real life, is seldom found in any 
 such habitations. The wise men of the world have 
 generally been men of fine physical development. As 
 the historian remarks of Plato, his body and his mind 
 were equally well disciplined and developed. Think 
 of Moses, and Solomon, and Demosthenes, and Cicero, 
 and of our own Franklin, and Washington, and 
 Webster, and of that host of worthies who signed the 
 declaration of independence, as so many weazen faced, 
 sallow, nervous gentlemen, and see how ridiculous is 
 the whole idea. But it is not so when you bring 
 before you with the same conception, Cataline, and 
 Cassius, and Loyola, and Voltaire, or even that living 
 oddity, the celebrated opium eater. And it is all 
 because our experience as well as our intuitive knowl- 
 edge tells us that true wisdom cannot be found in 
 poor disordered bodies, nor eccentric mad fancies in 
 well developed humanity. 
 
 There are other reasons why we should have public 
 gymnasiums. Children will seek exercise. If their 
 parents houses are not spacious enough for them to 
 get it indoors, (and but few can,) then they seek it 
 elsewhere. Those who have not the means to send 
 their children either to private gymnasiums, or to 
 dancing school, or to do anything else for their recre- 
 ation, are obliged to let them run in the street. It is
 
 PHYSICAL CULTURE. 105 
 
 there that thousands of our youth go for their exercise. 
 It is there that the frightful number of youth that 
 come before our courts, are taught their first lessons 
 in crime. 
 
 Furnish them with a good gymnasium to resort to, 
 and there is not five out of one hundred of them that 
 would not avail themselves of it with joy. Give us 
 good public gymnasiums, and it would be a dead shot 
 at our houses of reformation, our institutions for the 
 insane, and our thousand and one quackeries in 
 medicine and benevolence. It would not cost any 
 given city one-half as much to provide public gymna- 
 siums and sustain them, as it would to pay the 
 expenses for taking care of culprits, made so for want 
 of such institutions.
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 M A N N E E S . 
 
 A PLEASING address is one of the master influences. 
 It is more potent, as a means of advancement, than 
 birth, riches, or power. It does more to promote 
 happiness than all other influences combined. Until 
 we have become hardened by exposure, we are as 
 sensitive as the aspen to the least touch of ill-man- 
 ners. Your bluff people, who make a mock of refine- 
 ment, do not dare to carry their principles into the 
 nursery. The child will not tolerate such a doctrine 
 for a moment. Whoever courts his acquaintance must 
 do it with all the delicacy and grace that he can 
 master. As we grow older, other influences are 
 brought to bear upon us. We tolerate the coarse Mr. 
 Grater, because he is in power ; endure the uncouth 
 Mr. Burly, because he is wealthy ; and actually laugh 
 at the sour sarcasms of Mr. Crusty, because we have 
 got used to them, and because everybody else does. 
 But our hearts always remain loyal to their first love. 
 There is nothing wins upon us like engaging manners. 
 We sacrifice almost every other consideration in life 
 to enjoy the society of those whose manners please 
 us. Our likes and dislikes are almost always founded 
 on them. The most fatal shafts in Cupid's quiver are 
 winning ways. Miss Fanny elopes with her father's 
 well bred, penniless clerk, with nothing more promis-
 
 MANNERS. 107 
 
 ing in prospect than an enraged parent, and an attic, 
 rather than endure the clownish Mr. Bullion in a 
 palace. 
 
 The world has been pretty uniformly governed by 
 men of pleasing address. It is men of that stamp 
 that are usually selected to guide and govern. They 
 preside in our deliberative assemblies, occupy the 
 chief posts of honor, are relied upon in difficult 
 emergencies to persuade, and are put forward in 
 times of sharp conflict to conciliate. In tracing back 
 the history of public men, it is true, we find enough 
 of coarse and rude nature in public life, but they are 
 generally found stationed at the outposts, as com- 
 manders in the field, or subordinates in duty. The 
 one, two, twenty, hundred or more, who constitute 
 the central government, who plan, direct and are 
 responsible for all, are generally no more at the head 
 politically than they are socially. The first gentlemen 
 of the age are generally those at the head of the 
 government. It is so now. It has always been so. 
 History attests to it from the days of Joseph, to those 
 of our own. And no more instructive examples of 
 all that exists than those to be found in our own coun- 
 try, and almost in our own day. Mark the fact that 
 the first bronze statue erected to any public man in 
 New England, was to Benjamin Franklin, the man 
 who captivated all Paris, as much by the simplicity 
 and grace of his manners, as he did his own country- 
 men by his statesmanship, wit and wisdom. And 
 in that same connection let us remember that that 
 great leader and head of the bar, Rufus Choate, was 
 fully as eminent among his friends, including his life 
 long antagonists at the bar, as a true hearted and
 
 108 MASTNERS. 
 
 finished gentleman, as he was to the world at large, as 
 a jurist and orator. And who can say, in their case, 
 that they did not each of them owe to their gentle- 
 ness, and grace of manners, and true kindness of 
 heart, the finishing grace of that crown, which each 
 of them so clearly won. 
 
 The true secret of Mr. Clay's undying popularity 
 was, that his manners were so genial and engaging 
 that those who had once approached him never for- 
 sook him. So, too, Mr. Calhoun's magical influence in 
 South Carolina may be traced mainly to the same 
 cause. All who were honored with his acquaintance 
 always loved him. One of our citizens who happened 
 at one time to be in Charleston when Mr. Calhoun 
 arrived there from Washington, and saw how the 
 citizens gathered around him, and witnessed the frank, 
 easy and natural manner with which all classes 
 saluted him and entered into conversation with him, 
 without form or introduction, was quite amazed, it 
 was so different from anything he had seen North. 
 One reason why the South has taken almost all the 
 presidential nominations has been that her politicians 
 are better cultivated, socially, than ours, and are 
 making capital with the leaders at Washington, in 
 the drawing-room and at the dinner-table, while our 
 Northern politicians are spending all of their force 
 making long and eloquent speeches. There is great 
 influence in speeches and orations, undoubtedly ; but 
 there are times and seasons when smiles and oyster- 
 sauce make a greater impression. 
 
 Indeed, engaging manners do not stand a man in 
 stead in the drawing-room only. They are the poor 
 boy's capital, and the stranger's letter of credit. The
 
 MANNERS. 109 
 
 village pastor oftentimes may better rely on them to 
 save him his parish, than on the most brilliant talents. 
 They are the only current coin in society, and without 
 it the wisest and the wealthiest are sure soon to be 
 pinned to the wall. They are, besides, the only 
 worldly possessions that are beyond calamity. Beauty 
 is confessedly fleeting ; wealth may, and often does, 
 take to itself wings; the mind may become enfeebled; 
 but true grace of manirer, once acquired, never for- 
 sakes one. Indeed, the most captivating manners are 
 always found among the aged. 
 
 It has been thought by many that the great thing 
 that stood in the way of Mr. Webster's advancement 
 to the presidency, was simply and only his apparent 
 inability to shine out warm and sunny, except upon a 
 few select friends, who enjoyed his entire confidence. 
 Mr. Webster as he was, with Mr. Clay's social qualities 
 added, (if such a thing were possible,) would have 
 been a miracle of strength in a presidential canvass. 
 Few ever comprehended the whole secret of General 
 Jackson's wonderful power. He was no more a man 
 of an iron will, than he was a courteous and true- 
 hearted gentleman. The same bolt that kept out the 
 enemy, served just as effectually to rivet him to his 
 friends. 
 
 Our forefathers came here counting taste and 
 refinement as among the heresies. They were no 
 more at war with the Pope, than they were with Lord 
 Chesterfield and the dancing master. They were no 
 believers in bowing and scraping. They believed 
 heartily in the profound piety of those first gentlemen 
 of the world, Abraham, and Lot, and David, and Paul; 
 but as a model in the matter of manners, they could 
 10
 
 110 MANNERS. 
 
 not help admiring most the uncompromising Modecai. 
 with his hat on in the king's gate. Accordingly when 
 they laid here the foundation for a nation, they took 
 care to provide for mental culture in the public 
 school, and for religious culture in the church, but 
 made no provision whatever for social culture. 
 Indeed, they went farther, and took care to discounte- 
 nance everything that tended towards it. Everything 
 that the age of chivalry had fostered they discounte- 
 nanced music, dancing, the drama, games, taste, arts, 
 and all those natural appliances in the way of social 
 culture. 
 
 We have in the present condition and altitude of 
 France a life-long lesson. Where is the full-grown 
 man of all Anglo-Saxondom, who cannot remember 
 the time when his prevailing idea of a Frenchman 
 was only that of a light, trifling, vivacious man; 
 frittering away his time on mere forms and ceremonies, 
 dividing it between dancing, studying the best cut for 
 a garment, and the perpetration of a pretty saying. 
 And it was all true that they were attending to all 
 those things. But with their attention to the ameni- 
 ties and graces of life came a whole troop of other 
 accomplishments and blessings taste, ease, grace, 
 courtesy, kindness of heart, courage, strength, agility, 
 skill, science, industry, cheerfulness, and hundreds of 
 other things, until to-day they stand the foremost 
 people in all the world.
 
 CHAPTER XXIII. 
 
 ADORN. 
 
 THE law of progress is to adorn. Xo high state of 
 civilization has ever been achieved without corres- 
 ponding attention to the beautiful. While the world 
 was without form and void, it was not the abode of 
 man. It was only when it was adorned with sun, 
 moon, and stars, floods, fields, shrubs and flowers, 
 that he was created. We find nothing in scripture or 
 history to justify us in believing that man would have 
 been created to this day, if his eyes were to be 
 greeted with no more beauties than limit the desires 
 of half the people we meet. 
 
 Those people, in ancient times, who undertook to 
 live without cultivating the beautiful, have left no 
 name worth possessing behind them. Of Babylon, 
 with its gates of brass and its hanging gardens of 
 Jerusalem, with its beautiful temple of Thebes and 
 Athens, we have heard and know ; but what do we 
 know of the hundred and one other places, alluded 
 to in history, where no talent was cultivated, but the 
 so-called useful? There were Scythians and Chal- 
 deans and Guelphs and Ghibelines and Huns and 
 Picts, and all of them very matter of fact people, no 
 doubt, quite indifferent to embellishments, who never 
 built any very elaborate temples, or spent Iheir time 
 on works of art, or in the laying out of parks and
 
 112 ADORN. 
 
 promenades. Their works followed them perished 
 with them. And so will the works of every people 
 Avho neglect the work of beautifying and embellishing. 
 There is life and strength and power in beauty. 
 A beautiful statue or structure is immortal, because 
 it is beautiful. Amid all the storms of war it is 
 respected. A church or a cathedral, designed and 
 embellished with art, is a church or a cathedral for- 
 ever. But not so with one of our plain entirely 
 and hopelessly plain meeting-houses ? It is as 
 evanescent as the morning mist. Now it is a church, 
 now it is a dwelling, and by and by a hostlery. It 
 wants the grace of beauty to sanctify and save it. 
 The scholar who has read all his days about the 
 beautiful statues, temples, churches, and cathedrals 
 of the old world, and who at last goes abroad to see 
 them, finds them still there memorials of the age 
 of Pericles, of Charlemagne, and of Michael Angelo. 
 But how is it here ? The merest school-boy can 
 scarcely venture to stay from home a whole term, 
 without danger of finding, on his return, that his play- 
 ground has been sold to speculators, and that the 
 church of his fathers has been carted away to give 
 place to the counting-house of the trader. "Washing- 
 ton Irving once gave as a reason for the non-appear- 
 ance of apparitions now-a-days, that if a poor uneasy 
 ghost does return, and attempts to walk about his old 
 haunts, he finds everything so changed, that he slinks 
 back to his resting-place disappointed, never to 
 attempt it again. If it is not true of ghosts, it is 
 certainly true of all those who have settled far away 
 from their native villages. One return to them, to 
 find all the old landmarks swept away, the church
 
 AD01J.V. 113 
 
 where they worshipped, the mall where they played 
 cricket and foot-ball, the school-house everything 
 gone, is generally enough. 
 
 If we want to drive far from us, vice and crime if 
 we want to outbid the wine-cup and the gaming-table, 
 we must adorn. We must adorn our parks and gar- 
 dens; adorn our churches and public edifices. We 
 must have paintings and sculpture. We must have 
 something to claim the attention, to mould the taste, 
 and cultivate and elevate the minds and hearts of the 
 people. 
 
 Few stop to think how much taste has to do with 
 morals. But there is nothing better established than 
 that slovenly habits beget slovenly morals. All those 
 orders of men who have attempted to ignore taste 
 and beauty and elegance, and to go through the world 
 without regard to appearances such as the Cynics, 
 and the mendicant friars, have all proved conclusively 
 that immorality goes hand in hand with habitual 
 uncleanliness.
 
 CHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 PROVIDED, HOWEVER. 
 
 THOSE are the two great words in our modern 
 statutes. All other words, even those wonderful 
 ones, nevertlieless and aforesaid, pale before them. 
 Our statute books are full of them. No act seems to 
 be considered perfect without them. They come in 
 at the close of every section, like the chorus in a 
 Greek tragedy, or the refrain in an old song. They 
 cut up more comical antics in legislative halls, undoing 
 what has been done before, and turning serious things 
 into ridicule, than any clown in a play. No sooner is 
 a general law proposed and put into form, than it is 
 knocked into pieces with a "provided, however." 
 Construing modern statutes, is like travelling in 
 modern times ; in both cases, you are sure to 
 encounter divers crossings, where you are liable to 
 be dashed to atoms in the first case, by the proviso, 
 and in the second, by the locomotive. Every Ameri- 
 can statute book ought to bear emblazoned on its 
 cover, words of warning "Look out for the proviso!" 
 
 The peculiar function of the provided, however, seems 
 to be to afford practical examples for the people in 
 substraction and vulgar fractions. No sooner does 
 a statute make a grant, than a proviso is added to 
 break it up, cut it down, knock a corner off here, and 
 put a rider on there, until the act has as many aspects
 
 PROVIDED, HOWEVER. 115 
 
 to the beholder as the Horse Shoe Fall at Niagara, 
 and is as difficult to solve as a problem in Euclid. 
 If any one will take up any modern American statute 
 book and look along the several acts therein contained, 
 keeping his eye steadily directed for the word "pro- 
 vided," he will not go far before he will be convulsed 
 with laughter, to see how regularly and pertinaciously, 
 and sometimes even comically, Monsieur Tonson 
 comes again. 
 
 Does Mr. Stubbs, member from Coventry, on his 
 way to the General Court, have his hat brushed off 
 on the highway, by an overhanging branch, he 
 forthwith applies himself to frame a law to suit the 
 case, and in strict accordance with parlimentary rule 
 in America, the law thus framed is special, not general. 
 In other countries it would have read thus : " Every 
 tree that is planted or suffered to grow in or near any 
 highway shall be so planted, pruned and suffered to 
 grow, as not to incommode travel and travellers on 
 said highway." Our member, having due regard to 
 precedent, frames it thus : " No tree planted in any 
 highway shall be suffered to so extend its branches 
 as to brush off the hat of any member while on his 
 way to the General Court." His law suits his case, 
 and that is enough. 
 
 That draft goes into the hands of a committee of 
 the House, where another member, to meet a case 
 that he has heard of, adds another section, making it 
 apply to trees not planted in, but near the highway. 
 The bill comes into the House, and then, on 
 motion of the Rev. Dr. Stokes, a third section is 
 added, making the act apply to ministers of the gos- 
 pel while on the way to church ; and Ex-Judge Tinker
 
 116 PROVIDED, HOWEVER. 
 
 succeeds in adding another section, so as to protect 
 the officers of the law from such casualties while 
 riding the circuit. 
 
 Then comes the chorus. The member from A. 
 moves the adoption of the following proviso : " Pro- 
 vided, however, that the party incommoded by any 
 such overhanging branches shall not be entitled to 
 recover damages, provided he rides a high horse, 
 wears a steeple-crown hat, or might have avoided the 
 casualty by ducking." The member from B. adds 
 another proviso, so amending the last proviso, that it 
 shall not apply to near-sighted people. The act is 
 then passed. 
 
 Afterwards a suit arises under it, and three weeks 
 are spent in determining, first, whether the plaintiff 
 was a member of the House, a minister of the gospel, 
 or a member of the court ; if he was, then, second 
 whether he was on the way to the General Court, to 
 church, or travelling the circuit ; if he was, then, 
 third, whether he was riding a high horse ; or, fourth, 
 wore a forbidden hat ; or, fiftli, failed to duck ; and, 
 sixth, if he was found guilty of not ducking, whether 
 it was because he was near-sighted. One county 
 judge, one clerk of the court, one sheriff, four officers, 
 four lawyers, twelve jurymen, and five and twenty 
 witnesses, (including three photographists, with prints 
 of the tree,) having spent three weeks on the case, 
 no agreement can be arrived at by the jury, because 
 though they all agree that the member's tile was 
 brushed off, one man seriously doubts whether he was 
 legally a member, two jurymen insist that his horse 
 came under the denomination " high," several are in 
 the fog whether or not he was near-sighted, and three 
 stoutly maintain that he did not duck.
 
 PROVIDED, HOWEVER. 117 
 
 Though there are seven of the panel, good men 
 and true, a majority of the body, enough, if in a legis- 
 lative body, to declare war, make peace, or do any- 
 thing that man can do, yet in the case of the tile it is 
 too solemn and awful a question to be determined by 
 anything short of unanimity on every point. This 
 world would not be worth living in for a moment if 
 such a question could, like peace or war, an embargo 
 or a sedition act, be determined by a mere majority. 
 And then if the jury do agree, what a long vista of 
 law points, for the consideration of the full court 
 some years hence, do those provisos open to the 
 astonished gaze of the happy man who has prevailed.
 
 CHAPTER XXV. 
 
 ME. BLOT GORED BY BULLS. 
 
 MY mind has been much exercised of late with the 
 case of my friend Mr. Blot, the even tenor of whose 
 life has been sadly interrupted by two ecclesiastical 
 bulls, fulminated within the present year. To appre- 
 ciate fully the nature of his disaster you must know 
 that when he resigned charge of the account books 
 of the great commercial house of Boker & Co., and 
 retired on a snug competency, his active temperament 
 forbade his sinking into listlessness and idleness ; so 
 that Mr. Blot in the saddle in the morning, bathing, 
 boating, skating or rambling towards night-fall, soon 
 became settled habits, while a dozen other minor 
 amusements filled up other hours of the day, making 
 his life, as before, one of routine and diligence. Led 
 by his taste for such accomplishments, he devoted 
 considerable of his time to music, so that he had even 
 taken upon himself the instruction in music and 
 dancing of a large class of indigent children; was 
 quite a leader at the gymnasium ; presided at the 
 organ in a feeble church ; was consulted on occasion 
 of childrens' festivals, merry makings, and excursions ; 
 was relied upon by several old crones to help while 
 away a winter's evening over the chess or checker- 
 board ; was considered an invaluable acquisition at the 
 whist table ; and at his boarding-house, he oftentimes
 
 MR. BLOT CORED BY BULLS. 119 
 
 set a whole bevy of juveniles dancing for hours to- 
 gether, with the inspiring notes of his viol. Indeed, 
 Mr. Blot, of whom I have before several times spoken, 
 was rather my beau ideal of a man of leisure of the 
 genus bachelor. 
 
 Some week or two ago I called upon him, and found 
 him sad and disheartened. His former cheerfulness 
 was all gone. Where before I had always been 
 welcomed with a smile, I was now only saluted with 
 a sigh. The cause of all this was. soon explained. 
 An Orthodox ecclesiastical council at Gloucester, 
 Massachusetts, had recently, while sitting in solemn 
 conclave, found and declared dancing to be immoral, 
 and all aiders and abettors therein depraved and 
 hopeless sinners. And while smarting under the rod 
 from that quarter, a Quaker ecclesiastical council 
 sitting within and for the State of New York, had 
 solemnly denounced the- pianoforte as a device of the 
 devil, and the owner thereof unworthy a seat with 
 the elect. 
 
 Poor Blot ! those two momentous bulls of sage and 
 learned ecclesiastical councils of the nineteenth 
 century, were too much for his devout, reverent and 
 sensitive nature. They threw discredit on all his 
 past life. His blotter, where he had tremblingly 
 entered here and there a credit to offset so much of 
 debit, was at last pronounced by theological account- 
 ants false and fraudulent. Where he had vainly 
 counted on a balance stood an awful deficit. The 
 same decree that outlawed his pianoforte, and dis- 
 banded his class, had consigned him to moral and 
 religious bankruptcy. 
 
 Some of his friends, too, who I fear could pot
 
 120 MR. BLOT GORED BY BULDS. 
 
 appreciate the beauty of that simplicity which 
 led him to acquiesce in those findings, as the 
 voice of Heaven, had aggravated his disquiet by 
 suggestions that those decisions were only part of 
 a great whole; that all amusements of the same 
 nature were to be denounced ; but that to save the 
 several denominations from each encountering the 
 whole odium, these sins were to be denounced 
 in detail. Each denomination was to select and 
 denounce some *>ne or more amusement, not under 
 sentence by any other religious tribunal. Those 
 friends had even gone so far as to name the pro- 
 gramme, to wit : that the Baptists were to follow up 
 the blows already struck, by anathematizing cricket 
 and foot-ball; the Presbyterians, bowling and skating; 
 the Episcopalians, chess and checker playing; the 
 Catholics, flutes and fiddle-bows; the Methodists, 
 battledoor and blind-man's buff ; the Unitarians, hoop- 
 driving and kite-flying; and the Universalists, jumping 
 the rope and see-sawing ; while the Orthodox and 
 Quakers were to drive home their advantages already 
 gained, by denouncing everything connected with the 
 harmonies of sound or motion, so as to include an 
 anathema against horseback riding unless at a square 
 trot, and swimming unless at dog-paddle. I do not 
 pretend to include the whole list as given me, because 
 I find no reliable authority for the rumor that Mr. 
 Blot's friends have so industriously circulated, 
 although the action above related, of the two religious 
 bodies named, affords reasonable ground enough 
 to suppose that something of the kind may be con- 
 templated. 
 
 In view of such a state of things, I found that my
 
 MR. BLOT GORED BY BULLS. 121 
 
 friend had been casting about him for means of 
 recreation and employment not likely to be the subject 
 of ecclesiastical censure, and that he had hit upon 
 catching fish, killing birds, hunting game, and the 
 pleasures of a well spread board, as entirely canonical 
 and legal ; and so upon looking around, I found in 
 place of his pianoforte stood an old fashioned side- 
 board, bountifully covered, where before used 
 to hang his lute and viol, branched a pair of huge 
 antlers, and on them rested fishing rods and fowling 
 pieces. On his card table lay powder horns and shot 
 pouches, while in the hall where the children were 
 wont to move in merry measure, they were now 
 romping in wild confusion with a brace of ill-bred, 
 noisy pointers. Indeed, everything about him, in a 
 few short months, had changed strangely changed. 
 The quiet, genial harmony of my friend's abode was 
 all gone. The change had penetrated even to his 
 very guests. Together with his lute and piano had 
 gone those musical friends of his, whose rich melodi- 
 ous voices had joined with his own genial nature to 
 lend a charm to his abode, seldom found in the homes 
 of those who attempt life in solo. And when I came 
 to note the air and conversation of his hunting com- 
 panions, discussing fiercely the relative merits of 
 different breeds of dogs and horses, I could stand the 
 contrast no longer, and took a hasty farewell. 
 H
 
 CHAPTER XXVI. 
 
 P I L G E I M I S M. 
 
 WE have in our own history a conclusive argument 
 against all manner of asceticism, whether taken in 
 infinitesimal doses, prescribed by a Puritan, or taken 
 by the quantity, prescribed by a Jesuit. It is to be 
 found in the history of the Pilgrims. We are too apt 
 to confound Pilgrimism (if I may be allowed to coin 
 a word) with Puritanism. They are, however, two 
 very different things. The Pilgrims came here with 
 some half a dozen contraband ideas that they had fled 
 their country with, and wished to experiment on in 
 this western wild. They were, Religious Liberty, 
 Civil Liberty, Popular Education, Congregational 
 Church Government, and Puritanism. The whole 
 constituted what I call Pilgrimism, or the doctrines 
 and principles of the Pilgrims. Their experiments 
 have been tried, and now let us note the result. 
 
 The leading idea in Pilgrimism was, undoubtedly, 
 religious liberty. There was little of that extant then. 
 They came here expressly to enjoy it. And yet it 
 has been thought by many that their ideas of it were 
 quite one sided a sort of religious liberty for one. 
 But that, I think, is hardly a fair statement of the case. 
 They came here to try a religious experiment, and 
 hence, when the Quakers and Anabaptists flocked in 
 here, and began sowing what the Pilgrims believed to 
 be tares with their true seed, they became excited
 
 IMLO'lllMISM. 123 
 
 and said and did things that look now exceedingly 
 intolerant. And yet I am apt to think that the Pil- 
 grims did not mean to deny to the Quakers and other 
 sects the right of private judgment in matters of 
 religion, but only to deny their right to come in and 
 interrupt their experiment. The object was to ex- 
 dude schismatics, not to punish them. At all events, 
 the Pilgrims must have brought the true seed with 
 them, however poor the quality might have been, 
 since from it has sprung the genuine religious liberty 
 that we are now enjoying. 
 
 Pilgrimism, too, contained the idea of civil liberty. 
 Their church without a bishop naturally associated 
 itself in their minds with a " state without a king." 
 No sooner, therefore, had they moored their barque 
 on the " wild New England shore," than they began 
 to experiment on that item of their creed. We all 
 know the result. From their experiments in that 
 direction has sprung our own model republic; and 
 the end is not yet. So, too, with popular education. 
 No sooner were the Pilgrims fairly landed in New 
 England, than they began to experiment on free 
 schools. The result has been that our land is now 
 dotted with school houses from one end to the other, 
 and other lands are profiting by our example. Their 
 experiments in church government, too, were eminently 
 successful. So that in all those respects the Pilgrims 
 may be said to have succeeded beyond measure. 
 Never before was such a balance carried to the credit 
 of any firm, as now stands to the credit of the Pilgrims, 
 on those four items of their adventure, to wit : re- 
 ligious liberty, civil liberty, popular education, and 
 congregational church government.
 
 124 PILGBIMISM. 
 
 But Pilgrimism had in it one other idea, and that 
 was Puritanism. The Pilgrims were staunch Puritans. 
 Undoubtedly that was one of the darling articles of 
 their creed. They did not believe in beautiful 
 churches, nor costly robes, nor formal ceremonies, nor 
 in pictures and crucifixes. Neither did they believe 
 in the beauties and pleasures and delights of life. 
 The world and all its joys they looked upon as 
 dangerous snares. On mere doctrinal points the 
 Puritan did not differ very materially with the 
 Churchman, or the Presbyterian. He only differed 
 with them in respect to those rites and ceremonies of 
 the church, and modes of life and practice, that 
 admitted the eye and ear to be delighted, the face to 
 be wreathed with smiles, and the heart to be filled 
 with joy. Whatever contributed to those deplorable 
 ends, he renounced and abjured. He came here as 
 much to escape being drawn heavenward joyfully, 
 as he did to win heaven ruefully. His house of wor- 
 ship was to be plain in title, and plain in form and 
 finish, and the mode of worship was to be without 
 vestments and without formalities. There were to be 
 no public monasteries, for those were popish, but 
 instead thereof, every house was to bo a private one, 
 every father of a family an abbot, and every mother 
 a lady abbess. Amusements of all kinds were to be 
 forever outlawed. May-day, Harvest-home, and Christ- 
 mas festivities were to be forever abolished. Music, 
 dancing, the drama, rural sports, domestic games, art. 
 p taste, fashion, dress, social parties, and everything of 
 that kind were voted common vagabonds, with whom 
 no good Puritan could have any fellowship. In a 
 word, a Puritan was , not only a really well-meaning,
 
 PILG1MMISM. 125 
 
 good, pious man, but in addition a monk without the 
 monastery. 
 
 The Pilgrims were true as steel to their religious 
 principles. For two centuries their creed was not 
 relaxed one iota. For all that time a pleasure-seeking, 
 dancing or theatre-going Puritan would have been a 
 greater raree-show than a mermaid or a sea-serpent. 
 They tried the Puritan experiment faithfully and well; 
 and now let us note the result. 
 
 At the end of the second century from the landing 
 of the Pilgrims, the old Puritan churches in Massa- 
 chusetts seemed to be about to become extinct. 
 Almost all of its old strongholds had capitulated to 
 another and less ascetic sect. Out of eight Puritan 
 churches built in Boston during the first century of 
 its existence, seven had gone over to the enemy. 
 The Old South alone remained steadfast. In the very 
 pulpits where those old Puritan divines, John Cotton, 
 the Mathers, John Davenport, the Coopers, and the 
 Thachers taught the Puritan faith, another sect taught 
 another doctrine to the children's children of the 
 original founders. The same religious revolt had 
 been going on throughout the State; in Salem, in 
 Roxbury, in Cambridge, in Hingham, in Plymouth, 
 and in other places, so that in many towns there was 
 not left a solitary Puritan church to mark the former 
 existence of the Pilgrims. Harvard College had 
 struck to the foe, and old Massachusetts was no 
 longer swayed by the Puritans. The children one by 
 one had dropped away from the cold and gloomy 
 asceticism of the old church, and at last, at the end 
 of the second century from the commencement of the 
 religious experiment, the balance sheet showed it to 
 11*
 
 126 PILGRIMISM. 
 
 be an entire failure. History no where else furnishes 
 another similar startling example of religious revolt. 
 It is not to be supposed that so general and so 
 sweeping a desolation was brought about by any one 
 thing. A great many elements must have entered 
 into it. Too much Geneva too much creed too 
 little gospel, perhaps ; but that the family and village 
 monkery inculcated by the church had much to do 
 with it, does not admit of a doubt.
 
 CHAPTER XXVII. 
 
 HOSPITALITY. 
 
 THERE are few of the virtues that surpass in real 
 value the virtue of hospitality. There is a wondrous 
 charm, a magnetic influence about the hospitalities of 
 the family. They win upon the heart as none other 
 of the courtesies of life do. They have a power for 
 good that we can scarcely estimate. The most 
 appreciative act of consideration that one man can 
 extend to another, is to invite him to his table. There 
 is hardly any one act that implies so much. The 
 table is the social spirit level. It is a treaty of peace 
 and a proclamation of amnesty. It dispels doubts and 
 heals differences. It is one of the most potent of 
 pacificators. It is full of power to reclaim the 
 wandering, strengthen the weak and stay the falling. 
 It is seldom that where such courtesies are extended 
 to the young and ambitious, that they will fall below 
 the standard thus created. And then how full of 
 pleasant memories, those little rites of hospitality, to 
 him who has felt them in friendlessness, and in loneli- 
 ness. To him who has been in journeyings oft, and 
 tasted their fruits, how much has it been to him as a 
 pool of water in a thirsty land. There is something 
 peculiarly refining in the very courtesies naturally 
 springing from those two opposite positions, that of 
 the host and that of the guest. If there is anything
 
 128 HOSPITALITY. 
 
 worthy, anything of good report in either party, the 
 situation will call it forth. It makes the rude less 
 rude, the careless more careful, and the thoughtless 
 more thoughtful. It enlarges the heart of the enter- 
 tainer, and warms with more generous purposes the 
 entertained. It is one of the best of schools, both of - 
 the manners and of the heart. 
 
 One of the happiest things in the history of any 
 people is that of being hospitable. It is one of the 
 great elements in human happiness. It has seldom, 
 if ever, been estimated at its true value. The people 
 of the world, and those of that part particularly in 
 which we live, are improving no doubt in most 
 things, but not in individual hospitality. In that 
 respect we are still far behind the ancient Jews, 
 Arabians, and other oriental nations. The Bible is 
 yet the most perfect hand-book of manners. It gives 
 some of the finest examples of good breeding, polite- 
 ness and hospitality, that have ever yet been recorded. 
 Take for instance, that scene in the Scriptures, where 
 the three strangers appeared to Abraham, as he was 
 sitting in his tent door, and " when he saw them he 
 ran to meet them, and bowed himself toward the 
 ground and said, ' If now I have found favor in thy 
 sight pass not away, I pray thee, from thy servant ; 
 let a little water, I pray you, be fetched, and wash 
 your feet, and rest yourself under the tree, and I will 
 fetch a morsel of bread, and comfort ye your hearts 
 after that ye shall pass on.' " What is there in all 
 the Scriptures more charming than that account of 
 the aged patriarch's spontaneous hospitality. And 
 how seemingly just and natural, after that, follows the 
 divine condescension in listening to, and answering
 
 HOSPITALITY. 129 
 
 his appeals for the doomed cities. I will not be so 
 uncivil as to inquire what would have been the 
 reception of those strangers had they been com- 
 missioned to make a like visit to our shores, in Pilgrim 
 times, especially if they appeared in broad-brims. It 
 is enough to say, that there would have been no 
 bowing and scraping. They did not believe in those 
 things. We do not believe in them half enough 
 ourselves. 
 
 Hospitality was a part of the religion of the 
 ancients. It is a material and prominent part of the 
 religion of the Bible. All the men signalized there 
 as having been peculiarly favored of Jehovah, were 
 preeminent for good breeding. I will go further, and 
 say that those who were the most eminently favored, 
 were those the most eminently well-bred. Whether 
 you consider Abraham as parting from his brother 
 Lot, or entertaining the three strangers, or interceding 
 for the doomed cities, or standing and bowing among 
 the children of Heth, he is everywhere the .finest 
 model of a perfect gentleman that the world ever 
 produced. And no one can doubt but that he stands 
 first among the favored of God. Then there is David, 
 and Moses, and Job, and Paul. Where in all history 
 can you find men who can compare with them for all 
 those qualities that go to make up the finished gen- 
 tleman ? And all of them were the subjects of special 
 divine favor. 
 
 An unhospitable, unsociable people will naturally 
 be an ill-bred people. It is only in society that you 
 can learn the art of pleasing. Books do not teach it. 
 Learning does not give it. Practice alone can 
 command it. We have a striking illustration of it in
 
 130 HOSPITALITY. 
 
 our own history. At the North we have our justly 
 celebrated common school system, and our colleges, 
 and with them a vast amount of intelligence and 
 learning, but we have never known but little, techni- 
 cally speaking, of the drawing-room and the dinner 
 table. At the South, the case is different. They 
 have not our schools, but they have always maintained 
 a most generous hospitality. Their houses are always 
 open to the stranger. They are seldom without 
 guests, and their dinner table is a social reunion. 
 What has been the result ? Go into a drawing-room, 
 say at Cambridge, where you will find young 
 men from all parts of our country, and in one hour's 
 time, any man, with a practised eye, shall be able to 
 determine who of them are from the South without 
 any fear of mistake, judging from their manners 
 alone. 
 
 The social institutions of the South have been 
 doing for their sons what all our literary institutions 
 could not do for ours. They have made them gentle, 
 courteous and well-bred. They have made them easy 
 and graceful in society far beyond our northern young 
 men. May not, too, their dinner table account for the 
 hitherto inexplicable fact that in all political pitched 
 battles, they are sure to win the day. It is barely 
 possible, after all, that there is really more working 
 power in a generous hospitality, than in a high 
 sounding speech. 
 
 Our lack of hospitality has not sprung from want 
 of means, nor want of any of the elements either of 
 head or heart, that go to make the hospitable people. 
 I do not believe that there exists on the face of the 
 earth a more generous people than our own, nor one
 
 HOSPITALITY. 131 
 
 which would be more hospitable, had they been bred 
 to it, and had it been taught them as a duty. But 
 the difficulty is, that all the early teaching in New 
 England, and most all the teaching in later years, has 
 tended directly the other way, to keep people 
 asunder, and discourage everything that brought 
 them together whether in the drawing-room or at the 
 dinner table. The social principle that lies at the 
 root of all hospitality, when not positively and point- 
 edly denounced, has been only tolerated, where it 
 ought to have been relied upon as one of the master 
 influences for good. 
 
 And be it remembered that hospitality, dispensing 
 the social food to your children at your own table and 
 around your own fire-side, places the whole thing just 
 where it belongs. If there are evils connected with 
 the cultivation of our social natures, that mode is the 
 most natural, the safest and the best. It renders all 
 those other modes, the public table and the public 
 hall unnecessary, and places them in their true light, 
 in comparison, as coarse and cold, and everyway 
 uncongenial and unsatisfactory. It makes home the 
 happiest place, and that, alone, could sooner be relied 
 upon to dry up many of our present social evils than 
 thousands of prohibitory laws.
 
 CHAPTER XXVIII. 
 
 HINTS TO STRINGENT LAW MAKERS. 
 
 THERE is unexampled speed in everything nowa- 
 days, but there is nothing in nature, history or art, 
 that equals the haste of a modern philanthropist. If 
 another world was about to be made, six days would 
 be deemed an age to do it in, and not a man of them 
 would allow more than twenty-four hours for the job. 
 God and nature allow time for everything, and 
 abundance of it too, but a modern philanthropist must 
 be paid down, on the instant, in good current coin of 
 glorious results, or he flies in a passion at once. The 
 reason why so many of our great reformers are so 
 fractious, and scold so unmercifully is easy enough 
 explained. They do not distinguish between operating 
 on mind and operating on matter. Because a skilful 
 dentist can change the teeth of a luckless inebriate 
 in a day, they conclude, forthwith, that they can as 
 speedily change his appetite. But the truth is that 
 however fast a man may be when operating on matter, 
 he may as well make up his mind to be slow, when he 
 comes to operate on mind. There is no such thing as 
 speed there. Every advance in public opinion has 
 been most provokingly slow to those philanthropic 
 husbandmen who go out sowing, sickle in hand, 
 expecting to return bearing their sheaves with them. 
 A few well known historical facts will serve to 
 illustrate.
 
 HINTS TO STRINGENT LAW MAKERS. 133 
 
 It took more than three centuries to obtain toleration, 
 for Christianity. Wickliffe and Huss sounded the 
 tocsin of reform more than two centuries before the 
 Eeformation actually took root under Luther. Coper- 
 nicus published to the world the true planetary system 
 one whole century before Isaac Newton was born, and 
 nearly three centuries before the Catholic church 
 acknowledged it as the true system. Clarkson and 
 AVilberforce, and their compeers, labored and agitated 
 thirty years before the British nation were convinced 
 that stealing negroes was wrong, and ought to be 
 prohibited. About the same time has been employed 
 in this country in sowing broadcast the seed of 
 immediate emancipation. Perhaps our abolition 
 friends can tell us how the season advances, and what 
 are the signs of the harvest. Old habits and modes 
 of thought are stubborn antagonists. Granite 
 boulders, and ridges of flint stone, are nothing to 
 them. As sound as we are on moral questions, in a 
 race of diligence between a company of smart con- 
 tractors to tunnel the Atlantic, and as numerous a 
 force of lecturers bent on convincing us that it is 
 wrong to steal the literary labors of foreign authors, 
 the odds would be greatly in favor of putting the 
 tunnel through first. 
 
 The state of things here, in regard to intemperance, 
 is the growth of over two centuries. It is the natural 
 result of our ascetic, social, and religious habits. Yet 
 our philanthropists, without attempting to touch the 
 cause of the evil, expect to cure it at a single blow, 
 without escape, evasion or circumlocution. Because 
 they have somewhere heard of imperial edicts that 
 have dealt instant death to a certain cut of garment, 
 12
 
 134 HINTS TO STRINGENT LAW MAKERS. 
 
 or fashion of moustache, in a Russian army, they forth- 
 with sagely conclude that a cunningly contrived ukase, 
 from the sovereign majority of an independent State, 
 will instantly work a thorough change in the settled 
 habits of a million of free people. 
 
 There is, however, a slight difference between the 
 two, if they would only be persuaded to look at 
 the philosophy of the thing. In despotic govern- 
 ments, a numerous, well organized, and well paid 
 police force stands charged with the duty of seeing 
 that each and every law is observed, good, bad and 
 indifferent ; and hence it matters little whether a law 
 is just or unjust, popular or unpopular, the argus-eyed 
 police are ever on the alert, and woe to the unlucky 
 violator. With us it is entirely different. Here, we 
 have no such organization charged with the duty of 
 seeing to the due observance of the laws. Nor do 
 we need any such, unless we copy after those despot- 
 isms. Our penal code, with very few exceptions, 
 (and it is a pity that there are any,) is based upon 
 the simple principle of natural justice. It recognizes 
 the principle that every man has a right to use his 
 own as he pleases, provided he so uses it as not to 
 injure others. It is only when he so uses his own 
 that he injures others, that the law comes in and 
 punishes him. Hence it is with us that no police 
 force, no spies, no informers are needed, since every 
 breach of the law brings with it some one injured 
 party who stands charged, both by inclination and by 
 interest, to bring the violator to justice. And it will 
 be found that almost all of our prosecutions for crime 
 arise in that way, the injured party complains. 
 
 The weak spot in all our liquor laws, the Maine
 
 HINTS TO STRINGENT LAW MAKERS. 135 
 
 law as well as the rest, is in the despotic feature of it, 
 which declares certain acts to be crimes without 
 pretending that those single acts of themselves 
 injured any one. They declare, for instance, a single 
 sale of one glass of liquor to be a crime, without 
 regard to the point whether that single sale injured 
 or benefited the party sold to. 
 
 Xo one of those acts pretends to give the party in- 
 jured, say a drunkard's family, any redress, any com- 
 pensation, for the injury suffered from the liquor dealer 
 Avho has done the injury. They are all enactments to 
 prevent injury, and consequently, crime, not to 
 redress it and to punish it. Now, although it may 
 sound very well to talk about making penal laws to 
 prevent injuries and to prevent crimes, there is 
 nothing in the world more sure than that such laws 
 need and must have the despot's tools to enforce 
 them. The Maine Liquor Law is, as usual with us, 
 very verbose. Louis Napoleon would enact the same 
 thing thus : " whereas the use of intoxicating drinks 
 oftentimes leads to poverty, suffering, vice and crime, 
 it is hereby decreed that the use of the same here- 
 after shall forever cease. The Minister of Justice is 
 charged with carrying into effect this decree." 
 
 With his police force to stand by the decree, and 
 his military force to stand by the police, he might 
 perhaps enforce it. . So, even in this free country, a 
 despotic, preventive law, like the Maine law, can be 
 enforced for a while, to wit. just so long as the friends 
 of the law are willing to do the work, gratuitously, 
 that the police does in despotic governments, but no 
 longer. And the weak point there is that you can 
 get but few people who are willing to do that work at
 
 136 HINTS TO STRINGENT LAW MAKERS. 
 
 all, and those only while there is a strong excitement 
 about it. As soon as it comes down to the every day 
 labor of life, where the informer is sure of the hatred 
 of the accused, but not sure of any emolument or 
 public laudation for the act, the philanthropist faints 
 and grows weary of his task. There is scarcely a 
 penal law on our statute books, not based on an injury 
 done, or directly menaced, that has ever been worth 
 a penny to the community. Men, unless they are 
 employed to do it, will not busy themselves in accusing 
 and punishing people for acts that do not injure 
 themselves personally, and that they cannot see 
 clearly have injured, or are about to injure others. 
 Our ancestors demonstrated all that in their blue-laws. 
 And we have now too many practical illustrations of 
 the rule on our statute books to admit of any dispute 
 of the substantial accuracy of the principle above 
 laid down, that mere preventive laws cannot be enforced 
 among a free people. 
 
 To frame an effectual liquor law you have only to 
 find out what is just and equitable. If men will deal 
 in an article that leads naturally to the ruin of families, 
 and to vice and crime, declare them responsible, both 
 civilly and criminally, for all the injuries that they aid 
 in the slightest degree, in inflicting; on the same 
 principle that the law now declares each one of a 
 thousand rioters, or conspirators, liable individually, 
 for all the injury done by the whole thousand. If 
 Mr. Guzzle drinks at twenty shops in a given town, 
 and finally becomes intemperate, and neglects his 
 family, give any one or all of that family a right to 
 complain against one or all of those who aided in 
 doing the injury, by BO much as the sale of a single
 
 HINTS TO STRINGENT LAW MAKERS. 137 
 
 glass of liquor to him, and obtain a permanent decree 
 for that support from them, that before they had from 
 him. So let the town complain and get a decree for 
 the support of the man and his family if they become 
 chargeable upon the town. 
 
 If crime ensues, and the criminal becomes a public 
 charge, visit the expense to the State upon those who 
 aided, in the least, in causing it. If irresponsible 
 parties deal in it and injure others, confine them to 
 hard labor until they have repaired the wrongs that 
 they have done. Besides all, let there be a penalty 
 proportionate to every injury that the vender of 
 intoxicating drinks has, in the slightest degree, aided 
 in inflicting. Under such a law there would be a 
 police force for its enforcement coextensive with the 
 sufferers by intemperance. Every sufferer would not 
 only be an accuser, but a charge upon the traffic, so 
 that if it is true that the gains from the traffic will 
 not repair the injuries that it does, it would soon go 
 down like any other losing business. At all events, 
 the law would be just, and hence could be enforced ; 
 for there is nothing more marked and sure than that 
 juries are always ready to enforce the claims of 
 equity and justice. 
 12*
 
 CHAPTER XXIX. 
 
 PEEP INTO THE FOEECASTLE. 
 
 You will please to consider yourself on the deck 
 of the good ship Philanthropist, prepared to take a 
 peep into that delectable place where the sailor is 
 boarded and lodged. You observe that hole in the 
 deck near the bows, with a ladder stretching down 
 therefrom into the blackness of darkness. That is 
 the place; please to descend. Witness how admirably 
 arranged to woo slumber. Although it is now high 
 noon you have here all the soft obscurity of midnight. 
 No useless panes of glass, or other modes of letting 
 in sunshine to interrupt the dim religious light of the 
 place, or to tempt the sailor to spend any part of his 
 watch below in reading, writing, mending his clothes, 
 or other such frivolities. In its architectural arrange- 
 ments it is modeled after designs by "Woodchuck. 
 Reynard, too, from time immemorial, has built on the 
 same judicious plan: the leading peculiarity of which 
 is that all the light and air is admitted through the 
 hole at which you enter. 
 
 Allow me now to direct your attention to the 
 admirable arrangements of the forecastle, for feeding 
 and lodging the crew. They are all after designs by 
 Swineherd. The beds and bedding are all by Ship 
 Carpenter, and consist of a pine board bunk for each 
 of the men. The tables, chairs, table-ware and
 
 PEEP INTO THE FORECASTLE. 139 
 
 cutlery, are by the Hingham Bucket Company, and 
 consist of a single kid, or small pine pail for each 
 member of the crew, as a complete and ample fit out, 
 in which to serve up to him for the longest voyage, 
 his morning, noon, and evening meals. The pine 
 bunk and the pine nogging completes the entire 
 outfit of the ship-owner for this home of the sailor 
 on the sea. If he is provident, and brings along 
 with him a bed to sleep upon, a cup to drink from, 
 and a spoon and knife to eat with, it is all well. But 
 if he is improvident, or unable to provide himself 
 with such necessaries, he is permitted to sleep on the 
 soft side of a board drink his coffee and sup his 
 soup as he can, and tear his food in native style with 
 his teeth. 
 
 His frugal board is set, as a general thing, with salt 
 beef and hard bread, hard bread and salt beef just 
 that and nothing more, morning, noon, and night, 
 week in and week out, year in and year out. Any- 
 thing and everything over and above that simple fare 
 is looked upon by the master as a work of superero- 
 gation, for which Jack is expected to give thanks, 
 with all meekness and humility, evermore. Where 
 the living is tip-top, the forecastle is illumined, once 
 or twice a week, with either beans, peas, or rice 
 one of them, no more and on Sunday, Jack is 
 expected to be made everlastingly happy if he is 
 treated to " duff," or common minute pudding made 
 of flour. Once a week he gets a taste of pork with 
 his beans, and morning and night he has served to 
 him, coffee or tea. 
 
 Perhaps you are disposed to think that all this is
 
 140 PEEP INTO THE FORECASTLE. 
 
 necessarily incident to life on shipboard. Allow me 
 to conduct you aft, and dispel that illusion. 
 
 You will please to observe the broad and well 
 lighted stairway before you that leads to the cabin 
 please to enter. Allow me to direct your attention 
 to the beautiful panneling in maple and satin wood. 
 Those corinthian columns, with capitals, richly carved 
 and highly gilt, are also deserving your inspection. 
 The table, you will observe, is set with the best of 
 ware and cutlery, the beds are models of taste and 
 neatness, and all the appointments of this highly 
 finished and elegantly furnished abode are rich, 
 beautiful and classic. 
 
 The favored mortals who are to enjoy this princely 
 abode, are some other individuals whom the owners 
 have taken to board and lodge, styled officers and 
 passengers.
 
 CHAPTEE XXX. 
 
 JONATHAN'S REVERENCE FOR THE PAST. 
 
 No foreign country can present much of interest 
 to the general traveller, that is not well stored with 
 memorials of the past. Few have sufficient command 
 of foreign languages, or time and patience, if they 
 had, to inquire much into the present condition and 
 institutions of the people they are visiting. They 
 can usually only follow up and verify the records of 
 history, by wandering over old battle fields, bending 
 over decayed tombstones of patriots and scholars, and 
 making more distinct and accurate their recollections, 
 over the relics of scenes and events that have passed 
 into history. What could money or art do for London 
 to atone for the destruction of the Tower, or for 
 Rome, to interest the traveller, like her obelisks, her 
 ruins and her ancient temples ? And who would not 
 rather dwell a day only among the ruins of Thebes 
 or of Athens, than to be presented with the freedom 
 for life, of that great mushroom, the city of Man- 
 chester ? . 
 
 Jonathan has no well defined organ of veneration. 
 He has quite a distaste for everything that smacks of 
 age, unless it be old feuds, and old wines. "With his 
 heart brim-full of pride in everything that pertains to 
 his past history, yet has he not one jot of veneration 
 for any of its old memorials ! Old and venerable
 
 142 JONATHAN'S REVERENCE FOR THE PAST. 
 
 homesteads, hallowed by a thousand sacred recollec- 
 tions, go down to their graves with those who erected 
 them, to make way for paste-board palaces, of most 
 painful whiteness. Old battle-fields are cut up, and 
 improved with perfect nonchalance under the roller. 
 The auctioneer succeeds to the cherished library of 
 the scholar, presentation copies and all, before the 
 mute mourners have fairly left his remains alone with 
 the undertaker. Significant and historical names of 
 old localities are carelessly cast aside, like an old 
 novel, for others more sounding and sentimental. 
 Soon, nothing will be left us which has not been so 
 improved under the plane and the paint-brush, that 
 those old and hackneyed allusions, " ruined," " ivied," 
 and " moss-covered," will be words wholly unintelli- 
 gible to American ears. The hoary head of Mount 
 Washington, too suggestive of age, will have to be 
 touched up to a delicate aburn, the rough ridges of 
 the mighty Alleghanies will have to be smoothed and 
 terraced, while as to that uproarious big bully, 
 Niagara Falls, it will be voted passt and vulgar unless 
 it is cut into cascades, fashioned into whirlpools, and 
 scented with rose water. 
 
 For any perversion of taste in this matter, our old 
 Commonwealth must come in for her share of the 
 common obloquy. It was here that the most renowned 
 battle-field of our revolution that told a living story 
 to the eye of the stranger was cut up and despoiled 
 to help erect a column that tells him nothing. Where 
 the field itself would have pointed out to the inquisi- 
 tive traveller, " here our forces threw up their breast- 
 works, and there the enemy advanced and were 
 repulsed," its mouth has been closed forever. And
 
 JONATHAN'S REVERENCE FOR THE PAST. 143 
 
 how have our people been improving, even upon that 
 example, by attempting to build a heaven-high monu- 
 ment to Washington, while that old homestead of his, 
 where he lived, and died, and lies entombed where 
 every tree, and stone, and hillock, is vocal with 
 patriotic sentiment, was left liable for a long time to 
 JKIS.S into the hands of speculators, perhaps to be sold 
 under the hammer, or, perchance to be shown at a 
 pi.stareen a head, as a showman shows an ape. 
 
 Each city, town and hamlet in our land should be 
 instant in season and out of season, to preserve each 
 and every memorial of its early history, its old forts, 
 old breastworks, the mansion houses of its old wor- 
 thies, and the resting places of its honored dead. 
 The old Hancock House preserved by the public with 
 pious care, and stored with the relics of revolutionary 
 history, would be ten thousand times more interesting 
 and instructive, and vastly more honorable, both to 
 the dead and the living, than a monument to its patriot 
 founder, five hundred feet high. 
 
 How many times have I strayed of a moonlight 
 evening to our famous Dorchester Heights ; rambled 
 over those old breastworks ; pictured to myself that 
 memorable night-scene, when our fathers threw them 
 up ; fancied the dismay on shipboard when the morn- 
 ing's sun displayed them to the British fleet in the 
 harbor, until the whole panorama of the scene was 
 vivid and life-like before me. A few evenings since 
 I took a stroll that way again, to revive those old his- 
 torical reminiscences. But how was I bewildered 
 when I had clambered the old familiar mount as before, 
 to find every revolutionary relic gone ! Astonished 
 and chagrined beyond measure, I tried still to palliate
 
 144 JONATHAN'S KEVERENCE FOR THE PAST. 
 
 the sacrilege. I said to myself, " doubtless these 
 heights were private property, and now that the ven- 
 erable patriot who owned, and has so long preserved 
 them is no more, hungry and distant heirs are parting 
 his raiment." 
 
 But imagine my feelings, when an honest Hibernian 
 near by scattered all my palliatives to the wind, by 
 informing me that the thing was no private specula- 
 tion " at all, at all/ 7 but that the whole was one of the 
 improvements of our great and patriotic city. And 
 how was I edified and improved as I looked around, 
 to see with what a just sense of the beautiful and 
 true, those old triangular, up-and-down, and every- 
 which-way breastworks had been removed, and the 
 whole mount wrought into a roundness and smoothness 
 that cannot fail to cheer the heart of geometricians, 
 and presenting a plump and well-rounded model for a 
 brown loaf, that is well calculated to throw a baker 
 into ecstasies.
 
 CHAPTER XXXI. 
 
 AUNT DI AD AMA. 
 
 MANY years ago, in the days of my top and kite- 
 hood, my father, being about to leave home, to be 
 absent some considerable time, signalized the event 
 by presenting me with a watch. It was none of your 
 dumb watches, such as boys are generally treated to, 
 but a veritable, outspoken, industrious little time-piece, 
 that kept up a most tempestuous ticking day and 
 night, and had its hands always full of work. It was 
 when watches were not an every day commodity, and 
 it made something of a stir in the neighborhood. 
 The boys got excited about it and made daily pilgrim- 
 ages to its shrine. The neighbors gossiped about it. 
 Teamsters got wind of it, and drew up short, and let 
 their cattle blow, while they consulted it. John, our 
 man of all work, and Jim the boy, both fell dead in 
 love with it, and became more than ever observant of 
 the flight of time, consulting it often and thought- 
 fully, to see if it proclaimed any of those festival 
 hours of the day, when the rake and the shovel might 
 be legally laid aside for the spoon and the porringer. 
 Amid all this adulation, however, there was one 
 sceptic, one Mordecai, in the king's gate. Aunt 
 Diadama refused to bow down and do reverence to 
 the timepiece that I had set up. She not only 
 refused to do it homage, but she was even severe 
 13
 
 146 AUNT DIADAMA. 
 
 upon it, pronouncing its gold mere pinchbeck, and its 
 time false and deceitful. 
 
 Aunt Diadama was one of your strong-minded 
 women, who looked upon any dissent from her doc- 
 trines as downright perversity. However it might 
 be with others, she herself claimed to be infallible. 
 She was tall in person, and sharp in voice and outline, 
 so that she was seen and heeded afar off. Disease 
 and doctors fled at her approach. Bed-ridden invalids 
 turned uneasy on their couches, as the watchword 
 passed from mouth to mouth " Aunt Diadama is 
 coming," distracted with fearful forebodings of 
 drenchings of herb tea; while juveniles crept into 
 corners and formed desperate resolutions of resistance 
 to inflictions of oil and senna. Order was legibly 
 written on every fold of her carefully plaited gar- 
 ment ; the higher law stood out cold and stiff in her 
 well starched muslin ruff; and reform of all abuses, 
 and that instanter, too, seemed set severe between 
 her thin compressed lips. 
 
 Now long before the advent of my watch, Aunt 
 Diadama had set up a sun-dial on the window-sill, and 
 soon my watch and her sun, (spell that latter word 
 with a u, if you please, for Aunt was a maiden lady ; ) 
 were at logger-heads. When my watch said "twelve 
 pon honor," her sun would speak up and say, more 
 likely than not, contemptuously, "no, half-past eleven/' 
 or, " wrong, just one," or something of that sort flatly 
 contradictory. At first my watch carried the day; 
 but I soon learned that it was all idle to pit one little 
 feeble piece of mechanism against such a model of 
 abstract principle, and undeviating rectitude, as the 
 sun. Now, a neighbor would lose the coach, at the
 
 AUXT DIADAMA. 147 
 
 village, by too implicit faith in my watch. And now 
 another and another, would fail to come up to time 
 from the same misplaced confidence. Friend after 
 friend dropped away, until at last I myself began to 
 distrust it, then I came to detect it, in its short 
 comings, and at last I was forced to openly side with 
 Aunt Diadama and denounce it. Aunt could never 
 endure error anywhere, and much less in my watch; 
 since towards that she had conceived a special hatred, 
 and she was for lynching it at once. 
 
 On my mother, who was gentle and conservative, 
 and who in the palmier days of my watch had kept 
 aloof from either faction, now fell the whole burden 
 of defending it. " You ought not to expect it to be 
 perfect,'' mildly suggested my mother. " Then where 
 is the use of it," inquired my Aunt, tartly, who was 
 a religious believer in perfectability, and severe on 
 error wherever found. " Wait awhile and see if it 
 cannot be repaired and regulated," urged my mother 
 mildly. '' Regulated ! Fiddle-de-de ! " ejaculated my 
 Aunt, sharply. Poor woman, she was thinking then 
 of the attempt she made in her youthful days to 
 do a little regulating herself to wit, to regulate a 
 young rake who was paying his addresses to her, and 
 the reminiscence made her spiteful. " Once wrong 
 always wrong." was her motto ever afterwards. " It 
 will only take a week or two," pursued my mother 
 coaxingly, who knew my Aunt's weakness. " "\Vliy 
 not say a century and done with it," grimly responded 
 my Aunt, who abominated all delay. She was always 
 for having things set right at once "now or never." 
 " Send it to File, the jeweller," said my mother, address- 
 ing me. " Xo," screamed my Aunt, now thoroughly
 
 148 AUNT DIADAMA. 
 
 aroused, fixing her gray eye severely upon me and 
 gesticulating with her bony finger, " let us regulate 
 it ourselves. Those who have the wit to detect 
 errors are just the ones to correct them/' said my 
 Aunt, determinedly, as she took the little watch and 
 laid it on the table for instant dissection. 
 
 Aunt Diadama, in the view of all of us, had clearly 
 vanquished my mother. She had not only talked 
 twice as long and much faster than my mother, but 
 had laid all down, too, with ten times the emphasis. 
 There was no resisting such eloquence and determin- 
 ation, and the work of dissection had therefore to go 
 on. Aunt was always for probing the disease to the 
 bottom, and hence decreed that the watch must come 
 to pieces. And so at it we went. No jeweller could 
 have done it with greater celerity. John and Jim 
 were as handy as the greatest experts, and as for 
 Aunt, to say nothing of myself, the facility with 
 which she took part from part, and laid the whole in 
 fragments about her, elicited unbounded applause. 
 John declared that he should live and die in the 
 belief that she had spent all her days making watches, 
 so very handy was she in taking them to pieces. 
 
 It was only in the work of putting it together again 
 that we experienced any difficulty. Though civil and 
 polite at parting, the machinery seemed bent on never 
 coming together again. No two pieces of it could be 
 prevailed upon to agree for five minutes. No sooner 
 did one wheel get affable, and consent to go into place, 
 than another got angry, and insisted upon coming out. 
 So soon as one thing came out of the sulks another 
 went in. Did one screw begin to take, and work 
 kindly, then another would hang back and grow
 
 AUNT DIADAMA. 149 
 
 dogged. If one post came to a sense of duty, and 
 concluded to stand up, it was only the signal for half 
 a dozen others to mutiny and tumble down. If any- 
 thing did go in, it went in under protest. Indeed one 
 half that came out of the case seemed bent on never 
 going back. At last, after days and days of puzzling 
 over at, Aunt Diadamas' patience became exhausted. 
 She pronounced it a cheat, and sent it off and sold it 
 to File, the jeweller, for raw material. Afterwards, 
 our village schoolmaster bought an admirable little 
 time keeper at File's, looking marvellously like my 
 little culprit, but no amount of evidence could ever 
 convince my aunt that it was made out of the per- 
 verse materials that we parted with. 
 
 Since then I have often been reminded of my spare 
 and spunky aunt. Anniversary week, when most of 
 our institutions undergo their annual scrutiny and 
 tinkering, is sure to bring her vividly to mind. I see 
 her then in your higher law orator, who can brook 
 no defect in anything, and is for dashing in pieces 
 the most elaborate and cherished of human institu- 
 tions that has a moat on it. I seem then to hear a 
 gentle voice chiding him as thoughtless and irrational, 
 and exclaiming, in the language of my mother, "You 
 ought not to expect it to be perfect." I see Aunt 
 Diadama, too, in your impatient orators, who seem 
 to forget that it takes time to perfect any, even the 
 least of God's works, much more those of man, and 
 who are for obtaining results right off immediately 
 reaping before they have fairly sown. I feel then 
 sometimes like quizzing a little, and quietly beseech- 
 ing them to grant a little time, a week or so, to 
 change a national institution or habit, say as long as 
 13*
 
 150 AUNT DI AD AM A. 
 
 it would take to regulate a watch. But, of all places 
 to bring my aunt to mind life-like, give me the legis- 
 lative hall. I see her there in your reformers of the 
 intense and universal school, busied about affairs of 
 State, knife in hand, dissecting the Constitution, pull- 
 ing the Union to pieces, and taking things apart gen- 
 erally. I cannot help then ejaculating, mentally, 
 " There is Aunt Diadama regulating my watch ;" and 
 I am sorely tempted to break over the usual limits of 
 decorum, and shout lustily from my perch in the gal- 
 lery, " Hold on, there hold on don't start another 
 peg. It is all very pretty pulling those things to 
 pieces, and you may be very handy at it, but let me 
 tell you, ten to one you never get them together again. 
 Take warning from Aunt Jhadama, and if anything 
 goes wrong call in an expert."'
 
 CHAPTER XXXII. 
 
 ADORNMENT OF THE SANCTUARY. 
 
 OUR Protestant sires abandoned to Rome three 
 tilings, that, other things being equal, would be 
 enough to give her the victory for all time to come. 
 First of all, they yielded to her custody the only 
 emblematic and characteristic Christian flag. Because 
 Rome employed the cross as the sign of her faith 
 everywhere, they refused to employ it anywhere. 
 Because Rome misused it, they resolved to disuse it. 
 Nothing could have been more unwise. Flags, ban- 
 ners and standards as signs and signals of a common 
 purpose, are of the highest antiquity. 
 
 Then our fathers found Rome employing pictures 
 and other appeals to the eye in religious teachings, 
 and not only using but abusing those modes of influ- 
 ence, and so they yielded to her the use of them 
 altogether. Rome ornamented her churches too much, 
 so they refused to ornament theirs at all. Rome dei- 
 fied paintings and crucifixes, so they determined to 
 scorn them. Rome made her churches too inviting, 
 so they made theirs wholly uninviting. We all know 
 how well they succeeded. In all creation there is 
 nothing probably less inviting than one of our empty 
 churches. It must be evident that in all this Rome 
 and our fathers were about equally in error. Rome 
 thought too much of appeals to the eye and too little
 
 152 ADORNMENT OF THE SANCTUARY. 
 
 of appeals to the ear, and our fathers went to the 
 other extreme. The true system is to employ them 
 both and about equally. There is more religious 
 influence in one of her sublime altar-pieces than in 
 our pulpit upholstery ; and more to stir the soul in 
 one of our pulpit discourses, than in all her masses 
 and mummeries. There is more to excite devotional 
 feeling in one of her churches, adorned and illustrated 
 with sacred history and memorials, than in one of our 
 meeting-houses with its vast and indefinite extent of 
 plaster. All of this is understood well enough in 
 secular life. No one of us carries the severe simpli- 
 city of the church into any other place, unless it is 
 into a barn or a depot. 
 
 The same Deacon Dolorus who would look with 
 dismay upon an altar-piece in one of our churches, 
 will fill his drawing-room with Madonnas and Holy 
 Families, and subscribe with alacrity for " Illustrated 
 Bibles " and " Scenes in Palestine." If we wish to 
 make our homes enticing and agreeable, we adorn 
 them. If we wish to preserve family recollections, 
 we store our houses with family portraits. If any 
 scene is peculiarly dear to us, we prize a painting or 
 a sketch of it. All of those appeals to the eye we 
 know heighten and strengthen our impressions. We 
 use them on all occasions and in every place, except 
 one. The moment we enter the church all such aids 
 are thrown aside, as if we changed our nature the 
 moment we entered there. Six days in the week we 
 feel that we are mere mortals, and must use all our 
 senses, or fail ; but on the seventh, we set ourselves 
 up for pure, disembodied spirits, ignore sight, and 
 rely on sound altogether.
 
 ADORNMENT OF THE SANCTUARY. 153 
 
 Together with our cheerless churches, comes, 
 naturally enough, our custom of closing them on week 
 days. The custom has neither reason nor precedent 
 in its favor. Its origin can neither be traced to Jew 
 nor Gentile. The Hebrews went up daily to the 
 Temple to worship. All the Temples of old were 
 always open. Rome in keeping her churches always 
 open has only copied after Jerusalem. The idea of 
 building a Temple to the Most High, and solemnly 
 consecrating it to Him, and then quietly closing it for 
 six-sevenths of the time against all His people, is 
 surely a novel one, to say the least. For six days in 
 the week there is no public altar to Jehovah no 
 shrine for the pilgrim to kneel at. For all practical 
 purposes for that time the stranger might as well be 
 among mere heathen. It ought not to surprise us 
 that the almighty dollar takes the lead with us that it 
 does, when we consider that it has six days the start 
 of spiritual things. Our system of closing our 
 churches on week days, seems to say as clearly as 
 anything can, that religion has no claim on those days. 
 All of that I believe is unnatural, unscriptural, and 
 tending to the subversion of Christianity. Our system 
 in that respect is all wrong. The reason for erecting 
 Temples to God is to be found in that universal law 
 of the mind that connects our thoughts by association, 
 arid claims a time and a place for all things. 
 
 The Temple is a living epistle of itself; if it is 
 stored with illustrations and memorials of its mission, 
 the greater is the aid it can give to the worshipper. 
 If, in addition to that, it is in truth and fact God's 
 house, so that the poor stranger who enters it to 
 worship can feel that he is the guest of his Maker,
 
 154 ADORNMENT OP THE SANCTUARY. 
 
 and not of some purse-proud pewholder, it is at once 
 associated with its high office, and becomes an object 
 of tender and sublime veneration. That distinction 
 is legibly marked between the churches of Rome and 
 of the Puritan. There a church is a church forever ; 
 here, until the world bids higher. There one feels an 
 awe steal over him as he treads alone the solemn 
 cathedral aisle, while with us he feels nothing but the 
 cold cheerlessness of unappropriated and unadorned 
 space. There a church seems a church, whether 
 filled or not ; hero it is nothing if it is empty. There 
 it is surmounted with the cross; here with a weather- 
 cock. There morning and evening, its bell calls all 
 to solemn duty ; here it calls us to our meals and to 
 our rest. 
 
 Rome at this moment is making greater encroach- 
 ments on us than we are on her. "With the printing 
 press, lightning and steam engine enlisted almost 
 entirely on our side, how few are our victories over 
 her. In our popular education and free principles, 
 we have the elements of universal conquest, but our 
 advantages there are all frittered away by unnatural 
 and antiquated prejudices. We will neither be 
 scriptural, nor reasonable, nor avail ourselves of the 
 light of experience if it is to pronounce that Rome is 
 right in anything. We set ourselves against the col- 
 lected sense of the world and go forth to battle with- 
 out a banner. We are seeking a far country and yet 
 resolutely set ourselves against the aids that God and 
 nature have given us, and say, away with your maps 
 and charts, we will have no aid from the eye. We 
 are surrounded with watchful foes, yet we, good easy
 
 ADORNMENT OP THE SANCTUARY. 155 
 
 souls, having fought the good fight on the first day of 
 the week, deliberately lock up our entrenchments and 
 disband for the remainder of it.
 
 CHAPTER XXXIII. 
 
 HINTS ON THE ART OP LIVING. 
 
 BEWARE of the bounties of nature. The old-fash- 
 ioned notion that they were made for man is flat 
 heresy, and was exploded long ago. His only true 
 and unquestioned inheritance here below are briars 
 and thorns. Do not delude yourself with the belief 
 that those gorgeous clouds that you see floating 
 above you are so many fountains of water, formed 
 there to shower down blessings, quench the thirst of 
 the parched earth, and nourish into life little niceties 
 for you, as many thoughtless persons suppose. 
 They are gathered there in the heavens for quite 
 another purpose, to hurl thunderbolts, and terrify 
 lonely wives and timid children. The sooner you get 
 quit of those popular ideas the better. Be not de- 
 ceived. Grapes were by no means made to strengthen 
 and cheer the heart with their luscious juices, but to 
 teach the first rudiments of tippling, and to treat 
 gouty old gentlemen to a twinge now and then. The 
 rich fruits of the earth were not ordained to invigorate 
 the body, but to beget pains and colics. Flowers 
 were made to fade ; teeth were made to ache ; and 
 the tongue, that unruly member, was vouchsafed to 
 man just to set people by the ears, and make them 
 miserably unhappy. 
 
 You will be guilty of a great blunder if you attempt
 
 HINTS ON THE ART OF LIVING. 157 
 
 to go through life looking to the right and left, spying 
 out beauties, scenting the sweet flowers, and pluck- 
 ing, here and there, the ripe fruits. Toil is the great 
 thing in life. You should bend to it, day in and day 
 out, without an hour's cessation, laying up money for 
 some far-off distant day, when you propose to enjoy 
 your riches in ease and comfort, keep your carriage, 
 take the air, cultivate the acquaintance of your wife 
 and children, and look after the health and happiness 
 of yourself and family. Until you are too old to enjoy 
 anything, you have no right to idle away precious 
 hours on mere recreations and amusements. 
 
 Do blessings flow in upon you, don't, I pray, break 
 out into thanksgivings and rejoicings. Nothing could 
 be more unnatural. Your first feeling should be one 
 of distrust, lest they should turn out to be enemies in 
 disguise, sent to tempt you from duty. Besides, how 
 do you know but that Divine Providence has made a 
 mistake, and sent them to you quite unconscious of 
 your unworthiness. You should take all those things 
 into consideration, and receive them with fear and 
 trembling. Do not on any account, I beg of you, 
 be tempted into a state of hopefulness. Make it a 
 point to always look on the dark side. The truly 
 healthy-minded man will know his own deserts, and 
 be constantly in fear of getting them. When you 
 spread your canvass to the breeze in the morning, do 
 it with fearful forebodings that not a rag of it will be 
 left standing at nightfall. If, however, to your 
 astonishment, gentle breezes do fan your sails, and 
 you find your bark booming along over the seas mer- 
 rily, do not, I beseech of you, give way to rejoicings, 
 but rather lean over the taffrail, and peer down into 
 14
 
 158 HINTS ON THE ART OP LIVING. 
 
 the depths of the ocean, to discover, if you can, some- 
 thing to mark the disasters of, those that have gone 
 before you. 
 
 Have a care how you have anything to do with 
 society in any of its forms. It is not good for man to 
 be in society. He ought to be alone. The finest types 
 of manhood, the world over, have been your monks 
 and friars. 
 
 If you cannot make your house a monastery, and 
 your children monks and nuns, do try and see how 
 near you can come to it. "When you do go into 
 society, be on the watch always for something wrong. 
 If you have friends and neighbors, have a sharp 
 eye to their faults. Yirtues are self-sustaining, 
 and will naturally take care of themselves, but failings 
 need looking after. In your own house adhere strictly 
 to the same rule. Whenever you present yourself at 
 the dinner table, always do it with a fixed resolution 
 to take exception to every dish upon it. On going 
 into the drawing room, open a set of books, forthwith, 
 and note carefully the exact number of disagreeable 
 guests in the room ; it promotes gravity and circum- 
 spection. If you travel, do it with your tablets in 
 your hand, recording as you go the annoyances you 
 encounter. 
 
 If at any time, by any mischance, you find yourself 
 cheerful and happy, and disposed to let yourself go, 
 don't do it, I beseech of you. Cross yourself at once, 
 and bethink immediately whether you have not some 
 cause of uneasiness. Call up, if you can, some old 
 latent grief. Are you poor, dwell upon that. If you 
 have had losses, run them over in your mind, till the 
 old feeling comes back again. Have you had luck,
 
 HINTS ON THE ART OF LIVING. 159 
 
 and are you wallowing in riches, think, till it calls 
 tears into your eyes, how many instances there are of 
 riches taking wings. It is only babbling brooks, 
 and silly birds, and thoughtless children, that sing 
 away their lives. Do not you do any such thing. Be 
 a man, look sad and wearied and disheartened, as 
 though you knew and felt that all creation was in 
 arms against you ; and thus give the world credit for 
 fulfilling its destiny.
 
 CHAPTER XXXIY. 
 
 FORTUNE MADE BY AN INVITATION TO TEA. 
 
 A FEW evenings since my friend Mr. Blot, 
 the accountant, was moralizing over a cup of 
 Souchong on the virtue of hospitality. " Why," 
 said he, elevating his cup as if to give point 
 to the remark, " I once knew a lad's fortune made by 
 a mere cup of tea." " How so ? " said I. " I will tell 
 you," said he, helping himself to another cup. " You 
 must know that I was esteemed by all the neighbor- 
 hood, including my parents, as the flower of our 
 family ; so, when I had arrived at sixteen, my mother 
 fitted me out with a new suit, clapped some change 
 and doughnuts into one pocket, and the Bible into 
 another, gave me a multitude of good advice, a flood 
 of tears, and her blessing, and sent me away to Boston 
 to seek my fortune. The companion of my adventure 
 was a neighboring boy, who was thought quite my 
 inferior, whose mother had placed him under my pro- 
 tection, given him a similar outfit, including the tears, 
 and had added, by way of special capital, a letter of 
 introduction from her minister to one of the good 
 deacons of Boston. 
 
 "As luck would have it, we both secured places in 
 the same store, and soon I fancied that I was taking 
 the lead. Before long, however, the good deacon 
 came in, inquiring for his boy. Oh ! how I wished it
 
 FORTUNE MADE BY AN INVITATION TO TEA. 161 
 
 was me, when Ned was pointed out to him ; and then 
 how lonely I felt when I saw the good deacon shaking 
 him so kindly by the hand, and then how the tears 
 came into my eyes when I heard him saying to my 
 companion, l Come up and see us this evening, and get 
 acquainted, and take a cup of tea.' 
 
 "And well the tears might flow for that cup of 
 tea was revolutionizing all my plans. Our master 
 had drank down that invitation as he sat poring over 
 his newspaper ; the chief clerk had noted it down as 
 he entered nine and carried one into the next column, 
 and even the porter had caught it up and carried it 
 away with his luggage on his back. Before the next 
 morning every one in the store had it ; and Ned had 
 been set down as indorsed and of value on 'Change, 
 while I, poor I, was looked upon as mere doubtful 
 country security. Ned, before long, was called up 
 and entrusted with the money to deposit, while I was 
 ordered to clean up the lofts. 
 
 "After that, when evil influences were setting in 
 against us, that cup of tea was always present to 
 Ned's mind, holding him up to the level of his friends; 
 while I, poor lone boy, was left to drift with the cur- 
 rent, with nothing to check me but that far-off family 
 influence at the old homestead. Besides, when he went 
 out to see his friends of an evening, our little room 
 seemed too tight to hold me, and so, almost of neces- 
 sity, I wandered off too, but, not like him, to a social 
 hearthstone, though I would, it seemed to me, have 
 given worlds to have done it ; but, ten to one, I 
 strayed into the pit of some cheap theatre, or loitered 
 in some bar room, amid smoke and fumes. In due 
 time that cup of tea wrought out its mission, and 
 H*
 
 162 FOETUNE MADE BY AN INVITATION TO TEA. 
 
 duly installed my companion as a member of the firm, 
 while I was left to rejoice in a high stool, a lean 
 salary, and the books. Since then I never meet here 
 a country lad without thinking of the cup of tea, and 
 feeling that if the poor boy has been sent here with- 
 out good social acquaintance provided him, he is 
 already half ruined." 
 
 Blot was evidently getting blue very fast ; so, to 
 turn the conversation, I asked him what he thought 
 of those latest of our benevolent organizations, the 
 " Christian Unions." " Well," said he, " if they are 
 meant as aids to hospitality, and their down-in-town 
 rooms are designed merely as" way stations, where the 
 brethren can find the country lads, and take them 
 home, and introduce them to their families, they are 
 above all praise ; but if, on the other hand, they are 
 only designed to shirk private hospitality, by provid- 
 ing a substitute in a public room, then they are the 
 worst institutions imaginable."
 
 CHAPTER XXXY. 
 
 GALLERIES OF ART. 
 
 I called upon to give what has so often been 
 attempted, without any very distinguished success, a 
 definition of man in a single line, I should define him 
 as " a being naturally fond of pictures." I am not 
 aware of his having any synonym or counterpart in 
 that particular. And then the rule is so absolute. 
 Through all the stages of his existence he takes to 
 pictures as naturally as the honey bee takes to flowers. 
 It is a taste that survives all the frosts of age. No 
 matter what the character and interest of the book, 
 no one ever thinks of reading it, where it happens to 
 be illustrated, until those illustrations have been 
 examined. And the reason of it is very plain. There 
 are none of our other senses that can fill the place of 
 the eye. The merest dolt in Christendom would pre- 
 fer to see and examine any given thing with his own 
 eyes, than to take his information from the most 
 eloquent lips living. We are never satisfied with the 
 mere records of history. They only create a still 
 stronger desire to travel, and see and observe for our- 
 selves. And until man can be more ubiquitous than 
 at present, he must continue to take a great part of 
 his most satisfactory knowledge of men and things 
 from pictures. 
 
 That natural trait in his character is better appre-
 
 164 GALLERIES OP ART. 
 
 ciated on the continent of Europe than in any other 
 part of the world. There, for ages, pictures have been 
 in use as a favorite mode of perpetuating events, and 
 impressing them on the minds of the people. A great 
 picture is prized there higher than a learned work. 
 There is no amount of money that would tempt the 
 owner to part with a cherished work of art. And 
 yet nearly all of their most valuable paintings are 
 gathered into galleries of art that are free to persons 
 of every degree. All of the most considerable cities 
 in Europe have their collections, and some of them 
 are of very great extent and of exceeding value. 
 And as one good act only paves the way for another, 
 the private collections of art on the continent are at 
 stated periods thrown open to the public in the most 
 unreserved manner. Indeed, all through continental 
 Europe, if any one has anything to be seen, that he 
 has reason to believe will give the people pleasure, 
 whether it be works of art, or flowers, or grounds, at 
 certain periods, he is sure to throw them open to the 
 public. 
 
 In one sense their galleries of art may be said to 
 be their primary schools. The people are there 
 taught many of the great lessons of history through 
 the medium of the eye. And it is the most natural 
 mode, certainly, of beginning one's education. We 
 adopt the same mode ourselves to a certain extent. 
 The picture book, with us, with its cuts of a few 
 familiar objects, precedes the primmer and the spelling 
 book. But there we stop. All the higher walks of 
 study, Columbus, DeSoto, Yorktown, Washington, and 
 all the great events of our own and the world's history 
 the pupil is expected to encounter in his studies long
 
 GALLERIES OP ART. 1G5 
 
 before he meets them pictured to the eye. On the 
 continent it is otherwise. There, the pupil, from his 
 earliest years has before him, on canvas, from the 
 hands of the greatest masters, for his study, nearly all 
 of the great events of history, portrayed in the most 
 striking manner. He comes to the study of the his- 
 tory of any given subject or period, with the same 
 preparation that our pupils come to the study of the 
 common every day matters illustrated in their picture 
 books, or that have been passing under their eyes every 
 day of their lives. Those galleries are. to a cer- 
 tain extent, pictorial histories. And the lessons there 
 taught are so much more life-like than those obtained 
 otherways, that it is to be doubted whether we Pro- 
 testants, with the Bible in our hands, are so thoroughly 
 imbued with many of the great truths of Scripture, 
 as most of the worshippers of far less culture, in 
 Catholic countries where pictures on holy subjects 
 surround them on every side. 
 
 At all events, nothing can be more certain than 
 that those free galleries of art in Europe fill a very 
 important place in their' popular institutions, and that 
 they have much to do with educating the people in 
 taste, grace and general intelligence, and that they 
 minister largely to the happiness of the people. As 
 mere places of recreation, where any and every one 
 who has an hour to spare, can spend it profitably and 
 agreeably, away from every temptation to vice and 
 crime, they are valuable beyond all estimate. 
 
 It is to be hoped that the time will come, and that 
 soon, too, when we shall begin the good work of 
 founding free galleries of art in all our cities and 
 principal places. There is no one thing that shows
 
 166 GALLEEIES OF ART. 
 
 the absolute poverty of ideas of our over-burthened 
 wealthy men, than to read from day to day the cata- 
 logue of their dying bequests, they so much resemble 
 the case of the poor Indian. He was to be granted 
 any three things he might demand. His first wish 
 was for "enough rum/' his next for "enough tobacco," 
 and then, after cudgeling his brains for a long time, 
 he concluded to take for his third wish, "a little more 
 rum." The bequests here are education, then Harvard 
 College, then education is made residuary legatee. In 
 some cases, the poor hard-up devisor, with a city lying 
 at his feet, without one solitary free bathing house, 
 without a free reading room or library, without 
 gymnasiums, galleries of art, or conservatories, has 
 had to give up in despair, and leave it to his execu- 
 tors, to be the almoners of his bounty. It does seem 
 as though there ought to be a commission of public- 
 spirited men to advise, in their bequeathing moments, 
 with such unfortunates.
 
 CHAPTER XXXYI. 
 
 MY FIRST INDEPENDENCE DAY IN BOSTON. 
 
 SOME years ago I happened to be in Boston a 
 stranger on Independence Day. Bright and early I 
 was awakened by bells and guns, boys and squibs, 
 ding-dong, bang, bawl, whiz and snap, under my 
 window, until I supposed all creation was wide awake 
 and up to something tremendously exciting. Every 
 moment spent that morning at my toilet and breakfast 
 seemed to me so much time lost, for I knew not how 
 many acts in the great drama of the day would be 
 passed before I reached the scene of festivities. I 
 felt almost inclined to quarrel with the city authorities 
 that they had given me no bill of the performance 
 beforehand, with notice of time and place, so that I 
 might have been in at the opening. I was then quite 
 green of the city, barely equal to a trip to the Com- 
 mon by the aid of the Old South, and then working 
 up my reckoning and setting my course by the State 
 House. 
 
 With beating heart I made my way from the Com- 
 mercial Coffee House, through Milk, to Washington 
 street, watching sharply on the route to see that I did 
 not pass the scene of attraction, met people looking 
 sad, and supposed them to be thoughtless beings who 
 had rushed out breakfastless, and now had to leave 
 the festivities, just in the nick of time, to satisfy the
 
 1G8 MY FIRST INDEPENDENCE DAY IN BOSTON. 
 
 cravings of hunger, and congratulated myself that I 
 was good for the forenoon at least, if not for the Avhole 
 day. The throng of people were evidently Avith me 
 up Washington, and through Winter streets, and 
 so on to the Common. When I reached the Common, 
 I breathed free, for I knew where I was, and felt 
 certain that I must be near the scene of the grand 
 performance. I felt a little staggered, however, as I 
 hurried along down one mall, and through another, 
 and up another, that the rest of the people seemed as 
 much at a loss as myself as to the whereabouts of the 
 show. There were so many going, and coming, and 
 meeting, and crossing, and stopping, and looking, and 
 all seemed so anxious that I began to feel bewildered, 
 and wonder where on earth it was. 
 
 Several times I thought I could discover that 
 the current of human beings for the Common was 
 full was setting particularly strong in one direction, 
 so with feverish desire to be first at the play, I would 
 join the throng, and push on valiantly with them until 
 I would find them turning back, or, perhaps, stopping 
 to see a monkey go through his tricks, or to listen to 
 " Coal-black Rose " from an organ grinder. Then I 
 would be led off with a press in another direction, 
 and then in another, but all ending in discomfiture, 
 one way or another, until the forenoon was quite 
 spent. I had circumnavigated the Common in search 
 of the show five times ; had followed a man with a 
 plume till he disappeared from view in a big building 
 at the north end ; had made the trip to Roxbury and 
 back in an omnibus, watching sharply both ways for 
 the grand show, but discovering no sign of any. 
 Once in the course of my wanderings during that
 
 MY FIRST INDEPENDENCE DAY IN BOSTON. 169 
 
 eventful forenoon, I thought I had really found the 
 place of public rejoicing. I espied some scores of 
 solemn-looking men, arm in arm, entering a building, 
 and I followed on, and attempted to enter with them, 
 when I was unceremoniously collared, and my ticket 
 demanded. I apologized to the officer, and requested 
 to be shown the box office, when he kindly informed 
 me that there was nothing to be seen inside but the 
 city fathers feeding on a corporation dinner. From 
 him I soon learned that I had been chasing a will-o'- 
 the-wisp all the morning; that there was really nothing 
 going on in the city, and that the crowds of people 
 with whom I had been scouring the streets hour by 
 hour were mistaken people like myself, all seeking, 
 like questing hounds, for some public festivities com- 
 memorative of Independence Day, but never finding 
 them. Being a bit of a philosopher, I withdrew to 
 my dinner in merry mood, determining to make a 
 day of it, and have some fun out of it after all. 
 
 So in the afternoon I took a seat on the Common, 
 and quietly enjoyed the scene around me. Thou- 
 sands and thousands passed and repassed, all, I could 
 clearly see, in hot pursuit of that imagined Independ- 
 ence entertainment. One would come along quick, 
 eager, and excited, shoot like a rocket by me, and in 
 an instant would be lost in the crowd. He was a 
 new comer, fresh on the course, certain that there 
 was something going on somewhere, and determined 
 to be in at the death. A slight chuckle from the 
 philosopher was all that could be awarded to him 
 before on would come another. He had been longer 
 on the scent, had become weary and watchful, and 
 like a stag at bay, was ever stopping and looking 
 15
 
 170 MY FIRST INDEPENDENCE DAY IN BOSTON. 
 
 behind him, and then listening as if he thought, per- 
 chance, he might hear the sound of music and rev- 
 elry borne on the breeze. Poor fellow, how well I 
 knew what a longing there was in his sad heart for 
 amusement on that bustling, noisy, racketing day, 
 and yet all he was getting was, whiz flash snap, 
 within an inch of his nose, and then the riotous enjoy- 
 ment of a crowd of boys at his nervous discomfiture. 
 Hardly did I have time to laugh right merrily at so 
 sad a figure, before on would come a crowd of others 
 in still more woful plight. Those were matrimonial 
 pairs, followed by their young pledges ; loving 
 couples, just taking their first lessons in billing and 
 cooing; stray rustics from the fore-plane and the 
 scythe-snaith, all eager for amusement. Those had 
 come on to the ground early, had pushed on eagerly 
 in the beginning of the day, had become bewildered, 
 and watchful, and hesitating, as the day wore, and 
 now, wearied, disheartened and sad, with the full 
 reality staring them in the face that there was 
 nothing to be seen or heard, they were moping 
 about until the time for their departure arrived. 
 
 Those latter disconsolate beings had one consola- 
 tion, and only one that I could perceive. In the 
 morning, when hope was in the ascendency, and all 
 of us were expecting something great along momen- 
 tarily, I observed that the booths were apparently 
 getting along rather indifferently. Indeed, I rather 
 pitied some of the poor souls waiting there for cus- 
 tom. But as the day waxed and waned, and as the 
 hope of anything better went with it, my actors in 
 the grand drama, one by one, began to file off to the 
 booths to brace up their courage with a little some-
 
 MY FIRST INDEPENDENCE DAY IN BOSTON. 171 
 
 thing inspiring, until towards night almost all of those 
 who passed me seemed to be about equally influ- 
 enced by spleen and spirits ; and the retailers seemed 
 to be the only cheerful people extant. 
 
 Since that time every one who does anything 
 special for the amusement of the million on Inde- 
 pendence Pay, I look upon as a patriot and a public 
 benefactor. The day performances at the Museum 
 on that occasion, for all patriotic and noble purposes, 
 I regard as about equal to four Fourth of July ora- 
 tions ; a panorama of most any part of our free coun- 
 try as about equal to two ; and a gallery of art, a 
 show of flowers, a regatta, or a pretty jet or fountain, 
 as fully equal to one oration, with its usual accom- 
 paniment of cold fare thrown in. 
 
 But, after all, there are no enjoyments on holidays 
 so safe, pleasing and elevating as those that are social; 
 and the movements in favor of special provision for 
 the social entertainment of the people on Independ- 
 ence Day, and particularly the young, are clearly 
 movements in the right direction.
 
 CHAPTER XXXVII. 
 
 LUCKLESS WIGHT. 
 
 JONATHAN has always been supposed to have set 
 up business on an exceedingly small capital, in the 
 way of reverence for old usages and hoary-headed 
 dogmas and customs. But there are few without 
 their weaknesses, and Jonathan has his. In spite of 
 all that can be said or clone, Jonathan loves the old 
 common law. He absolutely reverences its old musty 
 maxims that come down to us in barbarous law Latin, 
 and fairly dotes on its immemorial usages and its an- 
 tiquated customs. Nay, he has even a lingering 
 fondness for its very infirmities. He is told again 
 and again of its old feudal origin ; that it is made up 
 of wise sayings and doings in a medley of courts 
 extending from the dark ages to the time of the 
 American revolution, held by all sorts of mortal men 
 for magistrates ; that it is a compound of grave 
 decisions in Courts Baron, held by fox-hunting 
 lords, far more expert with a spear than a pen ; 
 Piepowder courts, held by dusty clerks of country 
 fairs to settle disputes happening there ; courts of 
 chivalry, held by doughty knights-errant to settle 
 points of etiquette in arms ; whole swarms of eccle- 
 siastical courts, held by grave and reverend clergy- 
 men in gowns ; half a score of special courts, held by 
 the king's stewards and other knights of the cup-
 
 LUCKLESS WIGHT. 173 
 
 board to settle disputes in the king's household; 
 prerogative courts, held by archbishops in lawn to 
 distribute the estates of the dead ; chancery courts, 
 held by courtiers in bagwigs to do the same for the 
 living (who might as well be dead, as far as ever 
 getting any good from that court was concerned) ; 
 courts of the universities, held by mousing book- 
 worms to settle disputes among scholars ; courts 
 martial, held by fierce men in epaulettes and cock- 
 ades to settle disputes in the army ; and courts of 
 admiralty, held by lordly old admirals to do the same 
 for the navy ; courts of request, held by lord mayors, 
 courts for merchants, courts for miners, courts of star 
 chamber, courts of appeal, and courts of peers; tell 
 Jonathan all that, and gently insinuate that not one 
 in ten of all those magistrates knew as much of law 
 as a Yankee boy at ten years of age, and that the 
 common law is a compound of the whole of their 
 determinations simmered over for ages, and he only 
 whittles the faster and believes the more. Point him 
 to the old fabric, crumbling with age, with its founda- 
 tions laid in barbarism, built upon, age after age, by 
 Celts, Picts, Scots, Saxons and, Xormans, to accommo- 
 date all sorts of people and institutions serfs, vas- 
 sals, lords, kings and cardinals, and yet Jonathan 
 clings to the old crazy, tumble-down mansion, and 
 delights in nothing so much as to hammer about it, 
 driving a nail here and stopping a leak there, shor- 
 ing it up every time the wind blows, and fussing 
 about it generally. Not a year passes without a 
 whole batch of improvements upon it, so that now it 
 is a sort of feudal castle, with its portcullis, moat, 
 drawbridge, donjon-keep, and round tower, with a 
 15*
 
 174 LUCKLESS WIGHT. 
 
 modern boudoir clapped on in one place, a conserva- 
 tory hung out in another, and a score of other little 
 additions hanging to its sides in all directions, with 
 kitchen ranges, gas fixtures, water works, and all sorts 
 of modern inventions encircling its old dingy halls 
 and antiquated stairways. 
 
 I once met, however, with a man who professed to 
 have lost all reverence for the common law. He was 
 a sharp-visaged, wiry-looking man, turned of fifty, 
 who once had been a landed proprietor, but was then 
 pursuing the less ennobling occupation of a peddler. 
 His story embraced an account of some half a score 
 of sharp lawsuits that he had had, in the course of 
 which he had lost both his reverence for the law, and 
 his property. As his experience seemed to illustrate 
 quite clearly the practical workings of the legal com- 
 pound that we have adopted, I jotted his story down 
 as well as I could, as he gave it before a roaring fire 
 at a country inn, on a winter evening, and here give 
 it for general edification. 
 
 Luckless Wight, for that was his name, may be said 
 to have inherited a most hearty reverence for the 
 common law, for his father had held a five pound court, 
 and his grandfather had written quorum unis after his 
 name for time out of mind. But Wight's faith in the 
 common law was destined some day to be shaken. It 
 happened after this wise : Wight had purchased an 
 estate, not the least of its attractions being that 
 it was bounded north on the county road, east by land 
 of Job Stiles and a bill in equity, south by land of 
 Richard Johnson and a disputed line, and west by land 
 of Peter Plight and a standing quarrel. * Wight first
 
 LUCKLESS WIGHT. 175 
 
 encountered his neighbor Plight alone on a back-wood 
 lot. They first proceeded to words, from that to blows, 
 and then from that they proceeded, by a very natural 
 transition, to law. 
 
 COMMONWEALTH V. LUCKLESS WIGHT. 
 
 * 
 
 The battle being ended, both ran, with their wounds 
 upon them, for justice. Wight carried his case before 
 Mr. Justice Wiggs, and Plight went before Mr. Jus- 
 tice Rugg. Each in his complaint alleged that the 
 other made the first assault. Each succeeded in 
 obtaining a warrant for the other. Wight was taken 
 into custody and tried first. And on his trial, Plight 
 was the only witness in the case. No one but the two 
 parties having been present at the time of the conflict, 
 Plight, being sworn, had everything his own way, and 
 testified glibly that Wight made a most savage and 
 unprovoked assault on him, he, Plight, being then and 
 there in the peace of the commonwealth; and Wight 
 attempting to speak and give his version of the af- 
 fray, was snubbed by the constable, and commanded 
 " silence " in unutterable majesty by the court. And 
 then how were a whole crowd of listeners edified, 
 instructed, and improved, when the court explained 
 how, in the ineffable wisdom of the criminal law, the 
 question which of two disputants, like the said Wight 
 and the said Plight, should be admitted to testify as a 
 witness, entirely competent, and which should be 
 struck speechless, as entirely and hopelessly incompe- 
 tent, depended on their speed, the one arriving at the 
 office of any given justice, and making his complaint 
 first, being the privileged party. And His Honor then
 
 176 LUCKLESS WIGHT. 
 
 having explained to the poor dispirited Wight, that 
 he, being the accused in the said case, was taken and 
 deemed to be no more nor less than an -unmitigated 
 perjurer, incapable of throwing any light on the 
 assault and battery complained of, and hence totally 
 incompetent as a witness, until the contrary might be 
 established by the finding of the court, (viz., until his 
 evidence could be of no use to himself or anybody 
 else.) And how, on the other hand, the said Plight 
 having outran him in the race for justice, and having 
 made his complaint first, however great his ill-will 
 towards him, and however interested in getting him 
 convicted, is taken and deemed in law to be entirely 
 reliable and veracious, and therefore a competent 
 witness to all intents and purposes, until the contrary 
 is otherwise clearly shown and proved, (viz., until it 
 is too late to mend the matter one way or the other.) 
 
 And so Plight having testified to everything that 
 made against Wight, and denied everything that made 
 against himself, and Wight having been snubbed and 
 put down, and the justice having heard all of one side 
 of the case and none of the other, pronounced it an 
 exceedingly clear case, and Wight was found guilty, 
 and fined smartly. 
 
 After which, there being no further business before 
 the court, a little man in black, with a very piping 
 voice, hemmed in by a little railing in the corner of 
 the court room, sprang to his feet and uttered in an 
 authoritative manner "0 yes, yes, all persons 
 having anything to do before this honorable court will 
 depart hence, this court being adjourned without 
 day ; God save the Commonwealth of Massachusetts." 
 And the people did depart hence, forthwith, appar-
 
 LUCKLESS WIGHT. 177 
 
 ently in the full belief that God would save the 
 commonwealth, which, under the circumstances, was, 
 to say the least, taking a very hopeful view of the 
 subject. 
 
 COMMONWEALTH V. PETER PLIGHT. 
 
 Then came on before Mr. Justice Rugg the case of 
 the Commonwealth against Peter Plight, for an assault 
 and battery of Luckless Wight. And here Wight had 
 everything Ids way, and Plight was snubbed and put 
 down. And Wight told just how Plight assaulted 
 him, and just when and where he struck him, and how 
 he did it; and Plight attempting to reply and give 
 his account of the matter, was rapped over the 
 head by the constable, and frowned upon by the court, 
 and commanded " silence " by both of them; and the 
 judge thereupon gave Plight to understand, that in 
 the criminal law, as in milling, " first come first serve," 
 that the complainant was in the eye of the law the 
 friend and customer of the court, and in consideration 
 of his bringing grist to that hopper was specially 
 privileged, and^>ro hoc vice, was taken and deemed to 
 be entirely trustworthy, whereas the accused was for 
 the time being taken and deemed to be no more nor 
 less than a great rascal, who would incontinently lie, 
 and that continually. And that hence the complainant 
 was a competent witness in the case, and entitled to 
 tell all he knew about it, while the accused, who, it 
 was well enough known knew all about the case, was 
 incompetent to give any testimony whatever. 
 
 The reason of the rule having thus been given, and 
 the wisdom, equity, and righteousness of the law
 
 178 LUCKLESS WIGHT. 
 
 having been duly vindicated, the court was clear that 
 Plight had made a most unprovoked and criminal 
 assault on Wight, and fined Plight accordingly. 
 
 So Wight having been formally and legally found 
 guilty of making a most criminal and unprovoked 
 assault on Plight, and Plight having been duly found 
 guilty of having made a most criminal and unprovoked 
 assault on Wight, and each having been duly found to 
 have commenced the affray, and to have struck the 
 first blow, and that, too, according to well-settled rules 
 of evidence, and on the most uncontradicted of testi- 
 mony, they both, with their friends and admirers, 
 returned to their several homes very much edified. 
 
 LUCKLESS WIGHT V. PETER PLIGHT. 
 
 Those proceedings being ended to their mutual 
 discomfiture, both parties rushed pell-mell into the 
 nearest civil court to settle their civil rights and obtain 
 damages for their wounded eyes and honors. So 
 Wight sues Plight, and Plight sues Wight, each alleg- 
 ing that the other commenced the assault and struck 
 the first blow. The suit Wight against Plight was 
 called first. Wight there, as in the criminal prosecu- 
 tion, took the stand and attempted to tell the court 
 and jury how the affray commenced, but when it was 
 ascertained that he was no other than the veritable 
 Wight that was claiming damages for the assault, the 
 whole court were overwhelmed with horror, and 
 Wight was threatened with commitment for contempt 
 by the court, and was jeered at by the bar, and was 
 hustled rudely from the stand by the constable, and
 
 LUCKLESS WIGHT 179 
 
 then both Plight and Wight aro made to understand 
 that the common law deems it the surest way to search 
 out truth to exclude the testimony of the parties to 
 the suit who are supposed to know all about the trans- 
 action, and wisely set them to prove their case by 
 others, who are supposed, if they are no meddlers and 
 mind their own business, to know nothing about it. 
 
 So Wight calls all of his friends, and as they saw 
 nothing of the affray, they can only tell what Plight 
 admitted about it, and then Plight calls all of his 
 friends, and they testify what Wight had admitted 
 about it. When all that had been done and was ended, 
 the court charged the jury, and instructed them that 
 the burden was on Wight to show that Plight com- 
 menced the affray, and that if they were left in doubt 
 on that point they must find for Plight ; and the jury 
 having been left in great doubt on that point, and for 
 a very good reason, as no one had been allowed to 
 testify who knew anything about it, they find Plight 
 " not guilty," and so Wight is mulct in costs. 
 
 PETER PLIGHT V. LUCKLESS WIGHT. 
 
 Then Peter Plight against Luckless Wight is called, 
 and there the burden is on Plight to satisfy the jury 
 that Wight commenced the assault; and his witnesses 
 throw no light on it, and the Judge charges that if 
 they are left in doubt of Wight's guilt, then he must 
 be acquitted ; so the jury find Wight too "not guilty" 
 of the assault, and so both are acquitted of it, and go 
 home with their black eyes, sadly perplexed as to 
 where they got them.
 
 180 LUCKLESS WIGHT. 
 
 Now when Luckless Wight had seen how he, Wight, 
 had been found guilty of commencing the assault on 
 Plight before one tribunal, and how Plight had been 
 found guilty of commencing the assault on him, 
 Wight, before another tribunal, and how each of 
 them had been entirely acquitted and exhonerated of 
 all charge of having commenced any such assault 
 before another tribunal, and had seen how formally and 
 methodically and scientifically it had all been done, ho 
 was fain to confess that the ways of law as well 
 as of Providence are strangely mysterious. But like 
 all other mysteries it only baffled Wight to lead him 
 on. 
 
 EICHARD JOHNSON V. LUCKLESS WIGHT. 
 
 It never rains but it pours; and so thought Luckless 
 Wight when he had returned from court, discomfited 
 and forlorn, and found a very polite, yet still a very 
 importunate note, from the justices of the County 
 Court, addressed to him " greeting," wherein he was 
 very coolly, yet very decidedly, requested to appear 
 before them and answer to the suit of one Richard 
 Johnson, who demanded one rod more or less of his, 
 Wight's, land. That missive needed no very learned 
 interpreter. Johnson had long before laid claim to a 
 hand's breath and better, of Wight's land, for an indefi- 
 nite extent, alleging that a former owner of Wight's 
 estate, one Jonathan Slow, had years before moved the 
 division fence between their lands over on to his, John- 
 son's, land, so as to take in one rod, at least, of his land. 
 Now Jonathan Slow, full of years, had long since slept
 
 LUCKLESS WIGHT. 181 
 
 with liis fathers, and his two sons had sold their patri- 
 mony and departed. So Wight lost no time in seeking 
 them out, and taking their testimony; and they, nothing 
 loth, testified that they were born and bred on the 
 estate, and knew the division line well, and that there 
 had not been any such removal, and how they knew 
 it and all about it, so that Wight was quite elated, and 
 saw in his mind's eye the crafty Johnson ignomini- 
 ously beaten, and returning from court crestfallen and 
 discomfited, and himself triumphant, the idol and 
 admiration of the crowd. 
 
 Afterwards when the friends of Wight were per- 
 plexed with doubt about the issue of the case, because 
 Johnson represented that one Edward Bunker had 
 seen the whole thing when it was done, and knew all 
 about it, and intimated as much as that he himself 
 was not far off at the time, Wight expounded the law 
 to them ; how Bunker had since that time been con- 
 victed of burglary, and was then tight and strong in 
 prison, and so was counted infamous and unworthy of 
 belief; and how Richard Johnson, being a party to 
 the suit, was counted, for that reason, infamous also, 
 and unworthy of belief, and so neither of them could 
 testify; Wight's friends were perplexed no longer, 
 but were straightway moved with wonder at the sin- 
 gular moral effect of litigation in thus bringing the 
 convict and the suitor at once upon a level. 
 
 Shortly after came on the trial of Johnson against 
 Wight. Johnson's lawyer opened his side of the case, 
 and called for his witness Mr. Edward Bunker. And 
 how was poor Wight amazed when forth stepped the 
 identical Bunker, looking very pale and very con- 
 scious that everybody was staring at him, and took 
 16
 
 182 LUCKLESS WIGHT. 
 
 the stand : and how was Wight tempted to ejaculate 
 " we have you there," when his lawyer objected to 
 Bunker as a witness on the ground that he had been 
 convicted of felony ; and how was Mr. Wight elated 
 when the court nodded assent to that ; and then how 
 was he as suddenly depressed, when Bunker produced 
 a pardon from the Governor ; and Johnson's lawyer 
 having rubbed his hands, and said he believed that 
 that little instrument restored Mr. Bunker, and made 
 his testimony competent, the court nodded assent to 
 that, and ordered him sworn. 
 
 And how were all lovers of truth and justice edified 
 and improved while Mr. Bunker testified to everything 
 that made for Johnson, and was quite oblivious and 
 forgetful on all points that made for Wight, and 
 recollected all about the fence having been removed, 
 and made a clear case for Johnson, and left no case at 
 all for Wight, and retired from the stand very red in 
 his face, and very much excited. 
 
 Then came Wight's turn. He having offered the 
 depositions of the Slows, Johnson objected, and Wight 
 demanding why, Johnson replied they were interested 
 and Wight demanding how, Johnson replied that 
 Jonathan Slow sold the estate to Higgins, warranting 
 the title, and Higgins sold to Brown, and Brown to 
 Wight, and so said Jonathan's heirs were liable to 
 Wight for any failure of title, and the court nodded 
 to Johnson, and said clearly the Slows were inter- 
 ested and therefore incompetent witnesses: and 
 Wight's lawyer read from the deposition to show 
 that the Slows testified under the belief that they 
 were not interested; and further, that the land in dis- 
 pute was of no value; but the court ruled all that out
 
 LUCKLESS WIGHT. 183 
 
 as irrelevant, and laid down the law on a solid basis, 
 that an interest of one penny in the event of a suit 
 as effectually disqualified a witness, as an interest of 
 millions, and that, too, though he might not know or 
 believe that he was interested. 
 
 The testimony of the Slows being excluded, and 
 there being no further testimony, and the court having 
 instructed the jury that if they believed Bunker, 
 then Johnson had made out his case, and that they 
 must believe Bunker unless there was some substan- 
 tial reason for disbelieving him, and that the fact that 
 he had been convicted of an infamous crime, was no 
 reason at all for disbelieving him, the jury deliberated, 
 and considering themselves bound legally to believe 
 what they did not believe, returned a verdict for 
 Johnson, and found that the division fence had been 
 moved. 
 
 STATE V. BUNKER. 
 
 Now when Wight was disheartened, and would 
 have returned home cast down, he was comforted 
 exceedingly by his attorney, when he informed him, 
 Wight, that he had lost nothing, but that he had his 
 claim over against the Slows for all his damages, on 
 their father's warranty of the title, and that by bring- 
 ing his suit against them he shut out their testimony, 
 and left him to prove his case as Johnson did his by 
 Bunker. 
 
 So Wight sues the Slows and lays his damages at 
 two hundred dollars. While that suit is pending, the 
 Slows having taken counsel, complain of Bunker for 
 perjury, alleging that he swore falsely in testifying
 
 184 LUCKLESS WIGHT. 
 
 that the division fence had been moved, and get him 
 indicted, and on the trial, Bunker is not allowed to tell 
 the jury anything about the fact whether the fence 
 had been moved, and both the Slows, though acknowl- 
 edged to be deeply interested in getting him convicted 
 and thus shutting out his testimony in Wight's suit 
 against them, are allowed to tell the jury all they 
 know about it, and no further testimony being pro- 
 duced, the court having instructed the jury that if 
 they believed the testimony of the Slows, then the 
 fence had not been moved, and so Bunker had sworn 
 falsely, and that they must believe the Slows unless 
 they 'found some substantial reason for disbelieving 
 them, and that the fact that they were interested in 
 the event of the suit was not of itself any reason in 
 law for throwing out their testimony, the jury found 
 Bunker guilty, and so found that the division fence 
 had not been moved, and Bunker was once more 
 sentenced to prison. 
 
 LUCKLESS WIGHT V. SLOW 6t al. 
 
 Then came on the case of Wight against the Slows, 
 and Bunker having been convicted and sentenced, the 
 court ruled out his testimony, and the Slows being 
 parties to the suit, their testimony was excluded, and 
 thus the only three witnesses who by general consent 
 knew anything about it, being declared incompetent 
 to testify in the case, Wight was driven to the wall, 
 and was obliged amid much merriment to become 
 nonsuit, and retire ingloriously from the field without 
 striking a blow, and besides had to pay the Slows 
 their costs.
 
 LUCKLESS WIGHT. 185 
 
 Now when Luckless Wight had taken this his sec- 
 ond lesson in the rules of evidence, and had seen how 
 before one tribunal it had been found that the division 
 fence had been moved, and how before another tri- 
 bunal it had been found that it had not been moved, 
 and how before a third it was impossible to find out 
 anything about it ; and how at each trial there were 
 three witnesses who professed to know all the facts 
 about it, and how on the first trial Bunker was 
 admitted to tell the jury all he knew about it, and 
 both the Slows were not allowed to tell the jury any- 
 thing that they knew about it, (being found interested 
 to the value of a pistareen, though they did not know 
 it;) and how on the second trial of the same fact, 
 Bunker was not allowed to tell anything that he knew 
 about it, and the Slows (though admitted to be deeply 
 interested in the event of the suit, and very conscious 
 of it, too,) were allowed to tell all they knew about it; 
 and how on the third trial neither of the three were 
 allowed to tell anything that they knew about it. 
 Luckless Wight was lost in astonishment. He even 
 felt his idolatry for the blind goddess giving way, and 
 a lingering suspicion creeping into his mind that that 
 bandage was not all right, and that Madam was 
 inclined to administer Justice a little too blind some- 
 times. 
 
 STILES V. WIGHT. 
 
 When our fellow traveller, the unfortunate Luckless 
 
 Wight, had thus far brought his narrative of legal 
 
 mishaps to a close, he sat puffing away at an old 
 
 tobacco pipe, mute, and apparently moody, for some 
 
 16*
 
 186 LUCKLESS WIGHT. 
 
 time. It was a blustering night without, and as the 
 rain drummed against the windows and the wind 
 sighed around the house and rushed down the chim- 
 ney, some half dozen of us had gathered the closer 
 around the fire, and listened the more attentively. 
 The speaker had evidently enlisted the attention and 
 sympathies of our circle not a little. One of the num- 
 ber, a very seedy-looking gentleman, with a quick and 
 restless eye, and an interrogative turn to his nose, 
 had shifted his position with a sudden jerk, like a 
 puppet in a play, at every turn in the narrative, and 
 had come in with an earnest " well," so inquiringly 
 whenever Wight seemed to flag in his story, that he 
 evidently was taking our friend over a longer road 
 than he was intending. The pause seemed to add to 
 the frequency and violence of our inquisitive com- 
 panion's contractions, till, after several ineffectual 
 attempts of his to awaken Wight's attention by 
 administering gentle stirs to the fire, and getting off, 
 now and then, little inquisitive coughs, he ventured 
 to come to the point, and so addressed him with the 
 inquiry, " Well, Mr. Wight, what became of the bill 
 in equity? " Wight, being thus appealed to, knocked 
 the ashes out of his pipe, returned it safely to his 
 vest pocket, and continued his narrative. 
 
 As I have before intimated, I am not able to give 
 the narrative in Mr. Wight's own words. Indeed, he 
 was often quite digressive. Seeing us remark his 
 careful mode of disposing of his pipe, Wight took up 
 his story at that point. It seems that he had gone 
 home from his last defeat quite chop-fallen, yet very 
 stubborn, and resolved on having justice, cost what it 
 might ; had taken his accustomed pipe, returned it to
 
 LUCKLESS WIGHT. 187 
 
 its familiar depository, and had thrown himself on a 
 couch for a little repose, when on a sudden he awoke 
 with a fearful burning sensation in his left side. 
 Wight recollected that there was a contagious and 
 fatal disorder then prevalent, and that that was the 
 premonitory symptom, and "Wight's heart died within 
 him. Instantly all his misdeeds passed in review 
 before him, like a seven-mile mirror, but not half so 
 attractive, and Wight shuddered, particularly when 
 along came in solemn files, all bound in red tape and 
 nicely labelled, the papers in " Stiles and Wight 
 in equity." As Stiles and he were brethren and dis- 
 ciples in the same fold, Wight's heart smote him for 
 continuing the strife ; so Wight, though no papist, 
 made a solemn vow, that if his life was spared, he 
 would yield to Stiles all he claimed, which was about 
 half of his, Wight's estate. Wight having done that, 
 groaned audibly and called for help; and help arriving, 
 it is soon discovered that Wight's pipe had set his 
 pocket on fire, which being speedily extinguished, 
 Wight is pronounced out of danger. True, however, 
 to his vow, made in extremis, Wight lost no time in 
 waiting on his brother Stiles, and freely offering to 
 yield to him all in dispute, and both lost no time in 
 going to the conveyancers to have the papers drawn. 
 Now when Wight and Stiles had explained to Mr. 
 Square the terms of the compromise, and that Stiles 
 was to have one-half of the Wight estate, and Wight 
 had seen how minutely he entered into the matter, 
 and how clearly he understood it, and how many 
 papers he handled over to get the right one, and how 
 many books he examined, and how cautious he was in 
 dotting his i's and crossing his t's, and how he drew
 
 188 LUCKLESS WIGHT. 
 
 red lines through all the blank spaces, so that no 
 naughty man could interpolate, and how he tied up 
 his papers with red tape, and confined their ends with 
 wax and affixed Wight's seal, and took Wight's 
 acknowledgment, and looked sharp at him, too, when 
 he did take it, as though he would know whether it 
 was his "free act" or whether he was only shamming, 
 Wight was filled with admiration for the little convc}-- 
 ancer, and felt grieved that he had not known him 
 sooner. So Wight placed implicit reliance in Mr. 
 Square, and signed any and all papers that he told him 
 to sign, and Mr. Stiles having signed any and all 
 papers that he told Mm to sign, both parties Avent 
 home with their pockets very full of papers and very 
 happy. 
 
 Very soon, however, it got noised abroad that Luck- 
 less Wight had conveyed his whole estate to Job 
 Stiles; and that coming to the ear of Luckless Wight, 
 he becomes very wroth, and contradicts it very indig- 
 nantly, and very emphatically, but all to no purpose, 
 for the Paul Pry of Twinkleton had inspected the 
 record and knew all about it; and so the dispute 
 running high, Luckless examines for himself, and 
 turns pale with affiright when he finds that it is even 
 so. No time is lost in conveying that intelligence to 
 Mr. Square, who derides the whole story as " fabulous, 
 entirely fabulous ; " and the bottles of red ink, and 
 the box of red tape, and the stick of wax, and the 
 little taper to melt it with, and the huge shears with 
 jaws distended like a grim mastiff, all concur, and 
 seem to be joining Mr. Square in full chorus, and 
 saying very audibly and very decidedly, " fabulous, 
 entirely fabulous ! " Yet so it was, and Mr. Square
 
 LUCKLESS WIGHT. 189 
 
 having inspected the deed for nineteen successive 
 times, and refused each time to believe his own eyes, 
 broke completely down on the twentieth, and admitted 
 that for once he had fallen into an error, had taken 
 the boundaries from the wrong deed, and conveyed to 
 Stiles the whole estate of "Wight, when he intended to 
 convey him only one half. 
 
 So Mr. Square makes haste to call on Mr. Stiles, 
 and in the most bland and conciliatory manner ac- 
 quaints him with the trifling error that he has fallen 
 into, and requests Mr. Stiles to allow him to correct 
 it. Now, Mr. Stiles was a man of few words, and 
 many lawsuits; so when Mr. Stiles had heard Mr. 
 Square through, and had apparently feebly compre- 
 hended the fact that the individual addressing him 
 was a reality, Stiles took a general survey of the 
 heavens, and then a particular one of a little bantam 
 weather-cock on his barn, and having apparently 
 settled the great point that was laboring in his mind, 
 expressed the opinion that there was a storm brewing, 
 and that he, Mr. Square, had better make haste home 
 and attend to his own business or he might catch it, 
 and so washed him a very good morning. Mr. Stiles 
 w r as clearly right in his opinion, for a storm was brew- 
 ing, and did break over Twinkleton in no time after 
 Mr. Square had reported progress. 
 
 The whole town declared for Wight. The little 
 conveyancer was elevated to the post of a first-rate 
 hero forthwith, and delegations of citizens were for 
 days and days constantly arriving at his dusty little 
 office to gain reliable intelligence about it, and depart- 
 ing from it richly laden with food for gossip ; while 
 the children flattened their noses against his windows,
 
 190 LUCKLESS WIGHT. 
 
 vainly trying to catch a glimpse of his tape and 
 scissors. Wight against Stiles was tried, and decided 
 over and over again, and always with one result. At 
 the corners of the streets, in the village bar-room, by 
 the wayside, and at the sewing-circle, whenever and 
 wherever Wight and Stiles came up, victory declared 
 for Wight. It was a clear case of mistake. Mr. 
 Square said so, and he was above suspicion. Besides, 
 in a suit to correct this mistake, Wight and Stiles 
 would be not only both interested in the event of the 
 suit, but would also both be parties to it, so on both 
 these grounds would clearly be incompetent witnesses. 
 All that was as clear as day to everybody, for they 
 had all been profoundly impressed with those two 
 truths in the great cases of Plight and Wight, Wight 
 and Plight, and Johnson and Wight. So having 
 settled that neither Wight nor Stiles could testify in 
 this case, and that Mr. Square could, and that he 
 knew all about it, and no one would dare to doubt his 
 word, Wight was declared victor by acclamation, and 
 all that remained was for the court to record the 
 verdict. 
 
 LUCKLESS WIGHT V. STILES. 
 
 So Wight rushes in hot haste to law. But how is 
 he startled when he finds that all his previous lessons 
 in the rules of evidence fail him here ; and that 
 whereas in his previous suit, the court absolutely for- 
 bade his telling the court and jury anything that he 
 knew about the case, one way or the other, now the 
 court absolutely forbade his coming into court at all 
 with his case, unless he would first sit down and tell
 
 LUCKLESS WIGHT. 
 
 the court fully and particularly, not only all he knew 
 about the case, but all he believed about it ; and then 
 again, how is Luckless astounded when he learns that 
 Stiles, yes, the veritable Stiles, who is striving to 
 cheat him out of his land, is not only privileged to 
 come into court, and tell all he knows and all he believes 
 about the case, but is absolutely commanded to do so. 
 So Wight brings his bill in equity, alleging the terms 
 of the compromise to be one-half of his estate ; that 
 he and Stiles so understood it, and so stated it to Mr. 
 Square, yet that the latter, by mistake, wrote the con- 
 veyance for the whole estate ; and praying that the 
 said Stiles answer the same, all and singular, under 
 oath. And said Stiles did answer the same, all and 
 singular, and made clean work of it too, and every- 
 thing that Luckless had sworn to, Stiles denied, and 
 so they joined issue. Then came on the trial, and 
 Mr. Square being sworn, corroborated everything 
 that Wight said, and flatly contradicted all that Stiles 
 said, and Wight once more seemed to mere mortals 
 to be getting on quite swimmingly. But how was 
 Luckless Wight, and all of Luckless Wight's friends, 
 astounded, when, the case being ended, the court 
 summed up, and having found that all that Wight had 
 alleged in his bill, Stiles had denied in his answer, laid 
 down the law as undeniable, that in equity, nothing 
 short of the testimony of two witnesses is deemed 
 sufficient to establish any fact alleged by the com- 
 plainant, and denied by the respondent; and as in this 
 case there was only one witness to control the testi- 
 mony of Stiles, so it was clear that Wight had not 
 made out that there had been any mistake in the 
 matter, and Wight's bill was dismissed, and he was 
 mulct in costs.
 
 192 LUCKLESS WIGHT. 
 
 ECCLESIASTICAL. 
 
 Now, when that result was made known at Twinkle- 
 ton, there arose great commotion in the church of 
 which Wight and Stiles were bright and shining lights, 
 and on Wight's complaint being made, they forthwith 
 meet in solemn conclave, and then and there have 
 Stiles before them, and proceed to retry the question 
 whether or not Wight had by mistake conveyed to 
 Stiles more than he intended to do, and whether 
 Stiles in good conscience ought to reconvey it. But 
 there arose among them a great controversy, one 
 party declaring for the rule prevailing in criminal 
 tribunals, excluding the testimony of accused parties 
 and so hoping to exclude the testimony of Stiles : and 
 another party declaring for the rule prevailing in 
 civil cases, excluding the testimony of interested 
 parties, and so hoping to exclude the testimony of 
 both Wight and Stiles. 
 
 Another party, headed by the tallow chandler, 
 repudiated the doctrines of both of those parties, and 
 declared for admitting the testimony of any and 
 every one that could throw any light on the question; 
 and most of the members being mere mortal men, and 
 no lawyers, and quite devoid of science in the matter, 
 and wholly unsophisticated, took sides with the tallow 
 chandler, and declared for light, and so light being let 
 on in all directions, Stiles told his story, and that was 
 put in one scale, and Wight told his story, and that 
 was put in another scale, and then Mr. Square told 
 his story, and that being all on one side, and that 
 being Wight's side, was put in Wight's scale, and so 
 Wight's scale came down with a bounce, and Stile s's
 
 LUCKLESS WIGHT. 193 
 
 scale kicked the beam, and Stiles was found guilty. 
 So the church found that there was a mistake, and 
 that Stiles ought to have corrected it. 
 
 Mr. Wight having paused there and taken out his 
 pipe, our seedy friend, who had been silently expand- 
 ing under the genial influence of the ecclesiastical 
 trial, came together again with a snap like a double- 
 bladed knife, and said, " Well, did it end there ? " 
 No," says Wight, applying a coal of fire to his pipe, 
 and taking a whiff or two to make sure that it was 
 alight, " the court proceeded to eject me from my 
 home because Stiles claimed it rightfully, and the 
 church proceeded to expel him from church, because 
 he claimed it wrongfully." "But," said our inquisi- 
 tive friend, " had n't you an action over against Mr. 
 Square for damage, for not doing his work properly?" 
 " Well," says Wight, " yes, I might have had an 
 action against him, but in that case neither Mr. Square 
 nor I could have testified, and Stiles would have been 
 the only witness, and he would have been against me, 
 so I thought it best to let him alone. I believe, how- 
 ever, there was a small crop of slander suits grew 
 out of the transaction." 
 17
 
 CHAPTER XXXVIII. 
 
 MONT DE PIETE. 
 
 A WEEK or two ago, happening to be in New York 
 with a few hours to spare, I fulfilled a long neglected 
 engagement and called on my friend Mr. Bender. I 
 had long been promising myself the pleasure to see 
 and study his mode of employing his leisure hours 
 and spare capital in loaning to the needy. It was a 
 cold, blustering day in the early part of March. I 
 found him in a plain but commodious building, on a 
 narrow street near Broadway. When I arrived, there 
 were several handcart-men, with their carts in front 
 of the premises ; some taking away, and some deliv- 
 ering goods, of one kind and another. On entering 
 the hall, I observed a dozen or more of men, women 
 and children, on either side of the door, seated on 
 benches, apparently waiting to be served. A very 
 civil official stepped forward, and having learned my 
 business, conducted me to the proprietor at once. 
 The ceremony of salutation over, I took my seat in 
 the office, to await my friend's disengagement. While 
 waiting, my attention was drawn to an aged woman, 
 who presented to one of the clerks on my right, a 
 small but very well-executed painting of a full-rigged 
 ship in a storm. " My son," said she, " is at sea and 
 will return soon. I expect him now every day. I 
 desire, very much, to get some money on this until he
 
 MONT DE PIETE. 195 
 
 returns. It is a great favorite of his, and I know he 
 Avill redeem it." The clerk inspected the picture, 
 marked something on a card and passed it to another 
 clerk, who after a time gave her a card and some 
 money, and she went away, apparently very much 
 less burdened with sorrow than when she came. 
 After her, came a woman with a bundle of summer 
 clothes. She looked sad and anxious, as though 
 laboring under some affliction; but when her little 
 bundle had been examined and passed along, and it 
 had finally ended in her being presented with some 
 money and a ticket, I could discover a gleam of sad 
 joy illuminate her careworn countenance, as though 
 some darling hopes were now about to be realized. 
 
 By that time my friend had joined me and was 
 explaining what I had seen. " That young woman 
 with the clothing," said he, " has a sick child. The 
 little earnings of herself and husband have been 
 just barely sufficient to meet the wants of the 
 family, under ordinary circumstances. She has now 
 made up a bundle of clothing that she will not want 
 for several months, and on that I have loaned her 
 sufficient to supply many little wants for her sick 
 child." " That clerk," said he, " to whom she pre- 
 sented the articles in the first instance, is my 
 appraiser. He has now arrived at such skill in the 
 business, that any given lot of articles will sell on an 
 average, at auction, within one mill on a dollar of his 
 estimate." "I lend," said he, "to two-thirds the 
 amount of his appraisement, where the owner desires 
 it. When he has appraised the articles offered by 
 any given person, he puts the name of the person 
 and the name of each article, with its value, on a card,
 
 196 MONT DE PIETE. 
 
 and passes it to the next clerk. The latter records 
 in his book, the name of the owner, (with the maiden 
 name of the owner's mother,) the name of each arti- 
 cle, its appraised value, the number of the package, 
 and the amount loaned on the same. A card is then 
 given the owner, inscribed with all of those facts, 
 (except the mother's name.) That fact is reserved as 
 a secret, to detect any impostor who may purloin 
 the ticket. The ticket also contains the terms of the 
 loan, viz., that it is at the rate of one and one-half per 
 cent, per month, that the goods may be redeemed at 
 any time ; but that if not redeemed within one year, 
 they are to be sold at auction, and that the surplus, 
 after paying loan, interest and expenses, will be 
 kept one year for the owner. If not claimed in that 
 time, it reverts to the lender, to be used in charity." 
 Just then, on the opposite side of the office, a ticket 
 was presented to a clerk by two persons, apparently 
 husband and wife, for the purpose of redeeming 
 something of theirs then on pledge. The clerk hav- 
 ing observed the number, announced it to some one 
 above through a speaking tube, and soon after it was 
 sent down and landed at his side by machinery. 
 " Loan four dollars," said the clerk ; " interest for two 
 months, twelve cents ; whole, four dollars and twelve 
 cents." While the man was engaged paying the 
 money, the woman, I observed, hurriedly opened the 
 bundle, and with tears in her eyes touched each piece, 
 as she handled them over, to her lips. The articles 
 were, a little velvet cap, an embroidered jacket, a 
 very diminutive pair of pants, and a pair of little 
 boots. All at once I saw a hurried action of hers, as 
 if of alarm. A quick word was said to the man, and
 
 MONT DE PIETE. 197 
 
 then the little cap, the jacket, and the little pants, one 
 by one, were handled over quick and inquiringly. 
 Her hands were run nervously into pocket after 
 pocket. It was clear something was missing. At 
 length the shoes were thought of, search was made in 
 them, and out of one of them were drawn two cunning 
 little stockings. The mother, (for it was now certain 
 those were remembrances of a once darling boy, now 
 no more,) having kissed the little truants again and 
 again, tied them up carefully, and both departed, con- 
 versing in a low tone, and looking pleased and happy, 
 as though a great load was now off their minds. After 
 them came a young woman, with a ticket, and re- 
 deemed some jewelry. Among other things, I ob- 
 served a plain gold ring and a pencil-case. " That 
 woman," said my friend, " has carried her husband 
 twice before this through rheumatic attacks, that 
 incapacitated him for work, by pledging her jewelry. 
 Each succeeding time she has brought a greater num- 
 ber of pieces ; so that we are convinced that they 
 now take care to put any little sum that they can 
 spare into something that can be of service in case of 
 necessity." 
 
 Mr. Bender, knowing that my time was limited, then 
 rose and led the way to the hall above. There, I 
 observed was an office that embraced the greater 
 part of the whole room, and that on its walls were 
 compartments, in which were tools and implements 
 of all kinds. " What you have seen below," said 
 he, " is my Mont de Piete, or Bank of Charity, after 
 the mode of the banks of that name so universally 
 in use all over Continental Europe. My object is to 
 make my loans to the poor at such a rate that my 
 17*
 
 198 MONT DE PIETE. 
 
 money will yield me the legal rate of interest, and no 
 more, after paying all expenses. I have found that 
 one and one-half per cent, per month now yields me 
 something more than legal interest ; and soon I hope 
 to see my way clear to abate it one-third. No charge, 
 in any case, is made for storage or any other expense 
 on the article pledged, unless it is abandoned and has 
 to be sold. I am satisfied that it is one of the best of 
 charities. 
 
 " You would be astonished," continued he, " to see 
 how the needy prize such an accommodation, and how 
 true they are to their engagements. It is very sel- 
 dom that anything deposited by the really poor is 
 abandoned. Most of the abandonments are by per- 
 sons who are spendthrifts, and who would seldom 
 get such accommodations were their real characters 
 known. The little keepsakes of the poor are as dear 
 to them as the family portraits of the more opulent 
 classes. 
 
 " This room," said Mr. Bender, " I call my ' Indus- 
 trial Loan Office.' These compartments around the 
 room are filled each with tools fitted to some one par- 
 ticular calling." 
 
 While he was speaking, an aged but intelligent-look- 
 ing man applied for the loan of a woodsaw, wood- 
 horse and axe ; and soon after, a pale, sickly-looking 
 woman applied for the loan of a sewing machine. Mr. 
 B. seemed to be well acquainted with both of them, 
 and told me in an undertone that the man had seen 
 better days, but was now poor, and dependent on job- 
 bing of any and every kind for a living. " He is 
 industrious," said Mr. B., " and always ready to work, 
 and does a job offer, requiring tools, he comes here.
 
 MONT DE PIETE. 199 
 
 obtains the tools, and does the job. Sometimes he 
 comes for one tool, sometimes for another. To-day 
 you see it is a wood-sawyer's implements ; to-mor- 
 row, perhaps, it will be a handcart, or a box of car- 
 penter's tools." 
 
 " And how about the woman ? " said I ; for her pale 
 face had interested me in her behalf. 
 
 " That woman," said he, " represents a class. She, 
 as you will readily suppose, is a needle-woman. She 
 works in private families, and generally with her own 
 needle. But it often happens that a certain piece of 
 work is suited to a machine ; then she applies here, 
 and I loan her the particular machine her work re- 
 quires. There are thousands in this city, like her, 
 who are not able to own a machine, and if they were, 
 no one machine would be suited to the various wants 
 of their work. I am their capitalist, and loan them the 
 tools with which they may earn their living, as the ship 
 owner loans his ship to the merchant, or the railroad 
 company loans his cars to the producer. I endeavor, 
 in order to make it a permanent business, to make it 
 remunerative, and thus far it has proved so." 
 
 While he had been thus explaining, a man, appa- 
 rently in middle life, came in, and addressing the 
 clerk, said that he had obtained the job to set some 
 glass that had just been broken by accident in a neigh- 
 boring building ; and soon after he went out with a 
 full equipment of tools, putty and glass to do the job. 
 
 " That man," said Mr. B., " is a day laborer for a 
 painter, who employs him during the busy season. 
 This season of the year finds him out of employ, and 
 without tools of his own or the means to get either 
 stock or tools to do even the most insignificant of
 
 200 MONT DE PIETE. 
 
 jobs. NoWj however, with the facilities I afford, he 
 picks up little jobs in one way and another, to eke out 
 quite a living for himself and his family. Yesterday he 
 had a pot of paint and a brush. To-morrow, perhaps, 
 he will want a little varnish. In that way hundreds 
 get employment who would otherwise be idle." 
 
 Mr. B. was going on to give me further details of 
 his doings, but my time for departure had arrived, 
 and I bade him farewell ; not, however, until I had 
 expressed to him my conviction that the work he was 
 engaged in was one of the worthiest that could en- 
 gage the attention of man.
 
 CHAPTER XXXIX. 
 
 BEST TEMPERANCE AGENT. 
 
 THE best temperance movement is that now agitated 
 in England, to reduce the duties on wines. An agent 
 of the government has lately returned from a visit to 
 the wine-producing districts on the continent, and re- 
 ports favorably. He found the inhabitants of those 
 districts using wine freely and yet temperately, as a 
 beverage. He saw no traces of intemperance, such as 
 is general in England. The truth is, the creation of 
 the vine was no blunder, as many very sage people 
 seem to suppose, but one of the best gifts of God 
 to man. The inhabitants of wine-producing countries 
 are always temperate. All history affirms that 
 Spain, which furnishes so much wine for export, has 
 a population proverbially temperate. So has France, 
 which makes annually nine hundred millions of gallons 
 of wine ; and so has that whole belt of country 
 devoted to the culture of the vine, beginning in 
 upper Italy and extending through Austria to Hun- 
 gary. Indeed, the use of wines seldom leads to 
 intemperance anywhere. It does not in this country, 
 nor in England. Nor does the use of wines naturally 
 foster an appetite, as many suppose, for distilled 
 liquors. The properties of the former are so different 
 from the latter, that persons who have a relish for the 
 one seldom care much for the other. In a word, to
 
 202 BEST TEMPERANCE AGENT. 
 
 those who believe that the world was made a trifle 
 more skilfully than they could have made it them- 
 selves, it ought to be argument enough for the free 
 introduction of wines, that their production from the 
 grape is as simple and natural as flour from the wheat, 
 that they were as evidently made for the free use of 
 man as the grain was, and that all history attests that 
 those who have enjoyed the use of wines the most 
 freely, have been the most temperate. 
 
 I look upon Mr. Longworth, of Cincinnati the 
 pioneer in this country in the cultivation of the vine 
 as at the head of the temperance movement. The 
 success of the vine-growers in the West is the most 
 encouraging of all that is now doing for the promo- 
 tion of temperance. What is wanted in this country 
 more than anything else now, is pure wines, and cheap. 
 A strong petition should go into Congress for an act 
 repealing all duties on wines. If Congress would do 
 that, and go one step farther and declare all who 
 adulterated wines no better than poisoners and 
 murderers, and order them hanged, the whole thing 
 would be complete. We can be as temperate as are 
 the Spanish, French, Italians or Germans, only tempt 
 us away from the still with something as attractive 
 as they have. Intemperance is now fed from too 
 many rills of habit and interest, to be impeded for 
 any great length of time with all your dams and mud 
 embankments in the shape of laws and lectures, while, 
 like any other current, it may be quietly diverted 
 from its course into other and better, and perhaps 
 into fertilizing channels. Rely upon it, the creation 
 of the vine was no blunder, and that the best agency 
 to employ against the still is the press.
 
 CHAPTER XL. 
 
 PHILANTHROPY. 
 
 IN the course of a quiet ramble around the Mall, a 
 few evenings since, I encountered Colonel Lander, 
 from the South, whose hospitalities I had enjoyed 
 some years before, and whom I immediately recognized 
 and saluted. In a few moments we were pursuing 
 our promenade together, discussing the few personal 
 topics that laid between us. Very soon the Colonel 
 fell to canvassing the merits of our famous city, and 
 fairly amazed me by declaring that, when I accosted 
 him, he was revolving in his mind whether he slhoud 
 turn aside and fire a church, or rob a dwelling-house. 
 At first I thought the Colonel must have lost his wits; 
 but remembering him to have been quite a wag, when 
 I last knew him, I put a good face on it, and replied : 
 " Well, Colonel, what is in the wind now ? Some tart 
 criticism on our peculiar institutions, I will warrant." 
 
 " You shall see," said the Colonel. " You must 
 know that I have just spent my first day in Boston. 
 I sallied forth this morning determined to make a day 
 of it among the Courts. After threading a dozen, 
 more or less, of your most perplexingly crooked 
 streets, and inquiring at as many corners, I was at 
 last shown the Court House, a building that I had 
 passed several times before, each time supposing it to 
 be a substantial specimen of your famous cotton mills,
 
 204 PHILANTHROPY. 
 
 and each time really fancying >the illusion was so 
 complete that I could hear the peculiar buzz of the 
 spinning jenny. 
 
 " I followed a stream of people into a small room, 
 about the size of an ordinary country kitchen, packed 
 almost to suffocation with human beings. At first I 
 supposed it was some popular outbreak. A very civil 
 official, however, who was employed packing the men 
 closer, so as to admit another individual, soon informed 
 me that the little man pinned up against the wall was 
 a judge ; that the functionary on a stool before him 
 was the clerk; that the mob of well-dressed gentle- 
 men standing in solid mass around them were attor- 
 neys ; that the balance in the rear were witnesses 
 and suitors; and that the whole was no caucus or 
 popular commotion at all, but a court of law, for the 
 trial and determination of civil suits under one hun- 
 dred dollars. The announcement was calculated to 
 make me catch my breath, but that was out of the 
 question there, so I withdrew into the passage way, 
 and took a long breath there at my leisure. 
 
 " Admonished by my ill success so far, I concluded 
 to wait in the passage-way and observe. Soon I 
 perceived that a mysterious little tap on a certain 
 door seemed to command admittance, so I gave the 
 sign, and it was followed with a ' click ' within, and 
 then I was admitted. I was ushered into what I took 
 at first to be a small, but well-patronized bar-room. 
 Very soon, however, I was undeceived ; for what I 
 took to be a 'bar' turned out to be a 'bench,' and 
 the little pen in front, which I took to be filled with 
 jolly customers, was crowded in fact with six respect- 
 able attorneys; while all the rest of the crowd I soon
 
 PHILANTHROPY. 205 
 
 learned were mere culprits. It was a hard place to 
 live in, but quite an improvement on the civil courts ; 
 so I took courage and accosted a very civil official 
 that I found near me, and ventured to expostulate 
 with him for taking rogues into such an unwhole- 
 some atmosphere. ' Oh, bless your soul ! ; said the 
 official, 'these are no rogues at all mere street 
 smokers, uncollared-dog-owners, and such like persons, 
 of no account any way. Treat genuine rogues in 
 this way ! no, I guess not ! Just look into our 
 Municipal Court and prisons, if you want to see that 
 we know what is due to gentlemen. Let me tell you,' 
 said the official, looking very stern and speaking very 
 decided, and emphasizing all the time with a very huge 
 key, ' let me tell you, that there is not so clever a 
 place for rogues who are rogues, as this very city, 
 mind that!' and the official walked away, looking 
 over his shoulder at me, with the air of a man who 
 had vanquished his adversary. 
 
 " By this time my curiosity was getting aroused. 
 So, mounting to the Criminal Court, and there finding 
 a noted rogue on trial, and ceilings lofty, and ventila- 
 tion cared for, and everything quite genteel, I began 
 to speculate on the probable aspect of the Jail and 
 State Prison; for, thought I, if to be merely suspected 
 of great crimes entitles one to so much better accom 
 modations than ordinary citizens have, what must they 
 do for those rogues whose guilt is once thoroughly 
 established ? 
 
 " So off I hastened for the New Jail ; and how was 
 
 I delighted as I walked around and around it, and 
 
 admired its architectural elegance. And then how 
 
 isolated and airy its position, and how like to that of 
 
 18
 
 206 PHILANTHROPY. 
 
 a baronial castle, the lodge ; and what ideas of the 
 noble and the massive you get as you ascend those 
 immense granite steps, and enter those ponderous 
 doors; and how are you enraptured as you are 
 admitted into the grand vestibule of the prison, so 
 broad and lofty, almost rivalling the dome of St. 
 Peter's ; and then how soft and summer-like the air, 
 and how spacious and even elegant the cells, and how 
 commodious and beautiful everything about it! 'Fine 
 accommodations, these/- said I to the official. ' Yes/ 
 said he, ' we do n't give in to anybody hereabouts, 
 for genteel quarters.' 
 
 " It is the last straw that breaks the camel's back. 
 The thought had struck me, that the way of the trans- 
 gressor, instead of being hard, was getting decidedly 
 easy and quite agreeable withal. I rushed out into 
 the open air, determined to take the first train away, 
 to avoid all chance of accident, but, alas ! I was too 
 late. Tell me, what shall I do ? for I feel that I am 
 not safe here a moment, among such a good people." 
 
 Poor Lander ! I saw how it was, immediately. He 
 was a mere novice in the science of philanthropy. 
 To save the Colonel from all risk I took him home 
 with me, and am happy to announce that I succeeded 
 in getting him off betimes the next morning, with his 
 honor, I believe, untarnished. 
 
 N. B. Betty persists in saying that there is one 
 spoon missing ; but when was there ever known a 
 house where one spoon was not missing ?
 
 CHAPTER XLI. 
 
 MR. BLOT'S ACCOUNT CURRENT. 
 
 CONVERSING the other day with my friend Ben Blot, 
 the retired accountant, I was amused to see how Blot 
 brought the lore of the counting-room into use in his 
 vocabulary. As we made our way along the mall, 
 bowing to the right and left, I remarked to Blot that 
 he seemed to be on marvellously good terms with our 
 fellow pedestrians. " Yes," said Blot, " I manage 
 to keep something to my credit with the most of 
 them." 
 
 Then, pursuing the subject, Blot explained to me 
 his theory of life. " I find," said Blot, " that there is 
 no such thing as laying up anything in the way of 
 happiness, without keeping yourself busy. And even 
 then you may do a losing business, and get short, if 
 you are not careful what you busy yourself about. 
 
 " You may carry all that you do into one or the 
 other of two accounts. All of your kind acts to 
 others, from the bestowment of a nod to a guinea, 
 goes to your credit, and you may draw for it at sight 
 that is, at sight of your beneficiary. On the other 
 hand, all of your unkind acts to others, from a kick 
 at your cat, to an unkind word to your neighbor, you 
 may be sure to find posted against you, and that your 
 victim will check out any little gladness of heart you 
 may have on hand as often as he meets you."
 
 208 MB. BLOT'S ACCOUNT CURRENT. 
 
 Just then I happened to meet and nod to the widow 
 Starch and her child, who were hurrying along the 
 mall with their basket of clean linen for delivery. 
 " Yes/' said Blot, " that is right ; small consignments 
 to weak houses pay better than larger ones do to your 
 first-class concerns. I have a good deal out in weak 
 hands. I have pats on half the children's heads that 
 frequent the mall, out on call, with their fond and 
 grateful mothers ; I contrive to keep a handsome 
 balance to my credit, with all the invalids in my 
 neighborhood, on an orange apiece, or so, quarterly ; 
 while as to mere nods, and smiles, and pretty speeches, 
 I have any quantity of them invested about town at 
 extravagant rates of interest. Do you observe the 
 polish on those boots," said Blot, making a dead halt 
 and leaning over at a fearful angle, apparently to take 
 an admiring look at them himself " do you observe 
 that polish ? " I admitted that I did. " Well," said 
 Blot, " that extra finish all came from ' Blackball, how 
 is your rheumatism ? ' paid down to him with his 
 quarter's bill yesterday." 
 
 Blot was in high spirits, and running on very glib 
 about his small loans in the way of patronage, condo- 
 lence, and the like, and the fat dividends he was get- 
 ting from one and another, when all at once the stream 
 of eloquence was interrupted with " Ugh ! " said with 
 such a distressed tone that I looked up, expecting to 
 find nothing short of the cramp or gout twinging him 
 somewhere. And from his woe-begone expression, I 
 had no doubt it was that, or something worse, until 
 Blot found breath to make his dismal explanation. 
 
 " That man," said Blot, turning and pointing to a 
 hungry-looking individual, who was hurrying along
 
 MR. BLOT'S ACCOUNT CURRENT. 209 
 
 the mall, dragging a little starveling boy after him, 
 " that man is one of my worst creditors. Indeed, I 
 doubt whether any bankrupt ever had his equal. I 
 never meet him, or any one of his ten children, with- 
 out their making a run upon me, and emptying my 
 coffers completely. The way I run up the score with 
 him was this : Tom Jot, for that is his name, is a 
 brother knight of the quill, in indigent circumstances, 
 who has seen better days. Some years ago, Jot, ac- 
 cording to his own story, was on the eve of concluding 
 an advantageous contract, to take charge of the books 
 of one of our first-class commission houses, when an 
 unlucky laugh of mine at Jot's professional abilities, 
 as he says, broke off the negotiation and doomed him 
 to the life of penury he leads. There is just enough 
 truth mingled with his story to make it an account 
 that can never be balanced. Since that time," con- 
 tinued Blot, " whenever I walk one way, Jot is sure 
 to walk the other. Many is the time I have turned 
 into State street of a morning, happy as a lord, cast 
 my eye up at the clock, and finding that I had five 
 minutes to spare sauntered along bowing and smiling 
 and feeling just light-hearted enough to laugh right 
 out at the worst joke that ever was perpetrated, when 
 round the corner comes Jot, slap, taking all the sun- 
 shine out of me, and leaving me to whistle to keep 
 up my spirits for hours afterwards." 
 
 Poor Blot, I soon found that it was all over with him 
 for that day, so wishing him a very good morning, I left 
 him to seek solace in the weary wastes of the Public 
 Garden, there to contemplate the vestiges of creation, 
 and recover his spirits at his leisure. 
 18*
 
 CHAPTEK XLII. 
 
 MUSIC. 
 
 Music, unfortunately, is yet a luxury in America, 
 and, it would seem, a pretty expensive one, too. It 
 ought not to be so. Nature has diffused it like water. 
 Everything about us is filled with it. There can be 
 no doubt that the love of melody, and capacity for 
 making it, so universal in the human heart, was im- 
 planted for a wise end. I have no idea that the best 
 estate of society can exist without it. There is noth- 
 ing that soothes, attunes and elevates the soul like 
 it. It is a companion for the lonely ; cheers the sad 
 and weary; consoles the afflicted; and lights up with 
 joy the family and social circle. It tends to elevate 
 us by inspiring lofty sentiments, and awakening tender 
 and gentle emotions. But all of this is too well ap- 
 preciated by us all to need repetition. 
 
 A few only among us enjoy access to much good 
 music. What is wanted is a more generous diffusion 
 of music among all classes of our people, the same as 
 in Germany, Tuscany, and other countries of Europe, 
 from whence all our best singers come. There, all 
 classes enjoy the advantages of music. There, the 
 streets, of an evening, are vocal with glees, catches, 
 and parts of operas, executed by the poorer classes, 
 and yet in a style equal, often, to our best drawing- 
 room exhibitions. There, their tea gardens and caffas
 
 MUSIC. 211 
 
 are enlivened with the best of instrumental music ; 
 and everywhere, access to it is within the reach of 
 the humblest among them. To that universal diffu- 
 sion of music among them is to be ascribed much of 
 the gentleness, grace, taste and sensibility that char- 
 acterize the people of those countries. I have no 
 doubt it has much to do, also, with keeping them the 
 temperate people that they are. It gives them an 
 agreeable excitement, and fills up pleasantly their 
 leisure hours, so that resort to the wine-cup is not 
 needed. 
 
 Within a few years the practice (not the study] of 
 music has been introduced into our schools. So far, 
 it is all well. What is better, those that can afford to 
 study it, are giving a good deal of attention to it. 
 There is, however, a large class that it seldom reaches; 
 and it is a class, too, that needs its elevating influences 
 the most. 
 
 We have good music in our churches, but then the 
 expense of a seat in a church is not a little formidable 
 to a poor man, however much he may esteem the priv- 
 ilege. Then our concert music is graduated on an 
 intensely inflated scale. Had our taste for music 
 been cultivated as it ought, along with our literary 
 taste, we should not witness the strange disparity 
 that we now do between an effort of Mr. Webster's 
 or Mr. Choate's before a lyceum, and an effort of a 
 songstress before a musical society, the first obtaining 
 twenty-five dollars and the last twenty-five hundred. 
 It is not because our taste in literature is not as good, 
 and even better than it is in music, but because the 
 first is generously diffused, while the last is an exotic 
 a luxury.
 
 212 MUSIC. 
 
 I do not see why we should be so generous in pro- 
 viding common schools to teach our children reading, 
 writing, and arithmetic, and do so little, comparatively, 
 towards teaching them music. I doubt whether any 
 given city could do a better or wiser act, than to es- 
 tablish an ACADEMY OF Music, one that should be 
 open day and evening, for free education in music, 
 with space for free concerts from time to time by the 
 beneficiaries of the institution. It would reach a 
 class that are not in our schools, and benefit a large 
 class that now seldom obtain access to music at all. 
 For one thing, it would furnish them an agreeable 
 resort for their leisure hours, and thus keep them out 
 of the streets, or away from other and worse places 
 of resort.
 
 CHAPTER XLIII. 
 
 TO THE SOUTH GREETING. 
 
 WE desire to say that in providing for us at 
 the North the materials for that entertaining book, 
 Uncle Tom's Cabin, you have laid us under infinite 
 obligations. We have been in a state of beatitude 
 ever since its appearance. No one who has not 
 enjoyed the opportunity to sigh over the sins of 
 others and to rebuke them sharply, can possibly con- 
 ceive of the rare felicity of such a privilege. You 
 have given us that most delightful enjoyment, and we 
 thank you for it ; and with hearts full of gratitude for 
 that favor we feel like doing you a similar good turn. 
 We have no faults that are of any moment to us; but 
 if your philanthropy is like ours, of the genuine far- 
 sighted kind, that can spy a mote afar off, we have 
 the vanity to believe that we can put you in the way 
 of a little Uncle Tomism, that, duly served up with 
 your tea and toast, will gladden your hearts exceed- 
 ingly. 
 
 We allude to our peculiar institution, the sea-service. 
 We pride ourselves on our Jack-Tarism. We felicitate 
 ourselves on having in that institution a worthy offset 
 to yours. We desire to be modest, especially when 
 our own merits are in question ; but in comparing 
 our institution with yours, we think we may safely 
 put on some airs, though your merits are undoubtedly
 
 214 TO THE SOUTH GREETING. 
 
 astonishingly great. Star differeth from star in glory. 
 It was not given us to have the privilege to cultivate 
 your field. - But we fancy that the field we were 
 given to cultivate, we have improved to the very best 
 advantage. For all the purposes of Uncle-Tomism we 
 pride ourselves in the belief that we have in our 
 sea-service materials to gladden the hearts of far- 
 sighted and alien philanthropists, second only to your 
 far-famed peculiar institution. 
 
 And we tender you those materials with the 
 greatest delight. They are and can be of no use to 
 us whatever. But in your hands we see no reason 
 why they may not be made to minister to your com- 
 fort and happiness, besides edifying and improving 
 the world generally. 
 
 If you adopt our suggestion, and a romance of 
 Jack Tar's forecastle is resolved upon, you can rely 
 upon us to forward you any amount of materials of 
 the most tender, pathetic, touching, striking, harrow- 
 ing, and stirring kind. Our supply in every depart- 
 ment of Uncle-Tomism for such a work is positively 
 inexhaustible. 
 
 We desire to say in the beginning that there is a 
 mine of wealth in our Jack and his associates and 
 surroundings, for any outside and distant people like 
 yourselves. Jack himself is always and everywhere 
 a character. Take him when and where you will, at 
 sea or on shore, in prosperity or in adversity, with his 
 pocket full of bank bills, pursued by land sharks, or on 
 a foreign shore, penniless and in prison, he is a marked 
 man, individual, characteristic, unique, the focus of 
 every eye, from the time he heaves in sight until he 
 is hull down. He is admirably fitted for your use by
 
 TO THE SOUTH GREETING. 215 
 
 the peculiarity of his rig and the marked character 
 of his gait, trim, and dialect. He is a harp of a thou- 
 sand strings, and you may play any tune on him that 
 you desire. He is just the man for a first-class hero, 
 as much above your Uncle Toms as a diamond with 
 thirty-nine distinct faces is above a piece of good 
 honest window-glass. Like the sea he traverses, he is 
 at times a little rough and boisterous, but always 
 deep and clear, and full of the savory salt of human 
 kindness. He is gallant and fearless in danger, mod- 
 est in pretension, as full of generous impulses as 
 old Ocean is full of currents, and may be turned 
 into as many shapes, and shown in as many colors, by 
 the changing scenes of your romance, as any bits of 
 glass in a kaleidoscope. 
 
 You will find in the mere matter of accommodation 
 for our hero on board, we can beat the world in 
 originality, economy, entire republican simplicity and 
 Uncle-Tomism. Indeed, Jack's forecastle is modelled 
 on your negro cabins, barring their light, air, tables 
 and table ware, beds and bedding, chairs and stools. 
 With those exceptions, they are precisely alike. Then 
 as to their food, we have the vanity to believe that for 
 genuine Uncle-Tomism, their salt junk, day in and day 
 out, morning, noon and night, is far more romantic 
 and poetic, and better adapted to enrich a work of 
 the kind, than anything to be found in your hoe-cake 
 and bacon, with Aunt Chloe thrown in. 
 
 But the point on which we excel, and which we 
 think must cast Uncle-Tomism into the shade, irre- 
 trievably, is our personal treatment of Jack Tar on 
 the voyage. That is our strong point, and if duly 
 pressed, must give us the victory in all Olympian
 
 216 TO THE SOUTH GEEETING. 
 
 contests in Uncle-Tomism. In that particular, we 
 take pride in saying that our peculiar institution is 
 already enlisting the attention of British philanthro- 
 pists to such an extent that we do not despair of 
 soon running neck and neck with yours over that 
 famous course. In mere deportment towards Jack, 
 your Uncle-Tomism sinks into profound inferiority. 
 It is nowhere. We beg leave to commend to your at- 
 tention the high-toned Uncle-Tomism of the quarter 
 deck towards Jack. We beg to offer for your atten- 
 tion the vocabulary in which Jack is addressed. It 
 is calculated to supply a chapter rich in classic lore, 
 and to give unexampled edat to any work. 
 
 But our chief reliance is on the lash, the handspike, 
 and revolver. The history of our merchant service 
 in those particulars, is full of rich and rare incidents 
 in Uncle-Tomism. There we can safely challenge 
 the world. We can show a record there, calculated 
 to make any and every one, who has prided himself 
 on the superiority of the South in Uncle-Tomism, 
 tremble with fear. If there is any delight in looking 
 on the sins of others, any joy in believing yourselves 
 better than your neighbors, any love for rebuking 
 them, then we think we can safely promise you inci- 
 dents in that regard that shall give you happiness, 
 full, complete, and unalloyed. Indeed, our materials 
 are rich beyond description, and positively unexhaus- 
 table. There is nothing that can be fairly rated under 
 the head of genuine Uncle-Tomism, belonging to the 
 sea-service, that you may in your wildest imagination 
 require, that we cannot furnish on the instant. As to 
 all the minor details of the work, Jack's priva- 
 tions and sufferings, his disasters and shipwrecks, his
 
 TO THE SOUTH GREETING. 217 
 
 sufferings by frauds in port and frauds at sea, frauds 
 by captains and frauds by consuls, his sufferings by 
 land-sharks and sea-sharks, the materials may be or- 
 dered by the ton ; but we cannot promise despatch, 
 as those materials will come under the head of heavy 
 freight and must go by water. As to the higher 
 grades of Uncle-Tomism, kicks, cuffs, floggings and 
 beatings, these can be ordered by the hundred gross, 
 our stock being such as to warrant us in saying that 
 we can furnish such in assorted packages suited to 
 any and every contingency. As the plot thickens, 
 and it becomes necessary to dispose of your principal 
 characters, we can furnish you Jack Tars by the 
 hundred or thousand, as desired, for models in the 
 disabled and dying scenes to meet any conceivable 
 want. It gives us great pleasure to be able to assure 
 you that your work need not be deformed by any 
 record of judicial punishments. "Whatever atrocities 
 the officers may have practised on the seamen, that 
 you may have to record, history will not call upon 
 you to shock your readers with any vile judicial pun- 
 ishments. We can recommend that portion of Jack- 
 Tarism as being highly Uncle-Tomish. Indeed, as 
 something comic will naturally be required to break 
 the monotony and regularity of the work, a trial at 
 law of a few master mariners for throwing seamen 
 overboard, or blowing their eyes out, might be made 
 highly amusing and edifying. 
 
 As for the other dramatis persona of the work, we 
 can furnish them in abundance, of unexceptionable 
 character. The officers, owners, and all others in au- 
 thority over Jack, we shall be willing to warrant of 
 19
 
 218 TO THE SOUTH GKEETING. 
 
 pure northern origin, and of the highest character for 
 philanthropy and Uncle-Tonrism. 
 
 In tending you these valuable materials, from which 
 so much may be made in fame and fortune, we beg 
 that you will have no scruples whatever in accepting 
 them, since they are of no account with us, the whole 
 subject having a horrible nearness and contiguity that 
 divests it of all interest. Hoping that you will do 
 our Jack-Tarism justice, and that you will derive from 
 it as much enjoyment and self-complacency as we have 
 from your Uncle-Tomism, we subscribe ourselves, 
 
 Yours, at command.
 
 CHAPTER XLIV. 
 
 A MODEL INSTITUTION. 
 
 FOR many years I was in the habit of witnessing 
 on our national birthday, a procession of children, 
 dressed with taste, with shining happy faces, bearing 
 banners with charming little devices and mottoes. 
 It was always decidedly the loveliest spectacle of the 
 day. Sometimes I was told that they were " Mr. 
 Barnard's children," and sometimes they were spoken 
 of as the " Warren Street Chapel children," but who 
 thoy were, or whence they came, or where they went, 
 nobody seemed to know. For years it was all a mys- 
 tery, except that they came from a chapel somewhere 
 at the South end, and were regarded as indispensable 
 on all occasions of public celebration, as a rallying 
 point for the young. Whenever the culture that 
 belongs to the drawing-room was wanted, such as an 
 occasion of celebrating the birthday of Washington at 
 Faneuil Hall, or May Day, or Christmas, the aid of the 
 Chapel pupils was invoked as a necessity. While that 
 mystery was yet unsolved, happening one day in com- 
 pany to allude to it, a gentleman present very kindly 
 offered to take me behind the scenes if I would allow 
 him to do it in his own way ; to which I readily 
 assented, and it was agreed that we should set out 
 on our explorations the following Monday evening.
 
 220 A MODEL INSTITUTION. 
 
 Accordingly, at the time appointed, I take with me 
 a friend from the Andover Institution, who had ex- 
 pressed an interest in the subject, and under conduct 
 of our guide we are conducted to the chapel. We 
 find it a two-story edifice of unambitious exterior, 
 placed in from the street a few rods, with the pass- 
 way lined on either side with flower-beds and fountains, 
 and on one side with a green-house. My companion 
 whispers me his suspicions, based on the flowers, that 
 all is not right, but, nevertheless, we follow on, enter, 
 and descend to the basement story, where we find a 
 well-lighted room, filled with adults apparently study- 
 ing for dear life. " These," says our guide, " are our 
 subsoil arrangements. The pupils here are adults, 
 who, having missed the opportunities of acquiring 
 the simplest elements of education, such as reading 
 and writing, are now attempting to make up for 
 it by evening study. From two to four evenings a 
 week, during the winter, these rooms are open to all 
 such who choose to come." By that time I find lei- 
 sure to look around, and observe that the walls are 
 hung with engravings of more or less merit, and that 
 at one end of the room, or rather suite of rooms, there 
 stands a piano. My attention is drawn first to the 
 apparent eagerness with which each pupil seems to 
 be prosecuting his study, as if he were fully conscious 
 of its importance. Near me I observe a young man 
 of twenty-five or more years, who has just succeeded 
 for the first time in writing his name. His teacher, 
 in the kindest manner, is encouraging him with com- 
 mendation of it as a work of art, and our hero him- 
 self, highly elated, is leaning back at a moderate angle, 
 with head slightly inclined to one side, apparently
 
 A MODEL INSTITUTION. 221 
 
 surveying his autograph with much the same emo- 
 tions of complacency that Fulton may be supposed 
 to have surveyed the successful working of his first 
 steam engine. Our guide informs us, in a whisper, 
 that the matter of reading and writing their names 
 is with so many the whole end and aim of their 
 ambition, that it is found expedient to crowd in as 
 much other learning as possible, before the pupil is 
 allowed to reach that finishing touch in popular edu- 
 cation. We hear a little music in the short recess, see 
 a great deal of honest pains-taking endeavor, and 
 leave with an exalted idea of the wisdom and policy 
 of the evening school undertaking ; first, however, 
 arranging to return the following evening, to further 
 prosecute our inquiries. 
 
 At the appointed time on the succeeding evening 
 we are there, quite eager for further knowledge. 
 Again we are led to the basement, but on our way 
 our ears are saluted with sounds of music, and my 
 Andover friend expresses the idea that if he were not 
 in a church, he should conclude at once that there is 
 dancing going on in the building; but as it is a church, 
 we dismiss the idea as preposterous, and press on. 
 
 Another scene in those basement rooms now greets 
 our eyes. Around them are scattered, here and there, 
 little rough-looking, ragged boys and girls, some learn- 
 ing to read, some to write, but more undergoing a still 
 more primary mode of culture. For instance, near 
 the door where I enter, one of the teachers is try- 
 ing to fit a little squalid boy to a second-hand but 
 tidy-looking jacket ; further on I encounter a little 
 group of girls, engaged in mending their own 
 aprons and other articles of apparel that seem sadly 
 19*
 
 222 A MODEL INSTITUTION. 
 
 to need such attentions ; and in a corner of the 
 room, a shaggy little rogue, greatly to his disgust, 
 but much to the improvement of his personal ap- 
 pearance, is undergoing a little tonsorial operation. 
 " These," said our friend, " belong to our ragged 
 school, and come from the highways and by-ways, 
 wherever we can pick them up." Then, in a lower 
 voice, he imparted to us the intelligence that the 
 Chapel possessed, in the music above, an unfail- 
 ing attraction to toll them there. " When all other in- 
 ducements fail," said he, " we promise them an hour's 
 indulgence in the room above with the music, and it 
 is sure to bring them here." Just then I espy a group 
 of the boys around a print on the wall, and one boy on 
 a chair expounding it. I step along and find it to be 
 quite a spirited engraving of the " Cotter's Satur- 
 day Night." The boys seem delighted with that 
 and with a print of "John Pound, the Cobbler School- 
 master," that hangs near by, and insist on hearing 
 more about them from a grave personage in glasses, 
 whom I afterwards find to be the pastor. 
 
 After spending a few minutes more among the 
 " roots," as our cicerone facetiously terms this part 
 of their institution, he takes us back to the floor 
 above, and throwing open a door, discloses to us a 
 suite of rooms handsomely decorated and ornamented, 
 then being improved for a dancing school. The pupils 
 are on the floor, moving in harmony with the music. 
 My Andover friend looks amazed, but soon recollects 
 himself, begs to be excused, and withdraws, to walk 
 no more with us in such dangerous paths. " Here," 
 said my guide, " you see the strongest of all our 
 secular forces employed at the Chapel." Just then
 
 A MODEL INSTITUTION. 223 
 
 the doors fly open, and in hurries the ragged-school, 
 pell-mell, the teachers doing their best to steady them, 
 but evidently to little purpose. In an instant every 
 spare inch of floor room about the music is occupied 
 by these new-comers, some sitting, some kneeling, and 
 all crowded in upon each other, the great point 
 seeming to be to get the nearest possible to the 
 music. After the first outbreak is over, all is so still 
 with them, that with eyes riveted on the violin and 
 pianist, the whole group might have been photo- 
 graphed without danger of a single blur, from foot 
 to eye. " This course of instruction/' continued my 
 informant, " constitutes one of our prizes, like a 
 bishopric in the church, a title of ' honorable ' in the 
 state, or an order of knighthood in courtly circles. 
 All of our pupils, those ragged ones among the num- 
 ber, no sooner find place in the Chapel, than they are 
 looking forward to the prize of the dancing school." 
 
 By this time I find leisure to look about me and ob- 
 serve the pupils. They are neatly and tidily but 
 poorly clad, their outward appearance denoting hum- 
 ble life, while their demeanor is that of the best 
 classes in the social scale. After arranging for an- 
 other visit on the Saturday afternoon following, I take 
 leave, not, however, without taking a last look at the 
 little ragged-school, with eyes fixed and mouths open, 
 apparently entranced by the music and dancing. 
 
 Saturday afternoon finds me once more at the 
 chapel, but this time without my companion from 
 Andover. He had been almost tempted to turn back 
 when he saw the flowers, they were so ominous of 
 evil; but when the doors were thrown open upon a 
 dancing throng, and that, too, to the sound of the viol,
 
 224 A MODEL INSTITUTION. 
 
 all his hopes of good in that quarter were dashed, and 
 he fled from under the roof as from the house of 
 pestilence. 
 
 I am first led into a suite of rooms occupied by a 
 sewing school, where I find some scores of young 
 misses and maidens, taking lessons in cutting, basting, 
 and sewing the ordinary clothing suited to their own 
 wants. Some of them are very small and are trying 
 their hands on patchwork, and others, smaller and 
 more childish still, are engaged dressing their dolls. 
 In an opposite set of rooms, I find a singing school, 
 composed of pupils belonging to the Chapel, and stop 
 to listen to several specimens of their vocalization, 
 quite pleasing and gratifying. From there, I am 
 shown into the library, where I find the librarian 
 busily employed delivering books. I am then shown 
 a cabinet of minerals, and another of shells, and led 
 through a very creditable green-house, and suffered 
 to depart, after promising to attend service there on 
 the following day, being the Sabbath. 
 
 The Chapel has been growing on me all the week, 
 and now I set off early to see it culminate on the 
 Sabbath. I begin in the basement, there finding an 
 infant school, and proceeding up, find the whole of 
 the two lower stories alive with Sabbath school 
 scholars. At length, the time for services having 
 nearly arrived, I take my place in the vestibule and 
 see the children pass up to the Chapel. The demeanor 
 of the pupils is gentle arid respectful. I am particu- 
 larly pleased to see the cheerful and unembarrassed 
 intercourse between the pupils and their teachers 
 and pastor. It is seldom that one passes the pastor 
 without trying to catch his eye as he stands convers-
 
 A MODEL INSTITUTION. 225 
 
 ing at the foot of the stairway, and several are called 
 up, and a time appointed when he will call and give 
 an invalid parent, brother or sister a drive into the 
 country. While I am thinking in how many of those 
 cases, the poor invalid, but for him, would miss not 
 only a ride then, but ever, my guide whispers in my 
 ear that the pastor in that way manages to give more 
 than one ride to the sick for each day in the year. 
 
 Soon after I ascend to the Chapel, and find it 
 capable of seating between five and six hundred wor- 
 shippers, and on this occasion it is quite full, and 
 that, too, mostly of children. On the right of the 
 pulpit I notice with pleasure a very fair copy of 
 Murello's Joseph with the infant Jesus holding a rod 
 of lilies. On the left, is a picture of Christ standing 
 beside the Cross. In other parts of the house are 
 statues, and paintings of more or less merit, while on 
 the pulpit are flowers, and a very rare specimen of 
 coral. 
 
 The services are short and simple, in which allusion 
 is made to the coral, and some statements are made 
 about some of the most wonderful of the coral reefs. 
 The music is by a choir of children, and very credit- 
 able. After the services I linger to thank my kind 
 friend for his politeness, and to express my pleasure 
 and satisfaction at what I have seen and heard, when 
 I am requested to suspend my judgment for a period, 
 am told that other things are in store for me, and it 
 ends by my being invited to be present on the 
 Thursday evening following, which was Christmas. 
 
 Accordingly on Christmas Eve I present myself at 
 the Chapel, and find it crowded with an eager and 
 excited company of children, and the altar and space
 
 226 A MODEL INSTITUTION. 
 
 allotted to the choir entirely hung with presents. 
 And on inquiry I find that these are mostly presents 
 from child to child, and from teachers to pupils, so 
 arranged that no child is entirely forgotten. The 
 ceremony of distributing appears to be quite ex- 
 hilarating, and hundreds of eyes shine brightly, and 
 hundreds of faces are wreathed in smiles, some with 
 presents in hand, and others with presents in ex- 
 pectancy. 
 
 After that, all descend to the room below, where 
 some dance, some sing, some engage in games and 
 plays, while the elder portion of the company super- 
 intend the amusements of the younger portion. At 
 an early hour the festivities end, and all retire, the 
 deportment of the pupils and all engaged, from 
 beginning to end, resembling that of the most culti- 
 vated classes. 
 
 During the evening my guide, philosopher and 
 friend, has let me into many of the secrets of the 
 Chapel, such as, that the festivities that I have just 
 witnessed occur often at the Chapel, say on New 
 Year's Day, "Washington's Birthday, May Day, on 
 the occasion of closing the singing school, dancing 
 school, evening schools, &c., and that they are found 
 to aid wonderfully in producing harmony and attach- 
 ment between the pupils, teachers and pastor, and to 
 attach them all to the Chapel and all that concerns it. 
 He had a fund of illustrative anecdotes, recounting 
 how pupils had grown up there from the most humble 
 positions to be teachers, and even trustees of the insti- 
 tution; how they had remembered it while away 
 prosecuting prosperous enterprises in foreign lands, 
 and sent home their benefactions; how its pupils, taken
 
 A MODEL INSTITUTION. 227 
 
 directly from the street, were now filling important 
 trusts in mercantile, and even in professional life ; how 
 all this has been going on for over twenty years, with 
 an average of over one thousand young people con- 
 nected with the Chapel yearly, and that in all that time 
 instances have been very rare indeed, of one of the 
 Chapel children or graduates falling into vice or crime ; 
 how all this has been accomplished at an annual out- 
 lay of less than five thousand dollars a year ; and I 
 leave quite convinced that there is good in a great 
 many things besides sage counsel and Sunday sermons.
 
 CHAPTER XLV. 
 
 FAMILY HOLIDAYS. 
 
 IN all my recollections of , where I spent 
 
 most of my early years, Captain Handy and his house- 
 hold fill the first place, and yet the Captain was far 
 from being a magnate there. He neither belonged to 
 one of the first families, of which each village is sure 
 to have an indefinite number, nor lived in the " large 
 square house" that is always the centre of attraction; 
 nor was he that famous magistrate without whom no 
 village is complete, the 'Squire ; nor could he ever at 
 any time have been mistaken for " His Reverence," 
 the village pastor, or for that other man of literary 
 renown, the village pedagogue ; nor had he ever 
 filled any of those high and mighty offices of tem- 
 poral power, such as one of the board of selectmen, 
 overseer of the poor, or town representative. Indeed, 
 he was no potentate at all, but plain Captain Handy, 
 whose only insignia of office, so far as I can remember, 
 was a fiery red sign, with "JEtna Insurance Company," 
 emblazoned thereon, surmounted with clasped hands 
 as a sign and significance of the strength of* the 
 company he represented. 
 
 The earliest of those recollections are connected 
 with a first pair of boots, and a game of base-ball on 
 the green in front of the Captain's house. I remember 
 that it was early in the spring, that the ground was
 
 FAMILY HOLIDAYS. 229 
 
 still crisp and hard, that the playing was spirited, tho 
 sides well matched, that my new boots were kept 
 going pretty lively, and that there were sundry and 
 divers casualties during the heat of the games, numer- 
 ous hard hits with the ball, a great many rushings in to 
 catch it when it was coming down after a rousing hit, 
 with sad and discouraging discomfitures, in which sun- 
 dry boys came out limping and quite the worse for 
 wear. I particularly remember the finale, when our side 
 was declared victors, and the mustering of us all into 
 the Captain's house, and the marshalling us around a 
 very bountifully spread table, and how the Captain 
 came out with a set speech, much to our chagrin, we 
 being then and there quite ready to "begin," and how 
 he proposed the health of his son Harry, and told us all 
 and singular that Harry was then and there just ten 
 years old, no more and no less, and how the laugh 
 went round when the Captain touched upon the early 
 days of the youngster, how he dropped in upon them 
 quite unceremoniously, without as much as saying 
 " by your leave," and how there was great giggling 
 in corners among the servants, and hushing among 
 certain spinster aunts in muslin caps, and wonderment 
 among the boys, until the Captain's speech being 
 ended, and the Captain having drank Harry's health, 
 and the boys one and all having given three cheers 
 for Harry, and three more for the Captain, word was 
 given to " fall to," when the more active duties of 
 the day once more commenced, and servants were 
 called upon to bestir themselves, and dishes were 
 emptied in a trice, and cakes disappeared as if spirited 
 away by magic, and boys who had lost credit on the 
 field for spirit and endurance recovered it, and one and 
 20
 
 230 FAMILY HOLIDAYS. 
 
 all sustained themselves wonderfully at the table and 
 won fresh laurels there. 
 
 In due time, however, the fever and heat of the 
 onset being over, and all, even the most determined 
 and untiring, having withdrawn from the table, and 
 there being no further inquiry for buns, and pancakes 
 being flat in the market, and all kinds of condiments 
 a drug, word was passed to clear the hall for blind- 
 man's-buff. There was then hurrying to and fro, such 
 as is often seen when there has been an unexpected 
 irruption into a colony of miserly ants who have large 
 treasures in store. 
 
 In the effort to be serviceable, little boys were seen 
 hurrying away with high-backed rocking-chairs, and 
 straight-backed easy chairs; there were looking-glasses 
 to be hoisted up, and tables to be gallanted off, the fire 
 to be raked up, and the mantle shelf swept of orna- 
 ments, and everything put in snug trim, to stand a 
 raking fire fore and aft. At a given signal the Captain 
 is seized and blinded by a mob of children, among 
 whom his own act as leaders ; and when he has turned 
 round three times, and clapped his hands, the play 
 begins. And then the crowding in corners, and the 
 skipping under his arms, and the gentle twitch at his 
 coat, and the giggling behind him only to scamper 
 away when he faces about, till the Captain is put to 
 his wits' end to know what to do. And then when 
 fortune does favor him, and the sprite has neither 
 eluded him by dodging under his arm, nor by slipping 
 through his fingers, the standing on tiptoe to make 
 him mistake the child, and the calling the wrong 
 name, or giving a feigned laugh to lead him into a 
 wrong guess, sets the whole room in a roar, and unal- 
 loyed happiness commands the hour.
 
 FAMILY HOLIDAYS. 231 
 
 But then such cricketing on Robert's, his eldest 
 son's birthday, the sixth day of October. For 
 weeks and weeks before, the boys are in training for 
 the great event. The Captain is a great admirer of the 
 game, and a bit of a martinet in the matter, and 
 everything must be according to the latest and most 
 approved rules. Nothing can be done until the grounds 
 have been measured and the wickets have been placed, 
 twenty-two yards apart and no more. Then the 
 stumps must be put twenty-seven inches out of the 
 ground, the bails eight inches long, the bat thirty- 
 eight inches long and four and a quarter wide, and 
 the ball must weigh not less than five ounces ; and 
 then there was the bowling crease, on a line with the 
 stumps, six feet eight inches in length, and the pop- 
 pin crease, four feet from the wicket, and parallel to 
 it, both of which the Captain measured with the same 
 exactness that he would have done the engineering for 
 the corner-stone of a cathedral. Then there was the 
 placing of the players, of the out-party ; the " Bowl- 
 er" immediately in rear of the wicket, " Point" about 
 four yards in front and to the right of the striker, 
 " Short slip " behind the wicket keeper, " Long slip " 
 between " Point " and " Short Slip ; " then there was 
 " Long stop," some distance behind the wicket keeper, 
 then " Long Field On," on the right, and " Long Field 
 Off," on the left of the " Bowler," a good distance off, 
 for hard hits, and " Cover Point," placed to the off 
 side to stop balls missed by " Point." 
 
 When all these ceremonies were arranged and the 
 rules of the game read by the Captain in a grave 
 and emphatic manner to the contestants, the bat was 
 thrown in the air " face up " or " face down," called
 
 232 FAMILY HOLIDAYS. 
 
 by one or the other side and then, innings being 
 declared, away all speed to their places, the umpire 
 calls " play," the bowler, with one foot on the ground 
 behind the bowling crease, delivers the ball at the 
 opposite wicket, and then the contest begins. There 
 is then hot haste for one while, the bowler bowling, 
 the umpire crying " no ball " when it is not bowled 
 but thrown or jerked, and " wide ball " when it is out 
 of distance to be played to, and " out," if either of the 
 bails be bowled off, or if a stump be bowled out of the 
 ground, or if the striker, when striking, have both his 
 feet over the poppin crease, or if he hit down his 
 own wicket, or if while running, his wicket be struck 
 down with the ball, before his bat [in hand] or some 
 part of his person is within the poppin crease, or 
 if his ball is caught before touching the ground. And 
 then, when each of the in-party has had his day, 
 and been " bowled out," or " caught out," or " put 
 out " in some way, the out-party have their "innings," 
 there is then great rejoicing, and more hot haste in 
 speeding to places. The umpire calls " play," when 
 both parties must be ready, and then is there more 
 calling, bowling, batting, and rushing to and fro, until 
 the in-party are once more all " out," the score is called, 
 and victory has declared for one side or the other. 
 
 After which comes a jolly game among the Captain's 
 melons, apples, and pears, and then home to repair 
 damages and recount the adventures and hair-breadth 
 escapes of the day. 
 
 Then there was Nettie's birthday in June, that was 
 celebrated in a grove, near by, where we have all 
 sorts of merry sports, with games and dancing on the 
 green ; and Fanny's in September, when the Handys
 
 FAMILY HOLIDAYS. 233 
 
 keep open house, and young and old from the neigh- 
 borhood flock in upon them, and the Captain appears 
 with his viol in best of tune ; and there are little 
 private tea-drinkings in out-of-the-way rooms, of 
 which the neighbors' wives have notice, and great 
 pitchers of cider steaming on the hearth in the kitchen, 
 of which the neighboring husbands and fathers are cog- 
 nizant, and there are pyramids of heads at the doors, 
 and dusky faces peering in at the windows, and lively 
 dancing going on in the parlor, and frolicking games 
 being played in the sitting-room, and great jollity and 
 gladness everywhere. 
 
 But of all the birthday celebrations, that of George 
 Handy, the second son, is the most stirring and enliv- 
 ening. After a little toying with " quoits," and " drive," 
 and " trap ball," and " single wicket," and " crusoe," 
 the whole ends with a game of foot-ball, by the 
 whole strength of the company. The sides being 
 chosen, and goals, viz. two sticks on one side and 
 two sticks on the other side opposite each other and 
 about eighty yards apart, the player who holds the 
 ball advances to about midway between the goals, and 
 delivers it by kicking it as far as he can, and then the 
 play begins. From that time till the game is ended, 
 there is running, and chasing, and racing; the ball is 
 kicked this way and then that way ; there is bellowing, 
 and shouting, and snatching, and elbowing, and thrust- 
 ing, and pushing and squabbling. Now there is a most 
 determined rush on the one side, driving the ball snug 
 in upon the opposite goal, and a most dogged and des- 
 perate stand made at that goal to stop it and prevent its 
 being driven through. Then come shouts of defiance 
 on the one side, and shouts of exultation on the other, 
 20*
 
 234 FAMILY HOLIDAYS. 
 
 as the ball nears the goal and seems about to be driven 
 through; then comes the desperate encounter, the 
 whole body of the charging party being met in solid 
 phalanx by the other side ; then is there a hand-to- 
 hand and foot to-foot fight for the ball, the tall forms 
 of the leaders swaying to and fro like the masts 
 of some tall admiral, rocking in a heavy swell. The 
 sides seem all mixed up, and lookers-on who have 
 taken sides cannot distinguish which is which; at 
 length there is a shout as of victory, the ball is once 
 more in the air, there is another rush, another meeting, 
 another recoil; and so it goes on, gallant leaders rush- 
 ing in all sound, and coming out quite damaged, sturdy 
 lads, who pride themselves on their endurance, going 
 in briskly and coming out limping and quite chop-fallen, 
 brave adversaries who have been quite the terror of the 
 other party, getting laid up in ordinary, till, after 
 an hour of rushing, kicking, and vociferating, the 
 young blades who went into the brush for the first 
 time that day, having all been counted out, and many 
 a brave spirit that had never quailed before, hav- 
 ing ignominiously dropped off the stronger side, a 
 desperate push is made to drive the ball through 
 their opponents' goal, and thus end the game. So at 
 it they go, driving the ball in upon them, meeting and 
 foiling all their endeavors to stay its progress, until 
 after a dozen gallant charges, through the goal, it 
 goes, they give a rousing cheer, and the game is 
 won. In that way a fondness for rural sports is fos- 
 tered in until the festive days of the Handys 
 
 quite eclipse all the other holidays in the year ; and 
 their periodic return is cast with all the form and 
 accuracy of the rise of the tide or the happening of 
 an eclipse.
 
 FAMILY HOLIDAYS. 235 
 
 But those days are not to last. The stern decrees 
 of fortune call me away to wander far and long. At 
 length, after years of absence I find myself once more 
 in the old village ; but how changed, sadly changed I 
 All the old land-marks are gone. The church where 
 I worshipped, the school-house where I conned 
 Webster, and "parsed" the subtle lines of Pope, the 
 old book-store, into whose windows I used to gaze 
 with admiring wonder to feast my eyes on books 
 artfully displayed with open page at some cut of 
 marvellous richness, are gone, and the place that 
 knew them knows them no more. 
 
 I try to find some well-remembered name among 
 the signboards around me, but all is strange, out- 
 landish and unfamiliar, until my eye lights on the 
 well-remembered sign of the worthy Captain, and sure 
 enough, it is still surmounted by the name of " Handy." 
 
 The old playground, the Handys, and all the rush 
 and tumult of the old games come to mind, and I 
 hasten to revisit it. When I reach the grounds I find 
 them as of old ; and how is my heart gladdened when 
 I see there a crowd of boys engaged in the old game 
 of cricket ; but how am I still more delighted when 1 
 find my venerable mentor and friend, the veritable 
 Captain Handy of my youth, his locks whitened with 
 the snows of fourscore winters, still engaged in the 
 favorite sports, surrounded by his grandchildren, real 
 sprouts from the old ancestral tree. And then how 
 gratifying to see the old mansion still standing, 
 where I had so often helped to celebrate happy events 
 in his family ; and to hear him recount the blessings 
 of his lot, how all his children had been spared to 
 him, and had settled around him, and were hemming
 
 236 FAMILY HOLIDAYS. 
 
 in his house with cottages and rendering his old 
 hearthstone more jocund than ever with birthday 
 festivities and wedding celebrations, until his last 
 days seemed better than his first. 
 
 The sun is going down on hill and plain. With one 
 of the Handys by my side I go through the well-re- 
 membered streets, visit the well-reinembered spots, 
 but find few of the old names on the doors, and fewer 
 still of the old landmarks standing unimpaired. Scat- 
 tered, all scattered ! Some have left the village for 
 other lands, some have been pushed from their stools 
 by younger and more stirring aspirants, and more still 
 have fallen asleep to wake no more. The Handys 
 alone seem to remain to tell of ancient times and 
 ancient cheer. 
 
 And I leave, reflecting whether it can be only 
 chance that has so kept this family together in health 
 and unity, or whether there may not be, after all, a 
 saving virtue im family holidays.
 
 CHAPTER XLYI. 
 
 PUBLIC GARDENS. 
 
 IT is said that the honey bee has kept but a few 
 miles in advance of civilization since the first pioneer 
 crossed the Alleghanies. If that is so, it is a striking 
 circumstance, tending to show that even the bees 
 instinctively connect the growth and abundance of 
 flowers with the homes of civilized life. How- 
 ever that may be, it is certainly true that the 
 cultivation of flowers, like painting and sculpture, is 
 a product of civilization, and has grown up step by 
 step with our progress in knowledge and in the arts. 
 Where the ancients had a hundred plants, we now 
 have thousands. At the time of the revival of 
 learning, there were only about fifteen hundred 
 plants known to botanists, where there are more than 
 fifty thousand at the present time. 
 
 And well may a taste for horticulture go hand in 
 hand with advancing civilization. What is there in 
 all the world better adapted to woo us on to higher 
 thoughts and more worthy aims? It is no flight of 
 fancy to ascribe, as is so often done, language to 
 flowers. Where would you so soon go to learn taste, 
 grace and gentleness, as to the tender plants of the 
 garden. The rudest nature would hardly be rude 
 to delicate flowers. 
 
 And then how natural for us, when we see them
 
 238 PUBLIC GARDENS. 
 
 surrounding the dwelling-house, or climbing on its 
 walls, or peering through its casements, to associate 
 them with taste, elegance and grace within. When- 
 ever we see them thus domesticated, however humble 
 the dwelling, we can never regard it with disdain ; 
 or class it with its fellow opposite, inhabited by no 
 such smiling tenants. 
 
 And then plants seem so domestic, so a part of the 
 family, so like to children, have so many little wants, 
 demand so much care, and then repay in a way so 
 peculiarly their own, with budding promises and 
 blushing smiles. How many of the sick and lonely 
 have they cheered and solaced in their weary hours 
 of confinement. To how many have they been as 
 dear companions and chosen friends. There is hardly 
 anything that will light up a sick room like them, or 
 lend such a charm to the otherwise rude and dreary. 
 
 Of all still-life they probably twine themselves the 
 most closely around the human heart, and awaken 
 the strongest attachments. I remember once, many 
 years ago, of taking the stage, with several others, at 
 Concord, for the White Mountains. With us I 
 observed a young girl, and what first attracted my 
 attention was a flower pot in her lap, containing a 
 most sickly looking plant. My first impulse was to 
 seize it and throw it out of the window as worthless, 
 and then duly apologize and present her with another 
 on the way that was worth preserving. But as she 
 travelled on and on with her sickly companion, and 
 seemed to be ever regarding it with fond attention, I 
 began to look upon the little invalid with compas- 
 sionate interest, and before the day was spent, had 
 fully resolved to use my best endeavors to draw from
 
 PUBLIC GARDENS. 239 
 
 the damsel its secret history. It was not long before 
 I found an opportunity to do so, and found that she 
 had been absent from her home a long way off, 
 for a year or two, employed in one of the mills 
 at Lowell, and that the little plant, during all that 
 time, had been her constant friend and companion. 
 For all that time it had had a place on her loom, and 
 been her pride and pet, and now, a month or two of 
 vacation having been allotted her, she was bearing it 
 affectionately to her home beyond the mountains, to 
 share in the congratulations of he>r friends, and to 
 recuperate among the hills and valleys of bleak and 
 sterile Coos. 
 
 It is natural for the human heart to love the green 
 things of earth, and to yearn for communion with 
 nature in some form or other ; and the more highly 
 cultivated the community, the more that desire 
 centres in and is satisfied with the higher exhibitions 
 of her wonders, as seen in her daisies and her lilies, 
 her heliotropes and her camellias. But city life offers 
 so many obstacles to the gratification of such tastes, 
 that it was early found necessary to establish public 
 gardens in and near great cities to supply that public 
 want. We see that in the accounts that come down 
 to us from ancient times, of the hanging gardens of 
 Semiramis ; of the gardens of Paradise of the Per- 
 sians ; of the wonderful gardens of Alcinoiis ; of the 
 botanical gardens of the Greeks, centuries before the 
 Christian era ; of the gardens of the Romans ; of the 
 numerous public gardens established in various parts 
 of his empire, by the great Charlemagne, until, in the 
 fourteenth century, we find the whole subject of 
 floriculture assuming the character of a science, and
 
 240 PUBLIC GARDENS. 
 
 the great cities and universities of Europe from time 
 to time turning their attention to the founding of 
 botanical gardens, until now there is .hardly any of 
 the most considerable of either, without one of more 
 or less extent and importance. 
 
 The most celebrated are the Imperial Austrian at 
 Schonbrun, the Royal Prussian at Berlin, that of the 
 Grand Duke of Baden, the Royal Hanoveren, the 
 Royal Garden at Kew, and the Apothecaries Garden at 
 Chelsea, near London, the Garden of Plants at Paris, 
 the Royal Garden at Madrid, the Garden of the Uni- 
 versity at Copenhagen, and that of Alexis Rasunowski, 
 near Moscow. 
 
 In America, though cities abound, and large, 
 exceeding large ones are destined to abound more 
 and more, we have no public gardens answering to 
 those so common in the old world. And as yet there 
 have been no movements in that direction. Such 
 ought not to be the case. No city should be without 
 its public garden, where the people may go daily and 
 refresh both heart and body with the sight and smell 
 of flowers. The Garden of Plants in Paris is situated 
 in the heart of Paris, and embraces an area of great 
 extent, scores of acres, but when it was founded, 
 years ago, it was in the suburbs. Land enough and 
 cheap enough, too, could easily be obtained for 
 public gardens, for all our principal cities, if the 
 people would only consider, that what is now the 
 suburbs of any given city, ten, twenty, or fifty years 
 hence, will be perhaps its very heart and centre. It 
 is impossible to estimate the value and importance of 
 one such garden. Probably there is not included in 
 any one single space of the same size in the whole
 
 PUBLIC GARDENS. 241 
 
 world, so much that is calculated to amuse, to 
 interest and to instruct, as is to be found in that 
 Paris Garden of Plants. It is a grand effort to give 
 to the poor stived-up denizens of Paris, some of the 
 ennobling elements of country life. And who will 
 say that it is not money as worthily and as well spent 
 as could be done in any other one way? Such gar- 
 dens, in great cities, are a public necessity. They 
 are to the mind and heart, what pure air and water 
 are to the body. There is no teacher like nature. 
 And to expect that thousands and millions of people 
 can live all their lives shut up together, among the 
 works of man's hands only, without growing barbar- 
 ous, is entirely preposterous. We can better spare 
 whole oceans of precept, that is cast among us so 
 lavishly, than to miss those loving lessons of wisdom, 
 that come so naturally from hill and plain and 
 grassy mead, and from every plant and flower. 
 
 21
 
 CHAPTER XLVII. 
 
 HINTS ABOUT DAVELLING-HOUSES. 
 
 IT is worth considering whether some system can- 
 not be hit upon, better than that now in use, for 
 letting the cheaper class of tenements those, say, 
 occupied mostly by out-door laborers ; some system 
 better for both landlord and tenant. As now prac- 
 tised, nine-tenths of all the low-priced tenements are 
 let by the week or month. The tenant has no 
 interest in the tenement beyond the then present 
 day and hour. He has only to make the most of it 
 while he has it, and quit when he likes. If it is 
 less trouble to move than to be a little careful of the 
 premises, and drive a nail here and there when it is 
 needed, then things are left to go to waste ; and 
 when worst comes to worst, the tenant moves. 
 Connected with that utter want of interest in the 
 tenement, as now let, is one great hardship to land- 
 lords, and to tenants and their families. During the 
 eight busy months of the year, .say from April to 
 November, inclusive, the out-door laborer manages 
 to pay his rent from month to month, or week to 
 week, quite comfortably ; but during the four other 
 months, he either is unable to pay it, or he ekes it 
 out of earnings, every mill of which is absolutely 
 needed to supply the other wants of his family. 
 
 What is wanted is some general custom or law as
 
 HINTS ABOUT DWELLING-HOUSES. 243 
 
 to renting such tenements as shall give the tenant a 
 clear interest in preserving the tenement while in it; 
 and also, relieve him from the burden of paying rent 
 during those four most trying months to out-door 
 laborers December, January, February and March. 
 One mode of accomplishing those two desirable ends 
 would be to adopt the system of having one day in 
 the year for renting such tenements, say the first day 
 of April, and then to let them for not less than one 
 ye;ir, according to some agreed form of written lease. 
 Then, in ease the tenant was to pay his rent in 
 monthly payments, divide the rent payable into 
 eight payments, one-eighth payable on the first day 
 of each of the succeeding eight months, say, one- 
 eighth of the whole year's rent on the first day of 
 May, another eighth on the first day of June, and so 
 on until the first day of December, when the tenant's 
 rent would be paid for the whole year. If the tenant 
 were to pay his rent weekly, the whole year's rent 
 would be divided into thirty-five payments; and one 
 thirty-fifth of the year's rent paid weekly, until about 
 the first day of December, the whole year's rent 
 would be paid. In other words, arrange the pay- 
 ments so that at the end of the busy season, the tenant 
 should have secured to himself a home for the next 
 four months, rent free. 
 
 Under such a system, tenants would select their 
 tenements with more care; they would feel interested 
 in assuring themselves that the tenement they were 
 hiring was one that would serve their purpose for 
 the year they were entering upon, and then every 
 weekly payment would, by the payment that they 
 were making towards the rent for the winter months,
 
 244 HINTS ABOUT DWELLING-HOUSES. 
 
 give them a distinct and clear interest in remaining 
 in the tenement, and Avatching over and preserving 
 it. 
 
 There is wisdom most assuredly in annual rent 
 days, when all lettings begin and terminate. It 
 begets stability. Under such a system, families 
 learn to consider themselves established for a year. 
 They learn to look the whole year in the face from 
 one given point. They know that until another year 
 comes round, they can have no good choice in select- 
 ing another tenement. They are led into cultivating 
 numerous virtues, by the very thought that they are 
 settled for a fixed period of time. It leads them to 
 be more careful of the tenement and all about it, 
 more circumspect and kind and thoughtful among 
 their neighbors, and more prudent every way. 
 
 As it now is, where almost every tenement is held 
 under a tenancy at will, there is no feeling of perma- 
 nency anywhere. The great body of the laboring 
 classes are getting every day more and more unstable; 
 fixed to no place, and bound by no ties to any par- 
 ticular dwelling, they flit from house to house and 
 room to room, until they have no neighbors, no friends, 
 no employers, and no home. 
 
 And together with those considerations about the 
 letting of tenements, comes the modelling of our 
 dwellings for rich and poor. 
 
 There is one thing in connection with all our 
 buildings, public and private, that is a great and fatal 
 error. We have never learned to estimate at its full 
 value, the advantages every way, of good, generous, 
 wide, airy and light halls and passage-ways. Ordi- 
 narily a room should be small. But the entrance
 
 HINTS ABOUT DWELLING-HOUSES. 245 
 
 to your house, the stairs, and the passage-ways to 
 your several rooms, suits of rooms, and" chambers, 
 should be broad and well lighted. Space and light 
 count there in the matter of elegance, convenience 
 and health, vastly more than in any other part of the 
 edifice. In those respects all our edifices fall far 
 below those in the old world. 
 
 Together with broad and well-lighted halls and 
 stairways, go hand in hand that other and different 
 mode of arranging the edifice for the use of tenants. 
 Our mode is the perpendicular: twenty feet front 
 of earth, and sixty feet skyward, a system under 
 which an industrious housewife may reasonably be 
 expected to mount daily more stairs than it would 
 take to make the trip to the top of Bunker Hill Mon- 
 ument ; and at the end of each year may pride her- 
 self on having taken enough of such exercise to have 
 worn out any common mortal. The French system, 
 by which society is lodged in horizontal strata, one 
 layer above the other, those who can best afford 
 that luxury being on the second floor, and the less 
 and less able farther and farther up, each family hav- 
 ing their entire suit of rooms on the same floor, and 
 generally on the same side of the edifice, is far more 
 philosophical as to health, ease, comfort, and every 
 thing. All that is wanted to make that style of mod- 
 elling houses and of living, more general and more 
 popular among us, is wide and airy halls, and broad 
 and well-lighted stairways. 
 21*
 
 CHAPTER XLVIII. 
 
 AN ALIBI. 
 
 SEVERAL years ago I happened to be detained over 
 
 night at S , the shire town of one of our inland 
 
 counties. It was during the session of the court ; 
 and in the evening I found myself, with a half-dozen 
 lawyers, drawn up around a good, generous, old-fash- 
 ioned wood fire, in the landlord's best room. The 
 night was cold, the house old, and the room large and 
 dreary. The topic of the day was a sharply contested 
 case then on trial, where the evidence adduced, on 
 the one side and the other, was flatly contradictory. 
 
 One of the gentlemen, whom they addressed as 
 Judge, and who, I was told, was the leader of the bar 
 in that county, was inclined to ascribe all the mis- 
 chances of life to falsehood. Did a ship go down at 
 sea, he insisted that, ten to one, her copper bolts were 
 all head and no body, or her number-one cordage all 
 old junk. Did a merchant fail, or a factory go under, 
 or an insurance company or bank get into difficulty, 
 he traced it all to falsehood somewhere, either in the 
 capital, in the business itself, or in the parties that 
 conducted it. He would allow of no exceptions. " I 
 tell you what it is," said he, emphasizing as well as 
 a man could whose feet were well braced against the 
 jambs some distance higher than his head, " all the 
 trouble in this world comes from half the people we
 
 AN ALIBI. 247 
 
 meet counting falsehood just as good as truth, if not a 
 little better, especially if it goes current for the min- 
 ute. But let me tell you," added he, " that real facts, 
 real truths, are the most impregnable things in all cre- 
 ation. They are fortified on every side. Each fact, or, 
 what is the same thing, each truth, is consistent with 
 each and every other truth that ever did or ever will 
 exist. There can be no real disagreement between 
 two truths, when they are understood in all their 
 bearings ; they must agree. All the facts that have 
 transpired in the world have so followed each other, 
 and been piled one upon another, and beside and 
 around each other, like bricks in a wall, or sands in a 
 glass, that they mutually link into each other, and 
 cohere together, and support each other, so that there 
 is no place in all the world for falsehood. To attempt 
 to put a falsehood into the world, and bid it stand 
 and pass current, is like insisting on putting gas into 
 a vessel that is full already of solid substance. A 
 falsehood," said he, "so far from being assisted in any 
 case by a fact, is always damaged by it. They are 
 sworn foes. If you attempt to crowd a falsehood in 
 among facts, it is sure to be ground to powder. If 
 facts are called upon to speak, they are sure to cry 
 out against it. And then," said he, " it has been said 
 that one lie needs another to back it. But that is all 
 deception. You never can strengthen one lie by 
 another. The more of them there is put together, 
 the weaker they become." 
 
 There was quite a general approbation of the sen- 
 timents expressed by the judge, though some of the 
 younger members of our party seemed to think that 
 they had heard of cases where falsehood had been
 
 248 AN ALIBI. 
 
 completely triumphant. That position, however, was 
 controverted, and many instances mentioned by one 
 and another around the fire, of falsehood being foiled, 
 until a tall, spare man, of ancient look and mien, who 
 had hitherto contented himself with nodding approval 
 as any of the sentiments uttered met his assent, 
 withdrew the pipe from his mouth which he had been 
 most industriously smoking, and said, " Gentlemen, 
 your conversation reminds me of something that hap- 
 pened to me in my young days, and if you have no 
 objection, I should like to tell it." 
 
 You may imagine that a half-dozen men, penned tip 
 in a lonely old room in a dreary inn, on a long winter 
 evening, without aught to cheer them but a mug of 
 cider simmering on the hearth, and their own conver- 
 sation, were not in a condition to decline a story, and 
 hence we all insisted on his giving us his narrative. 
 
 The old gentleman appeared pleased with the unan- 
 imous expression of our desire to hear him, and hav- 
 ing first carefully knocked the ashes from his pipe, 
 and then having taken a long and loving pull at the 
 mug of cider, by way of prelude, told the following 
 story : 
 
 " The circumstances that I am about to relate," 
 said he, " happened soon after I commenced practice, 
 
 when I first settled in B . One morning, quite 
 
 early, two young men, of genteel exterior, called on 
 me, and stated that a friend of theirs had, the night 
 previous, been arrested for burglary, and desired to 
 retain me in the case. They assured me that he was 
 entirely innocent of the charge, and stated to me such 
 facts as made it plain that the young man had been 
 arrested under a mistake. I espoused his cause with
 
 AN ALIBI. 249 
 
 alacrity. As the citizens of B had then for some 
 
 time been annoyed with frequent cases of -burglary, 
 and as this was one of daring, it made some stir, 
 and both my client and myself concurred in opinion 
 that our defence should be kept a profound secret, 
 and be sprung on them to heighten the eclat of 
 victory. The court was in session, and a few days 
 sufficed to bring the case to indictment and trial. 
 The government put on two witnesses, inmates of the 
 house, who testified that about the middle of the 
 night they heard some one in the house that they 
 occupied; that they immediately suspected robbers, 
 arose and hastily drew on their clothes, and rushed 
 down stairs ; that the burglar sprang out of the win- 
 dow into the street, and that they sprang after him ; 
 that he ran down one street and into another, they 
 pursuing, losing sight of him only for a moment, 
 whilst turning the corner of a street, and that they 
 overtook and seized him in Grand street ; and that 
 the defendant was the robber. 
 
 ''It then came our turn to reply. We produced 
 two witnesses, who testified that on the night in 
 question the defendant and themselves were passing 
 
 the evening with one M , at his room on Parker 
 
 street ; that they left in company with the defendant 
 late in the night, and were returning home ; that 
 when passing down Parker street, and near Grand 
 street, they heard the cry of ' stop thief,' and heard 
 persons running; that very soon a man passed the 
 foot of Parker street, running, and that they, suppos- 
 ing him to be the thief, followed in pursuit ; that 
 they, the witnesses, being faster runners than the 
 defendant, outran him ; that they followed on until
 
 250 AN ALIBI. 
 
 they lost sight of the man pursued ; and that they 
 heard no more of the defendant until they found him 
 
 in custody. M , their entertainer, corroborated 
 
 their story, as to their spending the evening with him. 
 The government witnesses had fixed the time of the 
 robbery at one o'clock in the night; that they had 
 beard the clock strike one while they were preparing 
 to make ?, descent upon the robbers. Our first wit- 
 ness had testified unexpectedly, but quite luckily, as I 
 supposed, that the Parker street church clock struck 
 one while they were passing the church, and but a 
 few minutes before they heard the outcry. His com- 
 panion testified to the same ; and the third witness, 
 their entertainer, to put it out of all question that the 
 defendant and his comrades could not have been 
 engaged in the robbery, corroborated them very 
 exactly on that point, by saying that after they left 
 his room he sat down by the window, and heard the 
 Parker street church clock strike very distinctly; 
 that he recollected it perfectly from the circumstance 
 that he usually kept good hours, and was annoyed to 
 find that his friends had staid so late. 
 
 " I had observed," continued our narrator, " while 
 putting in the testimony of our first witness, some 
 whispering between the officers of the court and 
 the government attorney. As the case progressed I 
 became annoyed more and more by the nonchalance 
 and apparent indifference with which the district 
 attorney cross-examined my witnesses on material 
 points, and I began to suspect that he was stupid, 
 and a bore besides, -he put so many out-of-the-way 
 questions that had apparently no pertinency to the 
 case. At length there was a stir in the court house ;
 
 AN ALIBI. 251 
 
 there was more whispering to the attorney ; there 
 was smiling and winking among the officers of the 
 court and members of the bar, as the district attor- 
 ney, quite facetiously, if not derisively, requested 
 M - to state again about the clock striking one, I 
 began to feel quite angry that so meritorious a case 
 should be so trifled with. 
 
 " At length the case on our side was closed, and the 
 district attorney called witnesses in reply. The first 
 examined was a little weazen-faced old man, of nearly 
 threescore, whom he addressed as Mr. Sexton. He 
 had not proceeded far with his examination before the 
 court house and all within seemed to be whirling 
 round and round. I could hardly see the paper I 
 was writing on. He was stating to the court and 
 jury that he was the sexton of the Parker street 
 church ; that on the night in question the clock was 
 undergoing some repairs, and that the hammer had 
 been removed, and that for several days before and 
 after that time, the clock was not in condition to, and 
 did not strike the hours. And while he was testi- 
 fying, there was a very perceptible smile to be seen 
 spreading from face to face around the court room, 
 until, when he had concluded, the audience were 
 indulging in a most ungracious chuckle at our ex- 
 pense. By the time he had finished his testimony, 
 however, I had recovered my equanimity, and had 
 determined to face it out manfully, and was planning 
 my mode of tactics, when he called to the stand 
 another witness, whom he addressed as Mrs. Striker, 
 and whose name I at once recognized as that of 
 the landlady of our witness who had done the honors 
 of the evening to his friends. In that stage of
 
 252 AN ALIBI. 
 
 the case there was certainly something peculiarly 
 discouraging to see another witness brought to the 
 stand, but to have that one from our witness's own 
 house, and that a woman, the most implacable of all 
 persons on the stand, was enough to destroy all 
 hopes ; but when I considered that it was, besides, 
 his landlady, it served to cap the climax. I threw 
 down my pen, crossed my legs, and prepared for 
 utter and hopeless defeat. Her testimony negatived 
 every thing that he had said. She had looked at her 
 watch when his friends had left, to see what hours 
 her new lodger kept, and had found it a few min- 
 utes after twelve. Wherever they had ventured on 
 a fact, the landlady met and refuted it; until our 
 'alibi' was sneered at by the attorney, and jeered 
 by the crowd, and sly speeches made about it by the 
 bar ; and the court clinched the whole by saying, 
 ' Do you think it is worth while to argue this case, 
 gentlemen?' giving a sly look to the jury, and an 
 inquiring look to me. I did not think it was worth 
 while to argue it, and the jury returned a verdict of 
 guilty without leaving their seats. Since then," said 
 he, " I have always borne a spite against that word 
 1 alibi,' and have never had any faith in the saving 
 grace of falsehood since. But," added he, "my client 
 and his witnesses could never understand why they 
 had not a good case, as there were only two witnesses 
 testifying that the defendant was the burglar, and 
 we had two witnesses denying it ; and the burden of 
 proof was, besides, on them." 
 
 " Yes," said the judge, " there it is. There lies 
 all the difficulty. No genuine rogue can be made to 
 understand that there is any inherent weakness in
 
 AN ALIBI. 253 
 
 falsehood. He insists on placing oath against oath, 
 word against word, and witness against witness ; and 
 he can never be made to understand why a lie, well 
 told by a grave, sincere-looking witness, is not as 
 good as the truth." 
 
 Our fire was getting low ; the wind was whistling 
 around the old inn, shaking its shrunken sashes, and 
 rattling its worm-eaten blinds ; our cider was gone ; 
 and most of us were getting drowsy. So one after 
 another called for slippers and a light, and slunk away 
 to their slumbers, to dream of truth and falsehood, 
 and the dangers of an " alibi." 
 22
 
 CHAPTER XLIX. 
 
 TIME. 
 
 IN the employment of our time and powers we 
 should take counsel of nature. Observe the earth 
 that we inhabit : it indulges in no hours of idleness, 
 nor has it any routine or repetition. Every day it 
 makes one entire revolution on its axis, to give us 
 day and night, heat and cold, sunshine and shadow. 
 At the same time it is moving on in its course 
 around the sun, thus introducing more variety into 
 those days and nights, so that no two moments of 
 time from year's end to year's end can by any chance 
 be exactly alike. From the rising of the sun until 
 its going down, no ray of light ever falls on any 
 object twice alike. Every living thing in nature 
 is constantly changing. The little plant is not sta- 
 tionary a moment : now it is drinking in the dew, 
 now it is opening its buds and smiling a welcome to 
 the sun, and anon it is closing them again as the 
 shades of night come on. 
 
 The human constitution demands that same variety 
 of employment. What is labor to one faculty is 
 rest to the others. It was not intended that any 
 part of our waking moments should be spent in list- 
 lessness and idleness. There is nothing useful or 
 beneficial in either. "We are so wonderfully made, 
 that the use of one faculty gives rest and recreation
 
 TIME. 255 
 
 to another. There is recreation in mere change of 
 place or position. There is recuperative power even 
 in change of the surrounding objects that meet the 
 eye. There is rest in changing from sitting to 
 standing, from riding to walking, from laboring 
 with the hands to other and different labor. There 
 is rest and recreation to the mind, from change of 
 study, as from history to science, or from change of 
 books, as from travels to romance. Play may be 
 made work, and work may be made play. By judi- 
 cious diversity of employing one's hours, healthy 
 recuperation may be going on all the time. 
 
 It is by observing that law of nature that some 
 men have accomplished so much. Plato was as 
 much distinguished in his day as a gymnast, and 
 for his wonderful development of manly beauty and 
 strength, as he has been since as a philosopher and 
 scholar. The way our own Franklin and Choate 
 achieved so much, -was by resting one faculty by 
 using another. By so diversifying one's employments, 
 during the day, devoting some part to sleep, some 
 to devotion, some to labor, some to study, and some 
 to amusements, all of them become recreations. 
 They each help to restore the wasted energies of 
 the other faculties. They all help to adjust anew the 
 human mechanism to its true balance. When each 
 faculty is thus cultivated in unison with all the 
 others, there is harmony of body and mind. The 
 whole man grows in health and strength. He has a 
 well-developed physical system, and he has what is 
 called a well-balanced mind. Both mind and body 
 then grow together and in proportion, and when the 
 climax is past, they wane and fail together. It is
 
 256 TIME. 
 
 that unison and harmony of development that gives 
 health and happiness. 
 
 Those men who think that every moment spent on 
 anything but their one favorite object is thrown 
 away, have no conception whatever of the philoso- 
 phy of human life. Those, too, who look on music 
 and dancing, riding and walking, rural sports and 
 social enjoyments, as frivolities, have left unlearned 
 one of the greatest of lessons. That recuperation 
 of body and mind that comes from enlivening recrea- 
 tions, is a thousand times more profitable than that 
 which comes from inertia and dulness. The man who 
 gives himself up to one unvarying pursuit, and will 
 think of nothing else, and do nothing else, will wear 
 himself out, both bodily and mentally, much sooner 
 than one who taxes about alike all his powers each 
 day. There is health and happiness both, in imi- 
 tating nature. We were not made to recuperate by 
 idleness. 
 
 We are apt to speak of time as short. But it is 
 not so. A day is a long period. It has more than 
 eighty-six thousand seconds in it, eighty-six thousand 
 throbs of the heart. Each of those moments is 
 individual and peculiar. No two of them are en- 
 tirely alike. Man is created with a thousand different 
 and diverse powers to conform to nature. A year 
 of those days has an infinity of time for work 
 and improvement. No man, probably, ever im- 
 proved one tithe of the blessing that God has placed 
 within his reach. Threescore and ten of such 
 years, improved even in a slight degree, have been 
 found by such men as Aristotle, and Cicero, and 
 Bacon, and Napoleon, more than was needed to 
 achieve immortality.
 
 TIME. 257 
 
 Health is a boon above all price, and that can only 
 be maintained by cultivating all your powers, mental 
 and physical. A cheerful, contented spirit, is better 
 than riches and honors, and that, too, is the child of 
 faculties all in active, harmonious use. Wisdom, 
 true wisdom, can come in no other way. You might 
 as well expect the Atlantic cable to stand erect on 
 one end at your bidding, as to expect wisdom from 
 one who cultivates but one of his powers, and ever- 
 lastingly delves on one thing. 
 22*
 
 CHAPTER L. 
 
 THE OLD STAGE TAVEENS. 
 
 WE may find a useful lesson in the history and fate 
 of that once innumerable army of veterans in the 
 tippling service, the old stage taverns. For centuries 
 they held almost regal sway in all our cities, towns 
 and villages. They were great centres of influence. 
 There, the worthy citizens daily congregated to see 
 the stage-coach come in, to take leave of friends 
 bound away, to welcome others that were to arrive, 
 to see who were passengers on the road, and to get 
 the latest news. And then, when evening came, 
 beside the- nice fire congregated all the old cronies 
 of the village, to discuss the politics and news, and 
 to drown the troubles of life with generous potations 
 of the landlord's flip. To the terrible ordeal of that 
 assembly, too, the concerns of every body in town 
 were liable to be brought ; and in that same assembly 
 were daily concocted those mighty schemes of gov- 
 ernment by which village dynasties successively rose 
 and fell. 
 
 There was something in the mode of travel in those 
 days, with the stage-coach rattling along from village 
 to village, the bearer of all sorts of news and of pack- 
 ages of all descriptions ; waking up the echoes, with 
 its tramping steeds and sounding horn, rousing 
 every body on the way to action, some to run for
 
 THE OLD STAGE TAVERNS. 259 
 
 their newspapers, and some for their parcels; this one 
 for a letter, and that one to welcome a friend; and all 
 to see the stage come in, that was peculiarly enliven- 
 ing and inspiring. Then there was the thirsty driver 
 encased in a huge pea-coat, and enveloped in a maze 
 of comforters, and when well mellow one of the best 
 of fellows, civil, obliging, ready to accommodate you 
 on the box and to impart to you all sorts of mysteri- 
 ous information about places and persons on the way, 
 that seemed preparing you for what was to come. 
 And then when the whole village had been roused, 
 and you had whirled past the grocer's, and brought 
 him and all his customers to the door, and rattled 
 past the blacksmith's, and had brought him and all his 
 squad of cyclops to a stand, and had duly summoned 
 the maid to the gate, and her mistress to the window, 
 and every loiterer about town to the inn door, and 
 the coach had been rounded 'up before the house in 
 handsome style, and you had been met and recognized 
 by Boniface himself, and had had the steps of your 
 coach let down by his own hands, and had felt the 
 cheering influence of his hearty welcome, and the 
 genial temperature of his bar, enlivened with a rous- 
 ing fire, and then had seen him take position in 
 rear of a whole platoon of great big-bellied decanters, 
 charged to the brim with tempting liquors, and had 
 observed his beseeching and expectant look, as much 
 as to say, " Is it possible that you can be intending 
 to accept all these hospitalities and yet not patronize 
 my bar ? " there was clearly no escape. The roaring 
 fire, the jolly landlord, the dozens of crook-necked 
 squashes that hung dangling from the ceiling, the 
 score or two of circus riders displayed on the walls,
 
 260 THE OLD STAGE TAVERNS. 
 
 the driver, with his big pockets and husky cough, 
 the big burly decanters, and the thick-bottomed 
 tumblers, and whole files of villagers, all seemed 
 to have their eyes upon you, and to be uttering as 
 audibly as they could utter, "Shame, shame!" until 
 you are fain to give in, step to the bar and call on for 
 yourself, if not for the whole crowd. And the more 
 noble and grateful the traveller, the less likely was 
 he to withstand the temptation. 
 
 Travelling then seemed to be in its very nature 
 convivial. Life on the road was then, staging it from 
 bar-room to bar-room, and from one form of dissipation 
 to another. Taverns were then known and estimated 
 not so much by their table and upholstery, as by 
 their bar and their toddy. Every village then had 
 its stage tavern, that was to all the neighborhood 
 around the sun and centre of their little universe, 
 around which the people, one and all, revolved, with- 
 out one question that it was as necessary as the 
 revolving seasons, and as immutable as the fixed 
 stars. 
 
 Near a half a century ago, and more than a 
 quarter of a century before those ancient strong- 
 holds of tippling fell to rise no more, there went out 
 a decree from all New England that those old foun- 
 tains of intemperance should be dried up. And for 
 many long years there was a constant roar of wordy 
 artillery against them ; substantives, verbs, adverbs, 
 prepositions, and interjections, were discharged at 
 them in one continual volley. And then the press 
 was called into the service, and that opened its 
 batteries upon them in right good earnest, plying 
 them incessantly with hot shot in every form known
 
 THE OLD STAGE TAVERNS. 261 
 
 to that service, Pica, Small Pica, Long Primer, Bour- 
 geois, Brevier, Minion, and Nonpareil, but all to no 
 purpose. The old stage taverns, strongly entrenched 
 in the customs, habits, and business wants and ways 
 of the people, gave no more heed to the war around 
 them, than if pelted by so many snow-flakes. The 
 stage whirled through the village as before, the land- 
 lord's fire burned bright, the weary, lonely, and 
 shivering traveller was warmed into gratitude by 
 the genial welcome. Boniface, his bar and decanters, 
 still lived and flourished, and temperance taverns 
 waxed and waned. 
 
 But anon, while those old breastworks of intem- 
 perance, so ably garrisoned, seem to stand secure 
 and strong, occupying the most commanding posi- 
 tions in all our villages, other leaders are to make 
 war upon them. Watt and Stephenson, those twin 
 authors of the locomotive, are plotting their ruin. 
 The stream that could not be arrested is about to 
 be diverted into a new channel. There is a burly 
 reformer abroad, who avoids the old ruts, and cries, 
 ha ! ha ! to the old stage taverns and their smoky 
 fumes, and old cronies, and vile compounds, as it 
 tears past. It makes no parade of its principles, it 
 presides at no conventions, it calls for no pledges, 
 it drafts no stringent laws, it hurls at the old taverns 
 no dreadful anathemas, and yet in a few short years 
 they are all gone. They die and make no sign. 
 
 " Like the clew on the mountain, 
 Like the foam on the river, 
 Like the bubble on the fountain, 
 They are gone, and forever."
 
 262 THE OLD STAGE TAVERNS. 
 
 Reforms are brought about by action and not by 
 precept. Our course through life is seldom percep- 
 tibly affected by anything but the customs and habits, 
 practical and material causes around us. When we 
 see a moving train on the wrong track we do not 
 shout to it, nor club it, but we change the switch. 
 The old habits of a people are like the eternal 
 rivers. They both have their origin far back. 
 Those habits, if pernicious, are only perversions 
 of good principles and sentiments of the human 
 heart, ordained of God, and eternal. And those 
 rivers may flow on in shallow and impure beds, and 
 become putrid and deadly, yet are their waters 
 sweet and unfailing at the fountain. No human 
 hand can be laid on either at the source to bid it 
 cease. There is but one safe and sure course. 
 Those pure principles, and those sweet waters 
 must be diverted into other and more healthful 
 channels.
 
 CHAPTER LI. 
 
 WHAT OF THE NIGHT? 
 
 THE Scriptures, one would suppose, had now been 
 before the world long enough for it to settle quite 
 definitely their exact meaning. If we exclude the 
 long period of time when they were to be had in 
 manuscript only, and reckon from the time when the 
 discovery of the art of printing, and the Reformation 
 opened wide the sacred volume, the Christian world 
 has now had them for study for full three hundred 
 years. 
 
 Taking the Scriptures to be the word of God, and 
 embracing his revealed will and laws, how happens 
 it that there is so little comparatively settled, as to 
 the precise doctrines and interpretation of the Bible? 
 How can it be accounted for that so many different 
 doctrines are drawn from its pages, and many of them 
 so utterly repugnant to each other ? 
 
 Is it because the sacred Scriptures actually teach 
 different and repugnant doctrines? No one who 
 claims that the Bible is of any authority, will say 
 that ; much less will it be said by any one who 
 believes it to be the word of God. 
 
 Is it because the Scriptures are carelessly written? 
 No sect drawing its doctrines from the Bible, dare 
 say that, nor would it be true if it were said. 
 
 Is it because we do not read it in the original?
 
 264 WHAT OF THE NIGHT? 
 
 Certainly not, for the Jews differed in the interpre- 
 tation of the Hebrew Scriptures, and were cut up 
 into sects, Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes, Caraites, 
 and Rabbinists, varying as essentially in doctrine 
 then, as we do now. 
 
 Whence comes, then, all the diversity of sentiment 
 and of doctrine ? What led to it in the beginning ? 
 What is sustaining and perpetuating it? Is there 
 any reason for such conflicting opinions ? Is there 
 any advantage in having God's word misconstrued 
 and misapplied ? Is there any harm in it ? Is there 
 any hope that the various sects will grow wiser and 
 better, and at last harmonize? Is there anything 
 that can be done to aid in coming to a right and 
 also to an agreed interpretation ? Is there anything 
 encouraging in the past, the present, or the signs of 
 the future ? All these are questions that we ought 
 to consider, and, if possible, answer. 
 
 Most of that diversity of opinion and doctrine is 
 of very ancient origin, when the Christian world 
 was filled with traditions. Most of it had its origin 
 in times anterior to the discovery of the art of print- 
 ing, when the Scriptures were to be had only in 
 manuscript, and then only by permission of the 
 clergy ; when princes and nobles, much less the 
 common people, could neither read nor write, and all 
 the learning was locked up in monasteries. The dis- 
 tinguishing doctrines of most of the different sects 
 of the present day are to be found in the writings 
 of the various theologians in the early ages of the 
 church, when the great mass of the people were sunk 
 in ignorance, and when the clergy were only one 
 degree above them in learning and intelligence.
 
 WHAT OP THE NIGHT? 265 
 
 The great body of the Scriptures can hardly be 
 counted as having any essential bearing on doctrinal 
 points. A large number of the books of the Old 
 Testament are historical only ; and the greater part 
 of the other books are devoted to history, legislation, 
 hymns of praise, and devotional exercises. 
 
 If all those passages of Scripture on which the dif- 
 ferent sects of Christians divide, were collected into 
 one volume, they would hardly make so large a volume 
 for interpretation, as would the laws passed at any 
 single session of a modern legislative body. 
 
 The statute laws of the single State of Massachu- 
 setts embrace more than ten times as much reading 
 matter as all the passages of Scripture having any 
 doctrinal bearing whatever. And, what is striking, 
 when we consider the number and diverse views of 
 the different sects of Christians in the world, as to the 
 true interpretation of the Scriptures, is the fact, that 
 there is very little diversity of opinion as to the exact 
 meaning of each and every one of those statutes. 
 One could hardly point to a statute of ten years 
 standing, that has not a perfectly well understood 
 signification. 
 
 When will this diversity end? when will Christians 
 understand the Bible alike ? Judging from the past, 
 never ; for every age now gives birth to more and 
 more sects, and reconciles and unites no old ones. 
 Nor does the history of the various sects of religionists 
 in the world afford any hopes to the inquirer after 
 truth. Sects never progress. There is never any 
 permanent improvement in a religious sect. Of all 
 the sects in the world, there never has been an in- 
 stance of one of them passing on, step by step, to a 
 23
 
 266 WHAT OP THE NIGHT? 
 
 more reasonable, pure, and holy code of faith and 
 morals. They may languish, and, languishing, die, 
 and another sect spring up in their place, but the 
 old root can give life to nothing higher and better 
 than itself. Individuals may and often do rise above 
 the tenets of their sect, but the sect itself remains 
 unchanged for the better forever. 
 
 The exact character of man as an inquirer after 
 religious truth may be inferred from the fact that it 
 has seldom happened in the history of the world that 
 any learned man, who was educated in a certain re- 
 ligious faith, has ever totally renounced it and 
 avowed himself a believer in another and totally 
 different religious doctrine. Instances enough have 
 occurred of learned men passing from one to another 
 shade of creed in the same religion as to pass from 
 a Catholic to a Protestant, or from an Episcopalian to 
 a Baptist. But seldom, if ever, has it been that a 
 learned man has pursued his inquiries after religious 
 truth to such an extent that it has entirely conquered 
 the preconceived notions of his youth and of educa- 
 tion. For example, in the whole history of China, with 
 its innumerable standing population, no theologian or 
 scholar of all those three thousand millions* of Bud- 
 dhists that have existed there for the last three 
 hundred years, has ever found by searching that 
 the Mohammedan or the Christian religion had 
 claims superior to that of Buddhism. The same may 
 be said of the Mohammedan world. No one of their 
 sages has ever discovered any beauty or loveliness 
 in the Christian or Buddhist religions, over then- 
 own. And the Christian world has been equally true 
 to its early teachings. Though split into a thousand
 
 WHAT OP THE NIGHT ? 267 
 
 fragments, each sect is Christian notwithstanding. 
 Of the full one thousand millions of the Christian 
 world that have lived and died since the art of 
 printing set before them the various dogmas of the 
 religious world, no one of all that multitude has 
 ever yet turned entirely Turk, Hindoo, or Buddhist, 
 theologically and religiously. At least, I know of no 
 such instances of entire change, and if others do, I 
 will engage to find for every one such, ten well- 
 authenticated miracles. 
 
 Guided and informed by past experience, is there 
 any hope of our ever arriving at a common and 
 agreed interpretation of the Scriptures, through the 
 teachings of religious sects? On the other hand, is 
 it not perfectly certain that, unless there is a move- 
 ment outside of all sectarian organizations, full, strong 
 and complete, the present state of things is always 
 to remain, leaving the Bible as it now is practically 
 supposed to be, all things to all men, supporting all 
 sorts of creeds, and lending countenance to a hundred 
 different and repugnant shades of doctrine, a book 
 of riddles, a myth, a problem, a plaything for theologi- 
 ans, everything and anything, save a clear, safe, 
 sure interpreter of God to man? 
 
 If there is any truth in history, if there is any 
 consistency in man, if the human mind of to-day 
 is of the same type and mould as that of the past, a 
 common and agreed interpretation, reasonable, sen- 
 sible and true, of the sacred Scriptures, will never be 
 reached through any one or any number of religious 
 sects. The thing is utterly impossible. It is only 
 to be reached when they have crumbled to dust. 
 
 The hopeful thing in the world now is the increase
 
 268 WHAT OF THE NIGHT ? 
 
 of religious sects. Instead of being an object of 
 apprehension, they should be looked upon as har- 
 bingers of good. They tend to weaken party attach- 
 ments. They are links in the great chain that is one 
 day to bind the world in one great religious brother- 
 hood. The number of persons in the Christian world 
 who are unwilling to subscribe to creeds, and to be 
 bound by the dogmas of any particular religious 
 sect, is increasing steadily every day. Sectarianism 
 in a very large part of Christendom is losing the 
 strong hold it once had. People now interpret the 
 Scriptures for themselves. A large body of the 
 people now are ripe for an interpretation of the 
 Scriptures, without any saving clause that it shall at 
 all events be favorable to their views. The day 
 may be distant, and perhaps far distant, when there 
 will be a general crumbling of sects, when Christians 
 will see eye to eye ; but it is sure to come, and it will 
 not come by the strengthening of any one sect, but 
 by the weakening of all. 
 
 There is one practical question connected with 
 this gradual dissolving of the religious world into 
 individual elements, and it is this. Is there any 
 specific thing that can be usefully done ? Can any- 
 thing be done to aid the individual mind and yet 
 leave it free, anything that promises more good 
 than harm, anything that will not tend to sec- 
 tarianism ? 
 
 There is one hint that may be worth considering. 
 The Scriptures contain the will of our Heavenly 
 Father. They contain his laws and ordinances. 
 To a certain extent, then, the Scriptures are legal 
 instruments. The same rules should govern in con-
 
 WHAT OF THE NIGHT? 269 
 
 struing the Scriptures, as in construing laws, wills, and 
 legal instruments generally. The same habits of mind 
 and of investigation that would be best fitted to find 
 the true interpretation of the one would be equally 
 desirable for the other. 
 
 Judicial investigations beget habits eminently cal- 
 culated to expel from the mind all considerations of 
 times, place, sect, party, or creed. While in almost 
 all other situations in life, the honor, fame and ad- 
 vancement of the individual rests almost solely on 
 his adherence to his sect or party, the judicial 
 officer is conscious, every step that he takes, that his 
 path to honor and a fair name as an inheritance to 
 his children, lies in giving no place to any such con- 
 siderations. "While from the nature of things the 
 politician can only rise to eminence by adherence to 
 his party, and the bishop gain his mitre by supporting 
 the tenets of his sect, the judge must stand or fall by 
 the singleness of purpose with which he judges 
 righteously, irrespective of rank, age, sex, sect or 
 condition. 
 
 It is in view of that training of the judicial mind, 
 that, in selecting interpreters of the word of God, 
 it must be clear that a bench of judges of all men 
 would be less likely than any other class of persons 
 to be swayed by their previously conceived opinions. 
 I do not mean that because a man has been elevated 
 to the judicial office, and inherited the name of 
 judge, that that would of itself give him any title 
 over other men to construe the Scriptures, I mean 
 a bench of men who have grown old in judicial 
 duties, and whose title has been earned on the 
 bench. 
 
 23*
 
 270 WHAT OP THE NIGHT? 
 
 Let us suppose that by the liberality of a single 
 individual, or by bequest, or by voluntary subscrip- 
 tion, a fund was raised sufficient to defray the ex- 
 penses of a full and thorough examination of the 
 sacred Scriptures by a bench of judges composed of 
 the Chief Justices of the highest courts of each of 
 the several States of the Union; and suppose that 
 they should not only construe the several passages 
 of Scripture separately on which theologians divide, 
 but should, likewise, find on the several great mooted 
 points what is the doctrine of the Bible in its whole- 
 ness, would it not have a salutary effect? would it 
 not have a tendency towards a better state of things ? 
 I think that any one can see that such an inquiry, 
 properly set on foot and conducted, could not fail to 
 have a salutary influence on every form of error. 
 If it did nothing more than to introduce a sound 
 mode of examining and construing the word of God, 
 sanctioned by long experience in courts of law as 
 the best to elicit truth, it would alone be of incal- 
 culable value. Let but the same principles be ap- 
 plied to the Bible, that are in daily use in courts of 
 law in construing statutes, wills, and legal instru- 
 ments, generally, and nineteen-twentieths of all the 
 present supposed conflicts would entirely fade away.
 
 CHAPTER LII. 
 
 LEISURE HOURS AND PUBLIC LIBRARIES. 
 
 Too little is thought or done about our hours of 
 leisure. They constitute a large part one third, 
 if not one half of our waking moments. They have 
 much to do with our health and happiness. They 
 determine in a great measure our success in life, and 
 our habits, disposition and character. 
 
 There has been the weak spot in our social 
 economy. We have left that whole eventful period 
 of time, unthought of, and uncared for. The people 
 through their representitives have been careful to 
 furnish any and every desirable facility for business, 
 but none for recreation. Private benevolence has 
 never turned its attention to doing anything for those 
 leisure hours. Those have been left to be filled 
 any way and every way, by any body and every 
 body. The result we all know. 
 
 "We all know that however indifferent the public 
 may have been about providing employment for those 
 leisure hours, private individuals have seen the 
 want, and turned it to money account. Whoever 
 explores the streets, lanes and alleys of any given 
 city, would be likely to come to the conclusion, 
 before long, that a great duty has been left un- 
 fulfilled. They will be convinced that if legisla- 
 tors, theologians, moralists, and philanthropists can-
 
 272 LEISURE HOURS AND PUBLIC LIBRARIES. 
 
 not be made to understand man in his wholeness, 
 there is a very large class of philosophers who es- 
 tablish bar-rooms, and found saloons, and manage 
 billiard-rooms, and get up fancy clubs and mock 
 societies, who think they do, and manage to coin 
 money by it. In all our large cities, those who live 
 by catering to the wants of the people during their 
 unemployed moments, particularly after working 
 hours, by providing for them a comfortable room 
 to lounge in, and something to amuse themselves 
 with if they feel like it, constitute a large per cent, 
 of the whole population. 
 
 To satisfy any one that a want no sooner arises 
 than it is filled, in some way, I need call attention 
 to only one fact that must have attracted before this 
 the notice of the most unobservant. I allude to the 
 number of saloons of one kind and another that in- 
 variably line the approaches to the station house of 
 any one of our great lines of railroads. Those places, 
 doubtless, are passed unheeded by the thousands and 
 thousands of business men, who always hasten to and 
 from the cars. But how is it with the individuals of 
 that other large class who visit our cities for tem- 
 porary purposes only, and who are called upon to 
 wait hours and hours for the train to leave that is to 
 return them to their homes. With no friend or ac- 
 quaintance in the city, shelterless and alone, with no 
 business to employ their time, who can say that those 
 saloons, in the absence of all other and better accom- 
 modations, are not a necessity ? 
 
 A public library, one that is for use and not for 
 show, one that is open day and evening, and where 
 the citizen or stranger can enter and feel as much at
 
 LEISURE HOUKS AND PUBLIC LlliltAltlES. 273 
 
 home as he would in any ordinary book-store, where 
 he can visit the shelves, select his book, and read and 
 consult without let or hindrance, is one of the best and 
 most conservative institutions that belong to civilized 
 life. There is no village, town or city, that can afford 
 to do without one or more. There is a host of good 
 influences clustering about them. 
 
 As an educational institution, the public library is 
 invaluable. But its chief worth lies outside of that. 
 Love of books, and especially of those that are illus- 
 trated, is a natural sentiment. We see it exemplified 
 in children every day. We feel it all through life. 
 We love to handle them. We love to look them 
 over and read them. And no one is ever too old to 
 look for the pictures. I would sooner trust to a well 
 selected and well managed public library to dry up 
 the streams of impurity in any given place, than in 
 any other one thing. 
 
 The library is a home institution. Wherever we 
 find it, it inspires home feelings and begets home 
 sentiments. It has an atmosphere of domestic life 
 about it. We enter it with the same feelings that 
 we do a lady's parlor. We expect to meet there all 
 ages and both sexes. We associate with it not 
 only the taste, grace, refinement, and gentleness 
 of the drawing-room, but sentiments of respect 
 and veneration for the worthies whose works are 
 around us. 
 
 There are but few persons, young or old, in any 
 given village in the country where ail can read and 
 enjoy books, who would not sooner spend their leisure 
 hours in a comfortable library room, surrounded by 
 neighbors and friends and books, than in any of the
 
 274 LEISURE HOURS AND PUBLIC LIBRARIES. 
 
 most enticing places of resort provided by private 
 enterprise. It is not true of mankind generally that 
 they prefer the evil rather than the good. On the 
 other hand, where libraries and galleries of art, and 
 places of innocent and healthy recreation are open to 
 the public, the great mass of the people flock to them, 
 enjoy them, and are profited by them. On the con- 
 tinent of Europe, where free libraries, galleries of art, 
 gardens and other public places abound, and where 
 all the people, high and low, meet, the humbler classes 
 are far more temperate and far better bred than 
 are the same classes in either England or America. 
 
 In this country, no considerable village should be 
 without its public library. As for cities, there 
 should be one in every ward. We could better dis- 
 pense with one half of our schools, than do without 
 them.
 
 AMBITION. 
 
 A BABBLING brook from mountain side 
 Came leaping down in tuneful tide, 
 Singing gayly on its way, 
 " I will be famous in my day." 
 
 As flowing onward, clear and bright, 
 Sparkling in the pale moonlight, 
 The stars looked down with gladsome eyes, 
 To see reflected there their own sweet skies. 
 
 The brook flowed on, and in its course 
 From hill and stream oft gathered force, 
 Till deep and wide its bosom bore 
 Whitened sails from every shore ; 
 
 Then turned to heaven in boastful pride, 
 
 To mark its deep and swelling tide ; 
 
 The stars looked down, with steady beam, 
 
 But no image found in its dismal stream. 
 I 
 
 'T is thus with man in earliest youth 
 His heart 's a rill that mirrors truth, 
 But fed by fame, oft swells awide, 
 Till no image dwells in its turbid tide.
 
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