GIFT OF 
 
 Marston Campbell, Jr 
 
Cf 
 
 , / 
 
 * 
 
 / 
 
HALF TINTS. 
 
HALF TINTS: 
 
 TABLE D'HdTE 
 
 AND 
 
 DR A. WING-- ROOM. 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 D. APPLETON & CO., 443 AND 445 BROADWAY. 
 
 1867. 
 
6IFTOF 
 
 Entered accprding to Act of Congress, in the year 1867, by 
 
 D. APPLETON & CO., 
 
 in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the 
 Southern District of New York. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 COMMONPLACE, . . .. r . , . . 7 
 
 n. 
 
 COME, . . .".. ...... . . . 19 
 
 HI. 
 THE UNIYEESE, 31 
 
 IV. 
 LITTLE ONES, . . .... . . 43 
 
 Y. 
 TABLE D'HOTE, 55 
 
 VI. 
 DRAWING-ROOM, VI 
 
 832765 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 m 
 
 GENTLEMEN'S PABLOB, 91 
 
 vin. 
 
 THE EXCHANGE, 107 
 
 IX. 
 AN INMATE, . 121 
 
 X. 
 
 NOT A SEEMON, 133 
 
 XI. 
 HAPPINESS, . . . . . . . .149 
 
 xn. 
 
 POOE BODIES, . . . . . . . igj 
 
 xm. 
 
 POOE SOTJLS, . . . 9 1^9 
 
 XIV. 
 AND So FOETH, . , . . . .201 
 
 XV. 
 Our OP THE WINDOW, ... 219 
 
I. 
 
 COMMONPLACE. 
 
HALF 
 
 I. 
 
 COMMONPLACE. 
 
 JACK, my boy, will you give me your ears 
 awhile ? I feel an impulse to talk a little. 
 And don't take offence at my familiar way. 
 Kemember that as John and man I've never 
 known you. 
 
 Do you never rub your eyes and strain 
 back to that long ago? Do your faculties 
 never swim in remembrances of it ? Do you 
 never have periods of abstraction, when mem- 
 ories become actualities, and all sense for 
 present things is suspended or inoperative? 
 
 i* 
 
10 HALF TINTS. 
 
 To me they occur often, floating me off my 
 feet and out of myself. No matter how busy 
 or absorbing the situation, the exacting pres- 
 ent is shut out, and the old time comes back, 
 warm and'.radiknt as our boyhood painted it. 
 Only the, other, morning, hurrying through 
 he'tlioroiighfape' ef the great town, jostled by 
 the crowd of active men with desperate pur- 
 poses, I happened mechanically to glance 
 down a side street to the tidal river, when I 
 suddenly became as unconscious of the rush 
 and roar as if staggering in a syncope. The 
 water seemed actually to rise and blend with 
 the sky, and the thronging vessels to be trans- 
 muted into clouds, transfigured, but retaining 
 the essential lines and proportions of marine 
 architecture. And the sun was shaded to 
 soften the vision. The celestial fleet, floating 
 sublimely as a great soul at rest, was freighted 
 with the hopes and loves and ambitions of 
 my youth, and chief amongst the radiant 
 faces on the shining decks shone the lovely 
 lineaments of one you remember with an ardor 
 
COMMONPLACE. 11 
 
 next to my own. Mary still, but beatified, as 
 Beatrice to Dante. And Eliza, her insepara- 
 ble companion, as you were mine, stood by 
 her side. How much, Jack, those beautiful, 
 modest, bright girls were to us. I am sure 
 that for years we never did a doubtful thing 
 without a fear of their knowing it, and God 
 knows how many ill things that guardian con- 
 sciousness deterred us from. Last at night 
 and first in the morning came thoughts of 
 my little Mary, and pure they were as their 
 subject. And with something of awe her 
 presence inspired me. "We never talked of 
 the things always in our thoughts, and when 
 happiest we talked not at all. That sweet 
 baptism Motherwell describes as the silentness 
 of joy, and Lowell more at large in his apos- 
 trophe : 
 
 Oh, sweet Silence ! They belied thee 
 Who have called thee weak and vain ; 
 
 Speech is emptiness beside thee, 
 
 Joy and woe have glorified thee ; 
 Love and longing never seek 
 Any better way to speak. 
 
12 HALF TINTS. 
 
 Coherency at such times was as impossible as 
 steadiness to palsy. The happiness her pres- 
 ence inspired composed my soul, cushioning 
 the faculties like a sweet sleep. The tongue 
 forgot its cunning. Separating from her, the 
 magic thraldom would only too sensibly be 
 felt, as the waking senses consciously disen- 
 chant themselves of the stuff that dreams are 
 made of. You know the sensations well 
 enough, repeated over and over again in your 
 relations, present and absent, with Eliza, and 
 repeated to every man with a man's heart, 
 human enough for its best uses. Why, Jack, 
 it did seem that I lost my conceit some- 
 times, so absorbed I was with her, elbowing 
 myself perpetually, without a thought of sac- 
 rifice, by never-ceasing, ever-varying accom- 
 modations to her wishes and whims. If you 
 do not remember, it is nevertheless a fact, that 
 I learned to write her name before I could 
 write my own. I never saw a very red glis- 
 tening apple, nor a perfect, blushing, delicious 
 peach, without growing sinfully covetous of it, 
 
COMMONPLACE. 13 
 
 as a fitting little gift to her, so all-deserving. 
 In the class I would deliberately misspell the 
 word rather than go above her. I never saw 
 a smooth beech-tree but I cut our initials upon 
 it, never omitting to cut also a ring round 
 them, that another might not get in. Never 
 shall I forget the pretty pink bonnets she 
 always wore on smiling Sunday mornings, and 
 the conscious looks we gave each other across 
 the aisle. You remember, no doubt, that 
 pleasant time in the sugar-camp, when all 
 four of us, with each a mug of delicious syrup, 
 went down to the brook to cool it and drink. 
 "We were too earnest for jokes with or about 
 the sweet lasses. And you have not forgotten 
 how in the still summer days we sometimes 
 wandered to that same little stream and waded 
 in the pure water, and how the timid little 
 things ventured out, their white toes spread- 
 ing over the clean pebbles like live things. 
 Holmes's picture reminds us : 
 
 Maidens dancing on the grapes, 
 Their milk-white ankles splashed with red. 
 
14: HALF TINTS. 
 
 You are a ripened man, and so am I, but 
 it would be sacrilege to forget these things. 
 Trifles they are, no doubt, and shamefacedly 
 referred to, if at all, but inestimably have they 
 contributed to us. If Mary and Eliza are not 
 our wives, the good women who are are none 
 the worse for our innocent tenderness to them. 
 Job, my bachelor friend, broadly asserts that 
 he advises the girls never to marry men who 
 have not been in love a dozen times ; that it 
 is with the affections as with the muscles ; 
 they grow and strengthen by use. Grotesque, 
 of course, and extravagant, but a little of 
 truth may be found in it as in every thing. 
 My gilded memories of Mary come out of the 
 past and help me to appreciate another who 
 is better, as the vintage of half an age is pref- 
 erable to the raw juices, unpurified by long 
 voyaging upon the fretful sea and unmellowed 
 by years of sanctifying repose. If I shut my 
 eyes sometimes and dream of innocent pleas- 
 ures, as Paul's with Virginia, I am sure a new 
 touch of tenderness and delicacy unconsciously 
 
COMMONPLACE. 15 
 
 attends my caresses of that other Mary who 
 sits by my side, her memory, perhaps, idly 
 summoning up blithe blinks of some sunny 
 boy, which have helped to make her, the 
 Maker of us all knows how much, the good 
 woman she is to me. It is true we do not 
 speak to each other of these things, but as- 
 sume them, nevertheless. Age, said Grand- 
 father Titbottom, with a smile of immortal 
 youth, is not a matter of years, but of feel- 
 ing. My wife and I lately talked of this after 
 reading one of the thoughtful essays of John 
 Foster. In no way can we account for ourselves 
 so well as by a careful review and analysis of 
 the associates which chance or affinity have 
 put in our way. So good and lovable is rny 
 wife, that in robbing her of one memory I 
 should risk making her so much the less charm- 
 ing and saintly. If some remembrances force 
 from her a sigh, I would not make her obliv- 
 ious of them any more than I would put out 
 the light of her beaming eyes. In her integ- 
 rity I have her and would keep her, here and 
 
16 HALF TINTS. 
 
 hereafter. Think of a self-righteous, conceited 
 reader, who would presume to tear out inex- 
 plicable or exceptional passages of the Good 
 Book as he read them. 
 
 [Mary the First, you know, is now a widow, 
 and lives in one of your beautiful "Western 
 cities. The prosperous drover she married I 
 never saw, nor do I regret it. My only im- 
 pressions of him are got from a hideous por- 
 trait which hangs over the parlor mantel. 
 Some years ago (my wife accounted for the 
 delay by a storm on the lake) I travelled out 
 of my way to pay the widow a visit. I found 
 her plump and rosy as Hebe, and without the 
 aid of dressmaker or cosmetics. The snug 
 little sofa we snugly occupied during the even- 
 ing was little roomier than the modern old 
 gentleman's easy-chair. But oh, how the por- 
 trait glared upon us. I declare to you, Jack, 
 I never behaved so well in all my life as while 
 in its awful presence. The stiff, stick fingers 
 I felt tempted to knock off with my cane 
 while waiting for the little charmer to come 
 
COMMONPLACE. 17 
 
 in. Its one wholly visible ear seemed to move 
 and belly like the sail of a sloop to catch every 
 syllable of our interesting talk. The thin hair 
 was brushed so sleek, and had such a pomatum 
 gloss, that never a fly had dared to light upon 
 it. The eyes, as Thackeray would say, gog- 
 gled round savage. The complexion had the 
 hue of a peeled egg a little browned in the 
 roasting. One side of the glossy blue coat 
 hung so heavily that I shall believe till my 
 dying day there was a stiletto in it. Several 
 times since that night with the frightful pic- 
 ture and the cherry-lipped relict, I have seen 
 in my dreams the treacherous weapon steal 
 from its scabbard of shiny broadcloth, and felt 
 it push its way persistently between my ribs, 
 as a pin pierces a pippin. A moment's gush, 
 then gone forever. Oh, if there be a legacy a 
 dying man can leave utterly to damn his mem- 
 ory, it is a portrait, forever to embarrass his 
 widow.] 
 
n. 
 
 COME. 
 
H. 
 
 COME. 
 
 JACK, yon are a philosopher, and have never 
 travelled. You have been contented to grow 
 with your cattle and corn on your fat Mississippi 
 acres, while I have roamed like a vagrant over 
 the world. I have wished often we could see 
 each other as we are, to compare notes and 
 mark progress. Leave, I pray you, your short- 
 horns and sorghum, and spend a fortnight with 
 me amidst gas, and tall buildings, and horse- 
 cars. Leave your accustomed ruts, and get 
 into others as different as Nantucket from 
 Chicago. I do not say you will go home a 
 wiser or a better man. 
 
 If you come, let me suggest you stay at 
 
22 HALF TINTS. 
 
 The Universe. You would find the great hotel 
 a world within itself. Creature-comforts would 
 close round you like a pillow. Every thing 
 you could wish would be anticipated, or could 
 be had for the asking, all set down method- 
 ically in your bill, silently slipped under your 
 door every seventh-day morning. The porter 
 taking your luggage at the door will be civil 
 and sturdy, and a greenback will reward him. 
 The two or three clerks at the office will be as 
 clean and smiling as bridegrooms. But let me 
 suggest thus early that you have an eye to the 
 devices. All here is gold that glitters. Pre- 
 sent yourself at the marble counter with im- 
 pressive and masterly deliberation, with the 
 repose of power and distinction, your great- 
 coat buttoned carefully to the chin. Before 
 ungloving to register your name, very quietly 
 inquire if some celebrity, most in the news- 
 papers for the time being, has arrived and 
 asked after you. Be sure to do this with a 
 quiet air verging on indifference ; for studied 
 quietness in these times and places is every 
 
COME. 23 
 
 thing. Your comfort during your stay will 
 very much, depend on these apparently trifling- 
 things. But observe that the extreme of quiet- 
 ness may be as unfortunate as the unconscious 
 ease of a man in his own house ; it will argue 
 the guest an over-actor, or timid and unac- 
 quainted with the world. The Boots will de- 
 tect either, and vote him a bumpkin or a boor. 
 Balancing means and ends is nice exercise, 
 and busies- the ingenuity of the world. People 
 who do not learn the art, rarely get the worth 
 of their labor or money. Their best attain- 
 ments may be too expensive; to accomplish 
 little they may risk all. A conceit illustrating 
 it came into my head this morning, and curled 
 into rhyme insensibly : 
 
 'Twas of an Irishman crossing a field, 
 
 With a scythe swung over his shoulder : 
 Espying a snake in the grass concealed, 
 
 And finding not near him a bowlder, 
 Or stick, or weapon of any kind, 
 
 Determined with snath to kill : 
 Forgetting the blade his neck was behind, 
 
 The blow he aimed with skill : 
 
24: HALF TINTS. 
 
 The snake at once was killed quite dead, 
 But the blade cut off the Irishman's head. 
 
 [You never rhyme ? Sorry for it. I thought 
 every man fit to live had a twist of the sort in 
 him.] 
 
 Job's experience is suggestive. Having 
 been unfortunate in the treatment he received 
 at one of the great hotels, he resolved, upon re- 
 turning to town, to try another, varying his man- 
 ner, and summoning all his resources to make 
 his presence impressive and commanding. In 
 the most leisurely way he stepped out of the 
 carriage, into the office, and up to the counter, 
 and registered his name. The elegant clerk, 
 taking the pen from his hand in a graceful 
 way, was about to assign him to 1001 or 1007, 
 or some other interior room under the eaves, 
 looking out upon a court into which a ray of 
 clean sunshine had never entered, when he 
 suggested in an indifferent way that if the 
 
 Governor and General called, he wished 
 
 them shown to his room. A scarcely percepti- 
 ble tremor was observed in the obliging gentle- 
 
COME. 25 
 
 man's fingers, and instead of the four unwritten 
 skyward figures was placed opposite his name 
 a single numeral, assigning a large and richly- 
 furnished apartment on the first floor, near the 
 grand parlor, and looking out upon the green 
 and shaded and yet dewy square. It was a 
 morning in midsummer, and the view was de- 
 lightful ; not telescopic and grand as yours 
 over your fat valley, but, to a bachelor, who 
 has always lived in cities, inspiring. He was 
 shown up by the sagacious clerk in person, 
 who, in a flattering but humble way, opened 
 the windows, pushed back the lace curtains, 
 and let in the fresh and fragrant air in a flood. 
 Three brimming pitchers of ice-water came 
 one after another unasked, and Job declares 
 that a king on his throne never reposed in 
 greater magnificence of feeling. 
 
 And, by the way, he always adds, after 
 relating the circumstance, that later in the 
 morning he went into the barber's room of 
 the hotel to have the dust, gathered on the 
 
 road from the sea, brushed out of his whiskers, 
 2 
 
26 HALF TINTS. 
 
 and found the tonsorial professor at an open 
 window, in an easy-chair, engaged with the 
 summer number of the !Nbrth American. He 
 rose not with the precipitation usual under 
 such circumstances with gentlemen of that pro- 
 fession, but with the ease of opulence and the 
 serenity of a senator. Expressing a wish to 
 have his boots polished, another gentleman, as 
 illustrative of self-respect as the hair-dresser, 
 stepped from a side-room, and protecting him- 
 self with a clean toga of linen, went to work 
 at the leather with as much apparent pride 
 and dignity as a \jhief justice arranging his 
 dicta. While Job's extremities were most ar- 
 tistically being rubbed up, the clerk at the 
 office who received him, and the man who 
 supplied one of the pitchers of ice-water, came 
 in, off duty, both of them, and the four en- 
 gaged in a critical discussion of an article in 
 the quarterly referred to, by Lowell or Emer- 
 son, he forgets which. He learned afterward, 
 with pride, that three of them were graduates 
 of universities. 
 
COME. 27 
 
 The great establishment is nearly as won- 
 derful and noiseless as the machine it is named 
 for. So nice an attention is given to details, 
 and so wise a general providence extends over 
 the whole, that it would seem an invisible 
 grain of dust in a gudgeon of the coffee- 
 grinder in the lower cellar story would occa- 
 sion universal disorder. So perfect the man- 
 agement that every wheel and pen and em- 
 ploye seems inevitably and fatally absorbed 
 with a particular duty, and indifferent to the 
 work of every other. Of course there are 
 exceptional occasions of misfortune, as for in- 
 stance sometimes on a stormy Sunday in mid- 
 winter, when the guests are all at home and 
 weather-bound, a disaster will happen to the 
 heating-apparatus, emptying the public rooms 
 of the house, and filling the grates in all the 
 chambers, as a frost will sometimes occur in 
 June, huddling the poultry in the barn, and 
 cutting off relentlessly the early .cucumbers. 
 
 I am too lazy to write, and I wish above 
 all things you were here to see for yourself. 
 
28 HALF TINTS. 
 
 Enjoy it you would, I know, ineffably. Your 
 quick and penetrating sense would find ample 
 opportunity for employment. Even as a boy 
 I remember you used to know what things 
 meant and weighed, and that is a faculty not 
 very apt to wear out or dull. Every day I see 
 something I wish I had your old way of look- 
 ing at from a dozen stand-points. You were 
 always wise and broad, I neither nor ever. 
 Your unerring observation and mathematical 
 sense were never so acute or severe as to punc- 
 ture or wound. If your fine brain measured 
 to a hair and weighed to an atom, your human 
 heart floated in the milk of human kindness. 
 If you sometimes uttered in the freest way the 
 most searching and unpalatable truths, they 
 came in tones as rich and pure as the swing- 
 ing oriole's. It is so easy to be mean, and so 
 hard to be generous in our judgments, that no 
 wonder reflection makes us potter about form- 
 ing them. Human nature is so bad, or so good, 
 in a good or a bad place, that one who knows 
 it will hesitate about too fine a sight upon it. 
 
COME. 29 
 
 Alas, says Heine, one ought really to write 
 against no one in this world. We are all of 
 us sick and suffering enough in this great laza- 
 retto. Many a piece of polemical writing 
 reminded him, he says, of a revolting quarrel 
 in a little hospital at Cracow, where he was 
 an accidental spectator, and where it was ter- 
 rible to hear the sick mocking and reviling 
 each other's infirmities, how emaciated con- 
 sumptives ridiculed those who were bloated 
 with dropsy, how one laughed at a cancer in 
 the nose of another, and he again jeered the 
 locked jaws and distorted eyes of his neighbor, 
 until finally those who were mad with fever 
 sprang naked from bed, and tore the coverings 
 and sheets from the maimed bodies around, 
 and there was nothing to be seen but revolting 
 misery and mutilation. 
 
 During the major part ot a year or two 
 my poor wife has been at a water-cure, and 
 some twinges of my old injury from the falling 
 grape-vine (you remember it, you rogue) hav- 
 ing come back to me after an absence of some 
 
30 HALF TINTS. 
 
 years, and inclining to linger, not letting me 
 go out as often as I would, I have had plenty 
 of time, in one great hotel and another, to 
 look through and into them a little. If, in the 
 haste of preparation, the flowing bowl be not 
 suited to your palate, pray set it down to the 
 absence of Mary the Second, the twinges afore- 
 said, or my intimacy with Job. You never 
 use lemon. 
 

 THE UNIVERSE. 
 
III. 
 
 THE UNIVERSE. 
 
 I SHALL not take up your precious time 
 with the mere materialities. Rich and elegant 
 furniture and upholstery are now so common 
 that a word to anybody about them would be 
 carrying coals to Newcastle. The one un- 
 usual and unfashionable thing, perhaps, is the 
 strength of the chairs and sofas. A stout man, 
 like yourself, need give himself no uneasiness 
 about going through. And the beds, Jack, 
 you would appreciate. They tempt apostro- 
 phe. The airy mattresses, enveloped every day 
 in fresh snowy linen, the folds as distinct as 
 lines of latitude and longitude, close round old 
 
 and young bodies alike, snugly and gently as 
 2* 
 
34: HALF TINTS. 
 
 sea-water. They are indeed respecters of per- 
 sons. Soothing their touch as loving nurse, 
 and all-pervading. As beds for bachelors, no 
 suspicion can attach to them, and for men 
 and their wives, no contest can occur for the 
 disputed middle. So level my own, the cham- 
 bermaid is puzzled always to know just when 
 my wife visits me. 
 
 As I said, the apparent general harmony 
 will so strike you, thafc the machine will ap- 
 pear to run of itself. But put an eye through 
 its crystal covering, and you will be as forcibly 
 struck with the consciousness of every part in 
 its relation to every other and the whole. There 
 is such fidelity and responsibility imposed upon 
 every man and woman on the pay-rolls, that 
 the work of each becomes inseparable from the 
 work of every other. The eye single is an 
 eye omniscient. A little signal strikes every 
 ear as the touch of the key in an insignificant 
 office alarms every operator on the line. The 
 young man at the private door, who seems so 
 mechanically to let persons in, keeping his 
 
THE UNIVERSE. 35 
 
 place in a cheap story with his thumb, would 
 astonish you with his knowledge. So all the 
 way through. The system of espionage is 
 only so perfect as not to be seen. Every move- 
 ment of every guest is observed, and every 
 habit analyzed and accounted for. The know- 
 ing man of the world will hardly deliberate a 
 mischief in a hotel. What is not known is 
 assumed, or guessed at, analogically. The sit- 
 uation, doubtful or novel to the adventuring 
 guest himself, is a common one to the observa- 
 tion of the spy, who, groaning with his scuttle 
 of coal, so obsequiously seems to avoid him. 
 The purpose, perhaps hardly conceived by 
 him, has time and again developed in the folly 
 of others. Folly of any sort, especially con- 
 traband, as you descend the scale of men, be- 
 comes more apprehensible. Down very low 
 in the virtues, so low as just to touch the line 
 where the vices begin, the meaner faculties 
 are found acutest. The mind's eye grows con- 
 ical, as a rat's. Gross appetite and passion are 
 known and read of all men ; the brutes that 
 
36 HALF TINTS. 
 
 perish seem even to scent them. Pure prin- 
 ciples and pure motives, in their exaltation, 
 are invisible but in their effects. Into the 
 translucent depths of goodness the bad eye 
 never wanders ; but evil is in every vision, and 
 reflects itself forever. But excuse flashes ; 
 pyrotechnics for boys, refinements for sopho- 
 mores. What goes up must come down. A 
 plain word will say it better. All men are 
 policemen to evil-doers, especially at hotels. 
 Exposure is nearly inevitable. What the 
 chambermaid doesn't know, the fireman can 
 tell her. If the modest lady who arrived with 
 the honest gentleman, by the evening boat, is 
 not his cousin, the fact will be surely known 
 at the office very early in the morning. 
 
 Incident. Scene, ofiice. Time, morning. 
 Judge Finesse, a pure and distinguished cit- 
 izen of one of our beautiful interior cities, has 
 been spending a few days in town on profes- 
 sional business. His stay at the great hotel 
 has been peculiarly pleasant. Run to death 
 at home with hard work, change of situation 
 
THE UNIVERSE. 37 
 
 and associations and food has revived his en- 
 ergies. The night has been refreshingly cool, 
 after a very hot day, and the comfortable cham- 
 ber he has occupied, fronting to the south, has 
 received through its great windows the stim- 
 ulating breezes. Later down than usual, he 
 has hurried his breakfast a little not to miss a 
 business engagement. Passing composedly 
 through the office, the accomplished clerk, 
 with remarkable blandness, addresses him: 
 ' Good-morning, good-morning, Judge. Hope 
 you are well and comfortable. Charming day 
 before us. Ah, by the way, Judge,' grasping 
 his hand with regretful tenderness, and drop- 
 ping his voice to gentle softness, 'how dis- 
 tressing it is to blunder. Never told you your 
 room was promised to an old guest ; time up 
 this morning. Oh, excuse me, Judge; the 
 lady in ~No. , on your floor ; you know her. 
 Her room is not large enough for two by half. 
 Sorry we can't accommodate her ; have to 
 turn people off every day. Charming lady ; 
 carriage ready. Early engagements annoying ; 
 
38 HALF TINTS. 
 
 don't let me detain you. In town again, 
 give us a call ; not always so crowded. Dis- 
 tressing to blunder.' The Judge, a little 
 disconcerted, was about to protest, when the 
 amiable clerk, in a most graceful way, looking 
 straight at the guest the while, crossed his 
 lips significantly with a finger, and, after a 
 moment's pause, bade the abused good man a 
 final good morning. A line from "Watts ran 
 riot through the Judge's head as he rode down 
 the street: Dangers stand thick through all 
 the ground : and the same evening, at the 
 sea-side, he was heard to express new views 
 on the doctrine of special providences. 
 
 Hotels used to be devoted to the accom- 
 modation of travellers and temporary guests. 
 The best rooms were reserved for them, and 
 pains taken to please them. ~Now it is other- 
 wise. They are mainly filled by people who 
 live in them, and who possess their best com- 
 forts. For the good treatment of persons who 
 are only in the house for a few days, the man- 
 agers take little or no special care. Unless 
 
THE UNIVERSE. 39 
 
 the temporary guest be a lion, whose enter- 
 tainment would advertise the establishment, 
 or a spendthrift, to swell the extras, he is of 
 too little consideration for personal attention. 
 By the aid of devices, he may avoid a loft 
 lodging or a bed in the court ; but the best 
 accommodations can scarcely be had for affec- 
 tion, favoritism, or money. As before said, 
 the best comforts are permanently possessed, 
 and for residents the great establishment is 
 conducted. The treatment others receive is 
 secondary and incidental. Especially the sys- 
 tem of fees gives the former every advantage. 
 Fees in top figures for ostensible charges, and 
 fees for every thing, descending through all 
 the gradations of service. Fees to the porter, 
 who fees the proprietor for his license; fees 
 to the boy who takes your umbrella and duster 
 in the check-room, who pays a rental ; fees 
 to the chambermaid, who modestly, and not 
 at all suggestingly, tells you how mean are 
 her wages, the housekeeper dividing the profits 
 of her appealing eloquence ; fees to the fire- 
 
4:0 HALF TINTS. 
 
 man, which go to the aforesaid porter ; fees to 
 the table-waiter, who came all the way from 
 Ireland, who wasn't in the July riots, who 
 never repeated a word he overheard at the 
 table, who has a wife and seven children, one 
 of them very small, please your honor, who 
 gets all the best cuts, and never serves cold 
 dishes, who always knows a gentleman by his 
 kindness to servants, who would be stupid if 
 he gave all you give him to his superior, who 
 pays the big bonus for his office monthly ; fees 
 for soap and water in the wash-room ; fees to 
 the self-sacrificing genius who presides over 
 the dressing-room, whose occupation is so un- 
 wholesome ; fees to the young man at the 
 door of the dining-room, who tells you he is 
 a detective, who has saved many a hat and 
 coat to gentlemen who never gave him a shil- 
 ling, but who has since watched the same hats 
 and coats just the same as if each had given 
 him a guinea ; fees to the boy in the reading- 
 room, who never files the St. Louis papers till 
 he sees the generous St. Louisan come in, who 
 
THE UNIVERSE. 4 
 
 always gets the virgin reading ; fees, in short, 
 for every thing, regular and extra, necessary 
 and luxury, from office down to boot-room, 
 from a bottle of Widow Cliquot to a sheet of 
 indispensable paper. The habitue, who knows 
 all the springs, and which to touch, most effec- 
 tually to get the best things and the best ser- 
 vice, and who is willing and able to pay for 
 them, will alwavs of course command them. 
 
 / 
 
 He stands in the position of regular customer 
 to the patronized, and will get good attention 
 when the few days' guest will be nearly neg- 
 lected. The latter will soon be out of the 
 hous& and gone forever. The other will re- 
 main to give while his money or wind holds 
 out. So, neqessarily, the habitues pitch the 
 tone and make the atmosphere of the place ; 
 and with outline sketches of some of these it is 
 my purpose to amuse you a little. To the 
 many who are here from time to time, as at a 
 railway station, because they must be, and are 
 absorbed with matters to them greater than 
 meat and drink and glitter lor a day or two, 
 
42 HALF TINTS. 
 
 what is here said may be as appropriate and 
 interesting as to you. 
 
 [You want a nap ? Very well. Put aside 
 your pipe. Poise yourself in your easy-chair. 
 Oh, the value of a good conscience. Never 
 mind the falling manuscript. You can pick 
 it up when you wake. I go out to ride with 
 the proprietor. Livery-men are so kind, hotel- 
 keepers need not keep carriages. Strange they 
 are so liberal, considering the trouble they are 
 put to by orders. Orders, orders, orders. In 
 a single day a score of orders for plain car- 
 riages for shopping in the morning ; a score 
 for open barouches in the afternoon ; a score 
 for close coupes in the evening ; all from the 
 one hotel whose proprietor and book-keepers 
 and clerks are dead-heads. And the high 
 prices for feed. The good-natured stable-man. 
 He never tells his wrongs. Found never help 
 who never would his wounds impart, Spenser 
 says.] 
 
IV. 
 
 LITTLE ONES. 
 
IT. 
 
 LITTLE ONES. 
 
 shall I waste your time by more than 
 alluding to the many boys and girls just com- 
 ing to manhood and womanhood. Yealy and 
 irresponsible, they are here without their op- 
 tion. Thoughtless or thoughtful parents have 
 brought them here and pay the scores. They 
 are innocent and beautiful. Youth is always 
 beautiful. You might sigh for them ; but you 
 forget who sighed for you. We all must see 
 the folly of it. 
 
 Scene. Breakfast-room. Two fragrant 
 youths have just sat down. One of them, 
 the more pretentious, drawls wearily : ' Fash- 
 ionable life laboweous. Will Lent never come ? 
 
46 HALF TINTS. 
 
 Monday night a german at Mrs. Brown's, 
 Tuesday night a german at Mrs. Smith's, last 
 night a german at Mrs. Obscew's. Lattah 
 vewy laboweous. Only eight couples ; twelve 
 the happy numbaw.' Omelet discussed. Prac- 
 tising on the servant, the young man grows 
 sprightly and patronizing. ( Gawge,' he 
 drawls again, less wearily ; i do you know 
 Miss Peachblow? I saw her on the avenue 
 as I came in. Rawther pooty at times.'- i 
 
 Scene, an hour later. Music-room. Three 
 pretty young girls, and one not so young nor 
 pretty, with flat curls round her temples, who 
 seems to be matronizmg, announces pleasantly : 
 4 Lecture to-night, girls, I see, by Miss Dick- 
 inson.' ' Indeed,' responds one of the pretty 
 three, 'Miss Wickerson. Want to know. 
 "Wonder if she has a waterfall.' 
 
 You are a human fellow, Jack, and will 
 be astonished when I tell you children do not 
 abound in these places. An honest natural 
 man regards them as the best fruits of mar 
 riage. "Not to have them I know you would 
 
LITTLE ONES. 
 
 consider a calamity. You needn't stop read- 
 ing to count on your fingers your own posses- 
 sions in that line. I know in a general way 
 your severe ideas of duty, and have no doubt 
 of their fullest realization. Your old-fashioned 
 conscientious habits extend no doubt to family 
 matters as to all others. You know by heart 
 that radical old orthodox sermon of poor Yor- 
 ick, which Trim read so divinely to Uncle 
 Toby, Walter Shandy, and Dr. Slop, while 
 Obadiah was gone for the forceps, and* no 
 doubt you -religiously illustrate in all your life 
 its concise summing up : Trust that man in 
 nothing who has not a conscience in every 
 thing. But times have changed, and ortho- 
 doxy is not so muscular, nor ethics so compen- 
 dious. Life is constantly developing new 
 uses. A little while ago the theories of Mal- 
 thus were considered impious or ridiculous. 
 Not so now. Their practicability is so far 
 established as to be somewhat realized. At 
 first blush it would appear anomalous that a 
 hundred or two wives and husbands should 
 
48 HALF TINTS. 
 
 -from year to year eat, drink, and be merry, 
 and bear no ostensible blessings. But the 
 world moves, and progress has defined respon- 
 sibilities. Essentially eclectic and practical, 
 society has seized and adopted the best rules 
 of all the sciences. Political economy has 
 been ransacked, and its best truths appropri- 
 ated. So much to do in this world, and so 
 little time to do it in, that inevitably there ^ 
 must be a division of labor. Classes for every * 
 thing, and individuals for every class. Many 
 cooks are sure to spoil the broth. To do any 
 one thing well it must absorb the life. Your 
 stupid Torkshireman, imported with your love- 
 ly Durhams, feeds and curries and combs with 
 a zeal and energy that your scholarly boy Ben- 
 jamin carries into his search for Latin and 
 Hebrew roots. Nothing, you must know, is so 
 absorbing as fashionable life. Balls and calls 
 and parties and operas and shopping leave 
 little time for any thing else. Nothing you 
 can imagine could be so embarrassing to a life 
 of gayety as children. If by any mischance 
 
LITTLE ONES. 49 
 
 or miscalculation such an incumbrance accrues, 
 the interest in the most brilliant and enchant- 
 ing festivities can be only qualified and alloyed. 
 Nurses, most trustworthy, fortunately, can be 
 obtained ; but the mother, notwithstanding, 
 cannot withdraw her mind wholly from her 
 offspring. The success of her friend's magnifi- 
 cent entertainment would be disparaged in pro- 
 portion to her uneasiness and anxiety. Besides, 
 the dress-maker's patterns are not adapted to 
 such exceptions. The rules of tape and scissors 
 are remorseless. Artistic proportions must be 
 preserved. (Just here you will recall Sydney 
 Smith's alliteration of diameter and derision.) 
 Stays and devices do much, but cannot do 
 every thing. The form, paradoxically, must be 
 fitted to the mould. Out of fashion out of the 
 world. And delays would be dangerous. Out 
 of sight out of mind. The lists of friends 
 would be revised, and a chance would occur 
 of being left off. So, Jack, you see how it is. 
 Look closely into the proprieties and the ab- 
 surdity will not be more apparent than the 
 
 8 
 
50 HALF TINTS. 
 
 necessity. Imagine a mother living on such 
 sweets and spices as fashion furnishes. Her 
 thin blood would be as distasteful to the hun- 
 gry cherub as its persistent grasping at the 
 diamond ear-bobs would be annoying. No, 
 no. The tastes and requirements of gayety 
 and maternity are incongruous. Life to be 
 effective must be kept simple. Fashion is ex- 
 acting, and will not let her votaries divide or 
 suspend their worship. ' Babies,' she says, 
 oracularly, 'are vulgar. They are trouble- 
 some, and spoil the shape. My dears, do bet- 
 ter with your lives. Keep your charms, and 
 display them not at home. Encourage the 
 beautiful; the useful encourages itself. Adorn 
 and glitter. Tempt flatteries and live on them. 
 Sleep till you cease to dream ; dance till you 
 die.' And they dare not question nor demur. 
 The sweet boy, who nearly cost his mother's 
 life, must be put away. Her life is too pre- 
 cious to be given to him for whom it was saved. 
 Once a day or once a week is as often as she 
 can see him. She must not stop in the dance 
 
LITTLE ONES. 51 
 
 to think if he is well and warm and sleeping. 
 Resign him she must to the purchased mercy 
 of the stranger-woman, and risk her future 
 and his forever. 
 
 [Dear lunatic Lamb. You remember his 
 famous toast, after having been plagued all 
 the morning by noisy children : To the mem- 
 ory of the much-abused and much-calumniated 
 good King Herod.] 
 
 But poodles, let me say, are admissible. 
 They are thought to possess the requisite 
 merits without any of the drawbacks. Some 
 employment must be had for the affections, 
 which the dear things appreciate as much as 
 infants, without being so exacting. Down out 
 of the realm of bewildering pleasure, 'tis sweet 
 to hear the poodle's honest welcome. Re- 
 leased from the intoxicating atmosphere of 
 music and beauty and perfumes, .'tis refresh- 
 ing to unlock the sources of feeling, and let 
 the tender emotions unrestrainedly gather 
 about an object worthy of them. Such de- 
 lightful dalliance composes the thoughts and 
 
52 HALF TINTS. 
 
 cushions the nerves. The most desperate can- 
 not always dance. The best-ribbed body will 
 not always bear the stays. The eye must 
 weary with the dazzling diamonds. The most 
 flexible face must relax or the empty smile 
 would fasten. The lambent tongue must some- 
 times lay its length in stillness. The ear would 
 sicken with perpetual flattery. The brain would 
 soften without the sweet pillow. All the dis- 
 traction and dizziness of a fashionable career 
 may be perfectly soothed away by an occa- 
 sional hour of gushing caressing. The heart- 
 rending sobs of poor dear King Charles are 
 kissed away, and he forgets his desolation in 
 the lonely chamber. He believes all the vows 
 which are made to him in these hours of par- 
 oxysmal fondness. His voice of murmur dies 
 out, and their hearts go together like the clouds 
 of the morning. (Brainerd testifies that he 
 saw two of them tinged with the rising sun ; 
 that in the dawn they floated on and mingled 
 into one.) 
 
 So doth all nature illustrate itself. The 
 
LITTLE ONES. 53 
 
 angels, for relaxation, are said to leave their 
 blissful abodes to whisper their heavenly trifles 
 into the ears of sleeping and smiling innocence 
 on earth. Byron is described by his fellow- 
 poet as standing on the Alps and on the Ap- 
 penines, and with the thunder talking as friend 
 to friend, and in sportive twist weaving a gar- 
 land of the lightning's fiery wing ; as laying 
 his hand upon the ocean's mane, and playing 
 familiar with his hoary locks ; and then turn- 
 ing and with the grasshopper, who sang his 
 evening song, conversing. 
 
 At home the brilliant Seraphina can have 
 her dear King Charles always with her. The 
 rules do not exclude him from the eating-rooms 
 as they do the babies. A chair is drawn out 
 for him, and the bill of fare is searched for 
 bits suitably delicious for his palate. Great 
 care is taken with his diet, as do all that they 
 can they cannot make him drink Kissingen 
 or Yichy. His breath must be sweet and fra- 
 grant to be fit to mix with his loving Sera- 
 phina's. White meat, breast of the chicken, is 
 
54: HALF TINTS. 
 
 found best suited, in all climates and latitudes, 
 to the stomach of the delicate animal ; with 
 sweet cream, of course, for dessert. 
 
 Incident. Time, midnight. The Universe 
 announced to be on fire. All the perfect appa- 
 ratus in the house and out of it soon operating. 
 In the midst of the excitement and terror, com- 
 ing down the stairway, is seen the affectionate 
 Seraphina, with her poor helpless King Charles 
 'pon her bosom. A little later comes the 
 nurse with the baby ; an obscurity and almost 
 a secret till that dreadful midnight. The fruit, 
 of course, of honest wedlock, but tabooed. 
 
V. 
 
 TABLE D'HOTE. 
 
 ^Y- 
 
 I - 
 
 is - , f 
 
 
Y. 
 
 TABLE D'HOTE. 
 
 I SUPPOSE, in your busy life with head and 
 hands, it has never occurred to you that any con- 
 siderable number of persons could be brought 
 together, especially in America, whose regular 
 and earnest occupation would seem to be to 
 eat. The maxim inculcated in our boyhood, 
 eat to live, not live to eat, was accepted as the 
 summary of all table wisdom. In those days 
 the early morning meal was soon dispatched 
 that the serious work of the day might be com- 
 menced. And serious work it was, I often 
 think, for our fathers, single handed and alone, 
 to attack with their axes the unbroken forest, 
 to make for themselves homes and independ- 
 ence. Looking over the now smiling and fruit- 
 
 3* 
 
58 HALF TINTS. 
 
 ful fields and orchards and vineyards, the toil 
 and heroism which produced them seem in- 
 credible. Indeed, incredible it all seems to 
 me now ; for, accustomed to see but the stunted 
 shrubs which struggle up through the granite 
 streets, it is impossible to realize the grandeur 
 of the old trees, with their great roots and 
 branches interlocked in the black soil and blue 
 sky. I remember, lying on our backs, how 
 the trooping clouds seemed just to brush their 
 tops. A squirrel up there defied the rifle. 
 And the majestic oak we used reverently to 
 guess the age and height of, joining hands 
 with Mary and Eliza and taking the old fel- 
 low in our arms. His tremendous fall during 
 the memorable storm seemed for a moment to 
 still even the thunder. Such an old monarch 
 must have supplied the sublime image of Read 
 in his poem on the death of Webster : 
 
 The great are falling from us, one by one, 
 As fall the patriarchs of the forest trees ; 
 
 The winds shall seek them vainly, and4he sun 
 Shine on each vacant space for centuries. 
 
TABLE D'HOTE. 59 
 
 In those heroic days, plain food, in suffi- 
 cient quantity, was all that was required. The 
 appetite was kept whetted by labor, and di- 
 gestion was as easy and unconscious as respira- 
 tion. Sandwiches of corn-bread and bacon, 
 with the fallen tree for a table, untouched and 
 unpolished but by the winds of heaven, and 
 the glittering axe for a platter, brighter than 
 the brightest silver, made a delicious and bril- 
 liant dinner for the pioneer, after six honest 
 hours of woodman's gymnastics. His simple 
 and earnest life was ever a song or a prayer. 
 The present was all thankfulness and the fu- 
 ture all hope. His daily enjoyments, dearly 
 and honestly earned, were twice paid for and 
 blessed in health and sweet conscience by the 
 Master Employer. His title to the acres he 
 opened to the sun was directly from their 
 Creator ; and the bread they brought him was 
 the sweat of his own face. His future, in 
 the steady serenity of heroic faith, appeared 
 abounding in only such promises as his fidel- 
 ity and devotion entitled him to realize. His 
 
60 HALF TINTS. 
 
 work and wants were so simple as ever to keep 
 him close to the Giver. There was no middle- 
 man to divide his blessings or qualify his 
 thanksgiving. His health the Helper, and his 
 will the Assurance, his own short arm was 
 long enough to reach the Bountiful and Ever- 
 lasting. 
 
 But here, where reluctant exercise, and lit- 
 tle of that, is substituted for inspiring labor, 
 the appetite is dull and weary, and genius 
 must be called in to assist it. The old maxim 
 being reversed, and one of the essential means 
 of life made to become its one engrossing end, 
 nature, in her simple ways, is superseded, and 
 art, with her endless arts, substituted. Like a 
 lie, once told, forever and everywhere challen- 
 ging the truth to combat it, this violence to 
 nature must entail its consequences. From 
 daylight till midnight the table is always 
 spread, and the ends of the earth and the 
 bottom of the sea are hunted to keep it sup- 
 plied. The cook, once self-taught and ready- 
 made, has become a professor and a philoso- 
 
TABLE D'HOTE. 61 
 
 pher. His libraries exhaust the sciences, and 
 his genius pervades latitudes and elements. 
 The names and constituency of his dishes are 
 set down in encyclopaedias. (Jerrold's Hermit 
 of Bellyful is hardly an exaggeration or cari- 
 cature.) So many and novel his inventions 
 that only the resources of arithmetic and the 
 study of new languages would enable you to 
 count and pronounce them. To France the 
 world is indebted for most of this kitchen wis- 
 dom, as well as for most of the refinements in 
 vice and philosophy, and her language adheres 
 to it as tenaciously as it does to them. If we 
 accept her definitions of morals, and submit to 
 her guidance in matters which reach beyond 
 this life, we ought not to hesitate about adopt- 
 ing the names she has given to her culinary 
 inventions. France, you know, is the stand- 
 ard of civilization, and you run a great risk of 
 being considered vulgar if you do not know 
 her language. The English, in America, is a 
 very common language, and is mostly used 
 by common people and natives. It answers 
 
62 HALF TINTS. 
 
 well enough for ordinary uses, but must be 
 abandoned as advancement is made in social 
 standing. For prosperous people, even, who 
 have yet the scent of labor about them, it may 
 answer ; but when their probation of obeisance 
 and disinfection is ended ; when their new 
 birth of elegance and aristocracy is forgiven, 
 and they are fully admitted into the charmed 
 circle, they are presumed to have forgotten 
 the vulgar vernacular which sold their soap 
 and their poisons, their stocks and their lies, 
 and to have adopted the chosen language of 
 courts and civilization. So be very careful at 
 table to give the French names to the dishes 
 you ask for. The flunkeys and fine ladies and 
 fine gentlemen will not laugh at you, nor for a 
 moment suspect you are a useful man. 
 
 In the eating department, Jack, you will 
 be amused at the ambition which prevails to 
 be late at breakfast. The man who leaves his 
 bed early is suspected of earnest purposes. 
 You will find the best people, whose excel- 
 lence is determined by their having nothing 
 
TABLE D'HOTE. 63 
 
 to do, are late risers. By the time the ma- 
 jority of the world have earned their dinners, 
 the grandees carelessly lounge into the break- 
 fast-room, and the respectable hour of meeting 
 each other is there and thereafter a matter of 
 pride and congratulation. 
 
 But dinner is the event of the day, and the 
 achievement of life. It is anticipated as a 
 fete, dressed for as an entertainment, lingered 
 over as a luxury, and discussed as the thing 
 of life to live for. Eyes beam, diamonds glit- 
 ter, laces flutter, till you would think all the 
 ladies maidens just married, and all the men 
 Apollos and bridegrooms. If their lips speak 
 wisdom it will be of the banquet and its par- 
 takers. The meats and vegetables are so artis- 
 tically ripened that mastication is easy and 
 digestion half accomplished, and ample time 
 and opportunity are given to discuss the guests 
 as well as the dishes. To know just how many 
 ingredients make up the soup, just how long 
 since the halibut was captured, just how many 
 days the beef has lain on the ice, just the time 
 
64 HALF TINTS. 
 
 since the pheasant was winged in your prairie, 
 is not information at all inconsonant with con- 
 jectures as to the genuineness of the diamonds 
 and laces of the lady opposite, as to the gains 
 and losses in stocks of Mr. Breezy, at the other 
 end of the table, as to the probable result of 
 the flirtation between Miss Rosy and the bril- 
 liant Colonel, or as to the chances of the too 
 conscious lady in pink at the left of the gen- 
 tleman with side-whiskers being his bride or 
 his sweetheart, or his wife or another's. 
 
 The stout gentleman in a low waistcoat, 
 mixing his salad so abstractedly and artistically, 
 would be a study for you. His obedient and 
 handy servant is kept busy supplying materials. 
 .The lettuce, by the good diner, is carefully 
 culled and examined, to see that no disgusting 
 bug is hidden away between the suspicious 
 leaves. The eggs are boiled to the happy hard- 
 ness. The caster is exhausted for condiments 
 and appetizers, and still the poor servant is 
 kept busy supplying the artist's wants. All 
 the while the good lord of the stomach is 
 
TABLE D'HOTE. 65 
 
 patient and absorbed and occupied. The sweet 
 napkins are flaked about him and upon him, 
 under his chin, over his knees, on his left, on 
 his right, before his eyes. His calmness is the 
 serenity of an astronomer looking up a new 
 planet. The requisite salt to the infinitesimal 
 of a grain is meted out, the red and black 
 pepper mathematically proportioned, the acid 
 and oil measured to a drop, and the whole is 
 chopped up and sugared till the result in the 
 dish looks so perfectly mixed as if indeed there 
 had once been employed upon it all the chem- 
 istry of nature. 
 
 And the little woman with the blue face 
 and twisted nose and big diamond would inter- 
 est you as much. To see her go through the 
 bill of fare you would think she had just 
 escaped with her life from a respectable board- 
 ing-house. Double portions of every thing, 
 and rapidly disappearing. She is a mystery 
 and a wonder. My poor wife, invalid that 
 she is, with little interest in this fading world, 
 has watched her with absorbing interest, and 
 
66 HALF TINTS. 
 
 finds in her gastronomic enthusiasm and 
 achievements an incentive to live to know the 
 result of her prodigious industry. Go when 
 you will into the spacious saloons devoted to 
 eating, you will always find her. Early and 
 late and all the time at breakfast, sitting 
 through the whole hour devoted to luncheon, 
 at the plebeian's early dinner, at the later state 
 banquet, at tea, silently and insatiably, and at 
 supper at midnight, with raw oysters, cold 
 chicken, a pitcher of milk, and olives, just for 
 a nightcap, as she facetiously and felicitously 
 calls them, at the same time bearing a hungry 
 eye on the smoking stew of a passenger by the 
 midnight train. 
 
 And you would be not less interested in 
 observing the select gentlemen w r ho always 
 occupy the table directly in range of the main 
 entrance. Their leisurely indifference and 
 repose are not less remarkable than their 
 practised habits of .observation. Possibly one 
 of them, with the buttoned coat, younger than 
 the rest, may have blushed sometime within a 
 
TABLE D'HOTE. 67 
 
 decade, as his eye lias an adventuring hesitancy 
 denoting occasional introspection. His look is 
 not quite a stare, and his eye seems of shorter 
 range than the rifled brasses about him. His 
 glances, compared with theirs, have a random 
 unsteadiness, as occasional shots which precede 
 or follow a volley. But he seems ashamed of 
 his little remnant of modesty, and no doubt in 
 time will achieve the envied effrontery. When 
 he forgets that his mother was a woman, and 
 once was married, he will as indecently discuss 
 a bride as any of his accomplished compan- 
 ions. His eye in company with theirs will 
 follow and fasten upon her with an eagerness 
 and a tenacity in proportion to the pain of her 
 embarrassment. And if looks fall short of 
 perfectly torturing the shrinking innocent, his 
 pitiless words will audibly accompany theirs 
 to complete her misery. Poor hesitating con- 
 sciousness ; how it staggers and falls back be- 
 fore this faculty of gossips. They know every 
 poor woman's coat of mail, and strike hardest 
 where she is most unprotected and sensitive. 
 
68 HALF TINTS. 
 
 But heartily they love a shining mark of art- 
 lessness for skilful practice. The veterans of 
 watering-places and public amusements, who 
 have withstood the searching gaze of elegant 
 idlers and roues for untold seasons, they know 
 to be iron-clad and impenetrable. They pre- 
 fer not to dull their daggers upon callousness, 
 but to keep them bright and whetted for such 
 as are yet a little tender. The shrinking gives 
 a relish, and pure blood is fragrant. My wife, 
 Jack, is the most amiable woman in the world, 
 but she will sometimes lose her temper with 
 these philosophers. While they sit as easily as 
 in a restaurant, with their bottles of wine osten- 
 tatiously ranged before them, surveying com- 
 placently the dining-room to find some new 
 object for discussion, her tongue, in spite of 
 her, will sometimes quicken into eloquent in- 
 dignation. If I would naturally smile at their 
 sublime conceit, the energy of my wife's de- 
 nunciation still more excites my admiration; 
 and for this splendid reminder of her old 
 brilliancy, I am quite willing to forgive them. 
 
TABLE D'HOTE. 69 
 
 May they sit while they live, as they have sat 
 since The Universe opened, at the same well- 
 served and conspicuous table, and may they 
 never have wives to blush for their immodesty 
 and uncharitableness. 
 
VI. 
 
 DEAWING-ROOM. 
 
YI. 
 
 DRAWING-ROOM. 
 
 THAT last glass of Burgundy, Jack, went 
 right to the spot, and the cordial and coffee 
 fastened it. The spinal column is stiffened 
 prodigiously, and the twinge has departed. 
 My dear boy, let us be in fashion, and saunter 
 through the halls and lounge in the parlors a 
 while, just to assist the generous dinner. And 
 Job will accompany us. How brilliant every 
 thing is. And the ladies, how radiant and 
 charming. Many of the most beautiful, and 
 all of the most desperate of the guests are to 
 be met with at this hour. Some gay fellows, 
 who live mysteriously, who dress showily, who 
 "know the town and everybody, who talk 
 
 4 
 
74 HALF TUTTS. 
 
 stocks and horses and sonnets and French, who 
 are not guests, but who seem perfectly at 
 home, are to be met with also. Of course, in 
 such a brilliant assemblage, you will find a 
 sprinkling of widows. They seek these gay 
 scenes to forget their sorrows and temper their 
 woes. Your kindly observant eye will detect 
 them by the shadows which linger upon them, 
 and by the touching sadness which restrains 
 their smiles and mellows their voices. "Widow- 
 hood is so interesting that I once told my wife 
 that I could think of but one woman in the 
 world who would not be rendered more attrac- 
 tive by it ; at which remark she smiled so 
 sweetly as to incline me to question even the 
 one exception ; but observing that the little suf- 
 ering darling seemed for the moment endued 
 with new hopes of health and life, I upbraided 
 myself for entertaining the impious shadow of 
 a doubt, and determined repentantly to put it 
 away forever. If they sometimes appear a 
 trifle too gay, it must be accounted for by the 
 general pressure of their afflictions. The human 
 
DKAWINGHROOM. 75 
 
 heart is happily so constituted that every 
 weight will not always keep it down. It 
 has an affinity for zephyrs and sunshine, and 
 will sometimes float up to the rippling surface. 
 The same machinery which crushes out tears 
 of bitterness, distils delicious nectar. You 
 know how Burns puts it : 
 
 Chords which vibrate sweetest pleasure, 
 Thrill the deepest notes of woe. 
 
 It were a wonder if Job, considering his 
 desolate life of celibacy, had not some spice 
 of asceticism ; but no human being ever heard 
 him whisper a disparaging word of the sor- 
 rowing widows. If any one class of men more 
 than another be attracted by them, it is that 
 unfortunate one which has always suffered for 
 the want of that sweet use of the emotions 
 which widowhood mourns. They are mutually 
 attracted and mutually sympathize. They meet 
 upon common ground, and naturally mingle 
 their woes. In the solace of companionship 
 are compounded all losses and alLwants. The 
 
76 TTATVF TINTS. 
 
 saddest memories are dissipated by coveted 
 substitution, and the long-suffering hopes are 
 sublimed in fruition. If the satirical world 
 sometimes laughs at the companionship, the 
 spirits of just men and lost sweethearts rejoice 
 over it. If there be one transcendent cause 
 of ecstasy to departed husbands revisiting these 
 earthly shades of trial and affliction, or one 
 enduring, unexpressed desire of happy wives 
 to make them wish to linger in them, it may 
 be found in the final happiness of mourning 
 consorts and sighing lovers. Goldsmith, of all 
 the poets, is Job's admiration ; but he never 
 praises the Traveller or the Deserted Tillage 
 without a qualifying allusion to an ill-natured 
 passage in the Citizen of the "World. That 
 stain upon the fair fame of the immortal 
 Goldy will too readily occur to you ; and you 
 have no doubt wished a thousand times you 
 could blot it out. A poor widow had, in a 
 moment of paroxysmal grief, declared she 
 would never marry till the earth was dry 
 over her husband's grave. A sober second 
 
DRAWING-ROOM. 77 
 
 thought naturally soon occurring to her, the 
 poet describes her at the fresh mound, with a 
 great fan in each hand, heroically summoning 
 all the breezes to hasten her happiness. 
 
 Some of these unfortunates are reported 
 fabulously rich, which does not seem to dis- 
 courage attentions. Even the mysterious gen- 
 tlemen referred to, who kindly contribute their 
 presence and charms at this hour, seem rather 
 to seek than to avoid them. As a class they 
 unselfishly go about doing good, and humanely 
 take a hand in lifting, wherever found, the 
 superincumbent burdens of humanity. It 
 would warm your heart to see with what dis- 
 interestedness they turn from other and more 
 grateful services to smile away the shadows 
 which linger upon these desolate ones. Them- 
 selves cheerful and happy, and perfectly free 
 from material burdens, they naturally seek to 
 illumine the dark passages of those who are 
 oppressed and despairing. The distresses of 
 widowhood, with the cares of wealth super- 
 added, have the need of the sweet sympathies 
 
HALF TINTS. 
 
 which places of this sort so conveniently sup- 
 ply. Notwithstanding, the sorrowing creatures 
 seem reluctant to yield their tenacious fidelity 
 to cherished memories and investments, since 
 all the efforts of importunate and sympathizing 
 suitors fail to entangle them into new alliances. 
 They linger from year to year in these haunts 
 of pleasure, and hear continually the gushing 
 vows of devotion, and still remain obstinately 
 wedded to their desolation and cares. 
 
 The graceful creature just now acknowl- 
 edging the reluctant compliment of the gen- 
 tleman with eye-glasses, has made for years the 
 tour of the watering-places, and has the same 
 touching serenity of inconsolableness which 
 she displayed so meekly when I saw her at 
 Newport the summer my wife and I made our 
 first visit. She passes yet for twenty-five, so 
 gently has time dealt with her graces of person 
 and character. How many tempting offers of 
 affection and protection she must have declined 
 in that time. Many a noble man, no doubt, 
 has generously proposed to employ all her 
 
DRAWING-KOOM. 79 
 
 wasting wealth of affection and resources. 
 Still she has refused to be comforted and re- 
 lieved. So morbid her emotions have become, 
 that- the temptations of love and assurances of 
 good guardianship cannot seduce her. And 
 so selfish and narrow have her griefs and cares 
 made her, that she cannot see that in declining 
 an offer of love and sacrifice, she has lost an 
 opportunity of making at least one human 
 being happy and independent. 
 
 Yery awkward meetings occur sometimes 
 in these scenes of promiscuous gayety. Job 
 tells of one peculiarly so. Passing through 
 the brilliant throng one evening, he felt a gen- 
 tle touch on the arm, and turning round, dis- 
 covered his attention was arrested by one of 
 the most beautiful and attractive of the guests, 
 for some years a wife, who begged softly to 
 know if he knew the gentleman who was just 
 taking leave of his friend a few yards off. 
 Answering that he did not, the faithful spouse 
 was kind enough to tell him why she had 
 asked. She said, with a smile of satisfaction 
 
80 HALF TINTS. 
 
 which she seemed unwilling to suppress, that 
 she had met the gentleman two or three times 
 in the street, and that his eyes had followed 
 her round the corner in a way to denote a 
 question whether his feet might not follow her 
 also. The humor of the thing was her excuse 
 for troubling him with the inquiry and the 
 reason for making it. Her being misunder- 
 stood was such an amusing achievement that 
 she would like to know the sagacious fellow, 
 that was all. 
 
 The contrasts everywhere apparent would 
 interest you. Extremes jostle each other per- 
 petually. An honest young couple, just mar- 
 ried, engrossed with themselves and the sweet 
 relation they have just entered, will be di- 
 rectly followed in the promenade by a man 
 and a woman, who, if they have known mar- 
 riage, have only known it to degrade and dis- 
 grace it. The manly clean-minded bridegroom 
 and the maidenly angelic bride are a study 
 and a joke to those who have survived if they 
 ever felt the consummate bliss of love and 
 
DRAWING-ROOM. 81 
 
 purity united. The hymeneal hopes and long- 
 ings of the ardent and trusting couple are one 
 by one guessed up and gibed at as perishing 
 materialities. The nuptial enjoyments, so 
 sacred to delicacy and darkness that a taper 
 even would not shine upon them, are invaded 
 and glared upon by these satyrs. The dreams 
 which vault over to-day and its trivialities 
 into to-morrow of benedictions and grandeur, 
 are exhausted of the spirit of poesy and 
 prayer, and dwarfed to the measure of disap- 
 pointment and infidelity. The sanctified pas- 
 sion which so confidingly and trustingly links 
 them together, and so perfectly attunes their 
 aspirations and raptures, is disgustingly per- 
 verted, and made to bear the sins of men and 
 of animals. The glitter and array which to 
 the tender lovers seem an atmosphere of sub- 
 limation, have but sharpened the human sense 
 of the scoffing realists to anatomic accuracy. 
 The glowing mountains of promise, wrapped in 
 rainbows and reaching to heaven are speculated 
 upon as the delusive mirage of inspiring lust. 
 
 4* 
 
82 HALF TINTS. 
 
 But there. How beautiful that other 
 contrast. Admire it as you would a rain- 
 bow, with the glow which a hearty kinship 
 with all the world kindles. Those two lovely 
 girls floating by. Each perfectly beautiful, 
 and perfectly contrasting. Noiseless as spring 
 sunshine, and as inspiring. They fill the 
 eye and the mind's eye, and you only gaze. 
 You are as much lost in the vision as poet 
 in his dream or saint in his prayer. A per- 
 fect blonde and a perfect brunette, distinct, 
 together, and blending. Haven hair and 
 golden, rippling at random and flowing to- 
 gether. Blue eyes and black, as you look at 
 them, alternating, and confusing your fancies, 
 like the changing hues of a sunset. They 
 fascinate and subdue you, whatever your own 
 eyes or nature. Complexions, nut-brown and 
 alabaster, warm and roseate with innocency 
 and ripeness. Figures so perfectly matched 
 in size, style, and movement, as to appear 
 inseparable. Both of them adorned in har- 
 mony with nature. Colors and fabrics not less 
 
DKAWINGKROOM. 83 
 
 adapted to unity than to contrast. What 
 nature and art needed to make each of them 
 perfect is gained by putting them together. 
 If any thing so beautiful under the sun, cer- 
 tainly nothing so ravishing under the gas-light. 
 Blessed accidents which bring them together 
 so often at this hour. Happy miracles which 
 set them down so often upon the public prom- 
 enade together. 
 
 ISTot much less beautiful the good woman 
 of threescore who is now talking with them. 
 Her complexion is as clear and her face almost 
 as sunny as theirs. That glistening silver lock 
 must but a moment since have turned gray 
 while she unconsciously twisted it. Her voice 
 and smile and eyes do not answer to so much 
 of life and vicissitude. The three sympathize 
 and mingle without shock or discordance. 
 
 Now let us especially observe the group of 
 middle-aged women comfortably and compos- 
 edly seated in the left-hand corner. They are 
 as complacent as if no trouble ever came to 
 any one in this world, and as assured as if all 
 
84: HALF TINTS. 
 
 the world must come to them for counsel. 
 They are perfect types of their class. They 
 have lived so long in public places, and so 
 long devoted themselves to externals, that they 
 have ceased to be attentive to their own 
 thoughts and lives. Living wholly by their 
 senses, the power of reflection is lost by dis- 
 use. Their instinctive habit of scenting the 
 motives of others has left them no time to 
 consider their own. Always in a crowd and 
 always exposed, they have grown sharp as the 
 younger "Weller in the school of London streets. 
 Accustomed to colors in all their tints and 
 combinations, they criticise even the summer 
 clouds. "Without domestic occupations and 
 cares, their only resource is to watch the vary- 
 ing surface of life about them. Good natural 
 eyes often seem able to turn round corners, 
 but theirs make the circuit of square ones 
 unerringly and without difficulty. The slight- 
 est suggestion will let loose their whole pack 
 of senses in pursuit. To them every act has 
 its correspondent, as the freaks of the winds 
 
DRAWING-ROOM. 85 
 
 tell themselves in the roar of the chimney. 
 The only use of life which their careless lives 
 of idleness have permitted them to know is 
 amusement. A life of usefulness, if they could 
 apprehend it, would appear to them a paradox. 
 A life of consecration to duties so serious and 
 absorbing as to employ every energy and emo- 
 tion, and leave no time for such trifling as they 
 live for, would seem a dreamer's fiction. The 
 illustrious Howard, who visited Rome ' under 
 such a despotic consciousness of duty as to re- 
 fuse himself time for surveying the magnifi- 
 cence of its ruins,' must be to them as much a 
 myth as Jupiter. 
 
 Only occasionally are found in combination 
 the qualities and faculties suited to this kind 
 of life. The majority of women would be as 
 unhappy in it as in a toy-factory. To them it 
 would be empty and wearisome, as they could 
 find no employment for their better virtues. 
 The polished surfaces dazzle the eye but do 
 not warm the heart. If they do not weary 
 they fascinate, and fascination never brought 
 
86 HALF TINTS. 
 
 a tear. Its expression is the glitter of an icy 
 summit. An analysis of a character satisfied 
 and delighted with such a life would be inter- 
 esting and instructive. The faculties and ac- 
 quirements which express themselves in perfect 
 taste are all there, but the fine sensibilities and 
 affections which are perpetually reaching, as 
 the tentacles of the coral, and yearning to 
 apprehend or convert the wasting or per- 
 verted attributes of human nature, would be 
 found wanting. The flower which is most 
 effective for adornment is of another soil and 
 culture than that which discovers itself by its 
 fragrance. 
 
 The group is just now excited unusually. 
 A rare scene for its eyes and tongue is before 
 it. You might see these women often with- 
 out observing so much interest in their faces. 
 Their ordinary expression is indifference. Gam- 
 blers and the bad of their own sex only have 
 it more uniformly and perfectly. But their 
 studied lineaments seem now to forget their 
 training. The paroxysm has exposed new lines 
 
DRAWING-KOOM. 87 
 
 and wrinkles, as a thaw makes visible every 
 treacherous crack in the frozen surface. They 
 are discussing a mother and daughter from the 
 interior of the State, on their way to the front 
 to nurse a brave son and brother, wounded in 
 one of the bloody battles of the ^Rebellion. 
 The stricken ones are attired in such plain 
 garments as their home supplied, but which 
 so outrage the laws of harmony in colors, as 
 to make them a spectacle to these artists. The 
 countrywomen, as they are called, are scanned 
 from head to foot, and every article of dress is 
 the subject of a brilliant joke. The observers 
 imagine the Paris milliners laughing them- 
 selves sick at such funny bonnets. They re- 
 member to have seen just such shoes when 
 they were children, said to have been worn by 
 their grandmothers. The tucks set them won- 
 dering how many persons may have worn the 
 queer old-fashioned dresses, and to how many 
 more, painstaking housewifery may yet adapt 
 them before they reach the rag-bag. And 
 their waists are natural, suggesting an utter 
 
88 HALF TINTS, 
 
 ignorance of all the ingenious machinery of 
 the shops. They wonder what ' such people ' 
 can find to do, without the labor and anxiety 
 of dressing. Ah, little do they dream of 
 those earnest lives. The moments till the 
 boat starts are counted by throbs. Thoughts 
 of the wounded soldier make a tumult in 
 their hearts. The mother has carried him in 
 her bosom through the vicissitudes of half her 
 life, and would not let him go till the Repub- 
 lic called for him. Tenderly as her affections 
 gather about him, he is no longer hers, but 
 the country's. The loss to both she feels in 
 his probable death. Her life has been so use- 
 ful and devoted as to attach her to every 
 neighbor and every citizen, and has made her 
 unconsciously a hearty patriot. If her eyes 
 could see the impertinence she excites, she 
 would pity it. Blank as her gaze appears to 
 them, it is fixed upon the mangled body under 
 the bloody sheet in the busy hospital. If her 
 mind could dwell a moment upon the empty 
 splendor about her, she would blush at her 
 
DEAWING-ROOM. 89 
 
 weakness and infidelity. Her hands are un- 
 used to rest in idleness, and feel to her as 
 awkward as they look to the serene idlers. 
 "Will her boy survive to see the Republic tri- 
 umphant ? "Will the cause demand her other 
 boy also as a sacrifice ? Thy will, God of 
 Justice, be done. 
 
vn. 
 
 GENTLEMEN'S PARLOR 
 
yn. 
 
 GENTLEMEN'S PARLOB. 
 
 THE gentlemen's parlor after dinner is 
 sometimes interesting. I see it is attractive 
 now. Take an easy-chair, Jack, and give it 
 an hour. And let me suggest that you keep 
 command of your face. To enjoy it you must 
 take the tone of gravity which prevails. And 
 summon all your good-nature, for the pleasure 
 of the scene will half be lost if viewed severely. 
 It will sufficiently satirize itself without assist- 
 ance. 
 
 The club of self-admirers and self-exalters 
 is in session. It would be hard to find a half- 
 dozen more comfortable-looking gentlemen. A 
 majority, of course, are bachelors. So much 
 
94 HALF TINTS. 
 
 sleekness and complacency and gravity in the 
 same number of married men would be unac- 
 countable. Too many drafts are made upon 
 the head of a family to permit his character 
 to grow crotchety or chronic. The bachelor, 
 by always having his own way, soon forgets 
 that there is any other stand-point than his 
 own. His habits of thought and life insensi- 
 bly enwrap him like a cocoon, and in time 
 they become so essentially himself as to be the 
 abode of his brain and sensibility. They fit 
 so snugly and adhere so pertinaciously as to 
 give a general expression of tightness to his 
 character. There is nothing to man more 
 natural than selfishness. It is inevitable if 
 possible. If you, Jack, had not married at 
 twenty, and become a grandfather at forty, 
 you could never have become the man you 
 are ; especially if a combination of happy or 
 accidental circumstances had made you rich. 
 Instead of looking on as you now do with 
 strange interest at these gentlemen, you would 
 at this moment be in the same placid and 
 
95 
 
 solitary possession of a little universe of your 
 own, with all your faculties and feelings so 
 completely tethered by your little interests 
 and comforts, as to make you also think your- 
 self indispensable to the world. My acquaint- 
 ance with Job has enabled me to observe the 
 gradual growth of so peculiar a character. 
 My wife likes him, notwithstanding his ways, 
 and he likes her . (not unwisely nor too well), 
 which may partly explain her attachment. 
 "With all his crotchets, he has a certain 
 thoughtful consideration for others, which I 
 have observed is a distinguishing trait of per- 
 sons of his class, till they grow old. Until 
 they are so old as to be rigid, they seem to 
 be conscious that, to have their own exactions 
 respected, they must yield correspondingly to 
 the demands of others. This may be only the 
 shrewdness of selfishness, but to women espe- 
 cially it is agreeable. I observe that exactly 
 in proportion as Job insists upon the acknowl- 
 edgment of his own peculiar notions, he yields 
 a respectful assent to those he is indiiferent 
 
96 HALF TINTS. 
 
 about. He lias not yet attained that sover- 
 eignty of self-sufficiency which requires un- 
 qualified obeisance. When that is achieved 
 he will have advanced beyond the understand- 
 ing and indulgence of any but his own class, 
 and will naturally surrender himself to it. 
 That extremity you see illustrated now. It 
 shows itself in a spirit of accommodation and 
 tolerance which only themselves could acquire 
 or practise. Observing their forbearance and 
 politeness and kindness to each other, you 
 would hardly suspect they could take each 
 other in pieces, whim after whim, vanity after 
 vanity, as a mechanician would his machine. 
 But they know that the houses they live in 
 are so vitreous that the bare thought of a stone 
 terrifies them. Each poor conscious quivering 
 bundle is so sensitive to exposure or hand- 
 ling as to trust itself only to assortment for 
 security. 
 
 Rich and prosperous, and by virtue of cir- 
 cumstances controlling those about them, they 
 very naturally feel uneasy that they are not 
 
GENTLEMEN'S PARLOR. 97 
 
 acknowledged omnipotent. That feeling as 
 naturally leads them to disparage what they 
 cannot control. They are annoyed to find 
 that, much as wealth and prosperity have 
 brought them, there is yet much more which 
 is not purchasable. Nothing, for instance, sur- 
 prises or plagues them more than a manly 
 utterance, which goes crashing its way through 
 their weak cobwebs of fears and conceits, by a 
 man they never heard of as successful. 
 
 Their themes of conversation are suggested 
 mainly by their prosperity and fears. Their 
 oracular manner of disposing of all vexed ques- 
 tions would amuse you. Infatuated with their 
 gains and successes, they are unfitted to judge 
 for the millions who are struggling for per- 
 sonal liberty and independence. It would be 
 extraordinary, situated as they are, if any 
 one of them should * entertain sentiments of 
 generous breadth and humanity. The people 
 they speak of as an unthinking mob, and are 
 always ready with an argument in favor of 
 limited suffrage. They think of the poor man 
 
 5 
 
98 HALF TINTS. 
 
 as a drudge or a ruffian, fit only for menial 
 service or revolution. Hugging so tightly 
 their accumulations, and so systematically 
 hoarding to swell them, they naturally think 
 their own attainment supremely the ambition 
 of all, and morbidly reason themselves inse- 
 cure in the possession of that which ninety- 
 nine hundredths must desperately covet. Caste, 
 therefore, in social and civil life, is associated 
 with locks, in their shallow philosophy of pro- 
 tection. The man whom Souvestre describes 
 as having a taste for poverty, is as much be- 
 yond their comprehension as an archangel. 
 They think that tax-payers take care of most 
 of those who are not. Of the infinite help 
 the poor are to each other they never dream. 
 They exaggerate the immunities of wealth, 
 and grumble at the ballot because it will not 
 vote them titles and arm them with special 
 privileges. Every man in the public service, 
 or who seeks to be, is characterized as a cor- 
 rupt politician. Every one of them, they 
 think, has his price, and the multitude will 
 
99 
 
 not favor such as are not to be bought. The 
 always hopeful and anxiously struggling masses 
 they speak of as ' these people.' One of these 
 very comfortable half-dozen, made wealthy by 
 the growth of a thrifty and industrious popula- 
 tion about him, putting fabulous prices upon 
 the vacant land left him by his grandfather, 
 riding one bright afternoon in the public park 
 behind his splendid bays and servant in livery, 
 was heard to say felicitously, with a grand 
 wave of his gloved hand, as he passed the 
 happy crowd on foot, gathered on the green 
 listening to the music : c How commendable, 
 that the generous wealth of this opulent city 
 has provided so delightful a place for all these 
 people.' c Such people,' he is nearly of be- 
 lief, are of another genus than himself, which 
 the excuse of a shadow or two in complexion 
 would establish. That such people are per- 
 mitted to vote, is a sufficient reason why 
 persons of his class should not attend the 
 polls. Not voting relieves them of all respon- 
 sibility for bad government, and gives them a 
 
100 HALF TINTS. 
 
 sweeping license to complain. In their opin- 
 ion, it is rather vulgar to vote, as those who 
 do the voting are mainly vulgar. They prefer 
 to keep themselves clean by avoiding such 
 associations. If they do not exert themselves 
 to elevate the people, they hold themselves 
 not accountable for their degradation. The 
 reply of the idle philosopher, that every one 
 ought to give account of his actions, but not 
 of his leisure, is their theory of responsibility. 
 To hear them talk, you would discover that 
 their idea of the best civilization is a perfect 
 and unchangeable classification of society. 
 They have all of them been < abroad,' and 
 express themselves delighted with the settled 
 condition of every thing. They have con- 
 cluded that society is happier if in every way 
 limits are defined for it. Opening the future 
 to every man, and giving him a fair chance, 
 is, in their opinion, the cause of all the disorder 
 and discontent in free America. The fact 
 that every man is a possible law-maker and 
 executive, is in their apprehension only a 
 
101 
 
 premium upon tumult and anarchy. J In 'the 
 same sense they regard univei's^l/e^ipa^rf.^J 
 a disturbing influence, and find many reasons 
 for believing the system of public schools per- 
 ilous to the peace and safety of the State. 
 
 Their mode of making each other happy is 
 not novel, but systematic. They are so kindly 
 and graceful about it that the manner is almost 
 as pleasing as the effect. Softly wrapped and 
 calmly composed as they seem, they yet need 
 to have their complacency occasionally reen- 
 forced. It has been my pleasure to be present 
 frequently, and witness the delightful process. 
 And you must know the charming result is 
 additionally sweetened by the presence of a 
 few who are not of the select number, as a 
 dignified assemblage of any sort is put upon 
 its good behavior and made to do its best by 
 an audience. The admiration and envy which 
 are understood to be excited in those who listen, 
 reflect the chosen in grander proportions than 
 their own estimate of themselves had approxi- 
 mated. These meetings for admiration, exalta- 
 
102 HALF TINTS. 
 
 
 
 * ft 
 
 tion, and manipulation, are so irregular as to 
 appear orcid^atal, and each is so natural, and 
 easy, and self-adjusting, as to appear the first 
 and .only. The least show of art in their con- 
 duct would make them a caricature even to 
 themselves, as an exhibition of magic to ma- 
 gicians would be ridiculous. The man under 
 the table must be concealed if credulity and 
 wonder are to be kept in countenance. You 
 remember, long ago, in the old school-house, 
 the explosive effect of the travelling astronom- 
 ical lecturer attempting to illustrate the solar 
 system by a squeaking planetarium. 
 
 It is only in times of agitation that the 
 soothing oil is requisite. The first muttering 
 of a tempest suggests the remedy. The appli- 
 ances to tranquillize and felicitate are set in 
 motion by a single shadow of trouble in one 
 placid face. Doubloon, one of the six, has 
 been unduly alarmed for the safety of an in- 
 vestment. An insurance company in which 
 he has some shares has suffered by a sweeping 
 fire. An occasion when all are together is 
 
GENTLEMEN'S PAELOE. 103 
 
 seized upon to put him back upon his plane 
 of complacency. One by one his other invest- 
 ments are referred to, and presented in the 
 most profitable light. His sagacity in possess- 
 ing certain vacant lots is commended as re- 
 markable, and he quite forgets his losses in 
 his inestimable prospective gains. Meanwhile 
 silent, he pulls his jacket over his round belly, 
 and is contented. The machine is fairly started. 
 Eagle, the glittering holder of bank stock, comes 
 in next for a flood of admiration. No common 
 man, it is agreed, Doubloon included, could 
 have foreseen the happy accidents to finances 
 which sent his shares to the highest figure on 
 the list. Exalted and made easy, he is ready 
 to join with the rest in complimenting Sov- 
 ereign upon his wisdom in selecting such agen- 
 cies as have converted his mines of anthracite 
 into silver. ~No other man in the Eepublic 
 could have selected so many men to represent 
 him without being deceived in some of them. 
 So exhibited, Sovereign sees himself in greater 
 proportions than his ambition had ever endowed 
 
104 HALF TINTS. 
 
 him with. Adjusting his wig, he is all at 
 once impressed with the aptitude of Slug for 
 comprehensive commercial enterprises. The 
 rest promptly agree with him in asserting that 
 another man could not be found in the wide 
 world who could so have anticipated the growth 
 of cities on remote uninhabited shores. And 
 Slug's imagination floats in succession the rich 
 argosies which brought him his splendid opu- 
 lence. Thaler, till now busy with sage com- 
 mendations of the rest, has settled himself to 
 receive his own share of encomium. Which 
 seeing, Slug lifts himself, delighted, to the ex- 
 pected service. In Slug's opinion Thaler would 
 have done as well or better with the same 
 opportunities which he himself had seized with 
 only qualified success. Thaler's stock opera- 
 tions proved, in the judgment of all, a breadth 
 of wisdom and forecast, which, carried into 
 grander schemes, would have brought him mil- 
 lions where he only realized thousands. His 
 modesty in being contented with such small 
 returns, when as well they might have been 
 
GENTLEMEN'S PARLOR. 105 
 
 prodigious, is rather berated than commended. 
 "Which general impression of boundless untried 
 resources puts Thaler in such delightful exalta- 
 tion, as to make him unconsciously push back 
 the stiff linen about his neck to make room 
 for his swelling person, till now a still absorb- 
 ent of great opinions. And now only Napo- 
 leon, the imperial coin of the realm, remains 
 to be lifted by generous loosened tongues to 
 the top of possible human attainment. His 
 phrases of praise have been the weightiest and 
 most graceful, and deserve a return in kind, 
 compounded. Serenely he listens to the sweet 
 strains of Doubloon, Eagle, Sovereign, Slug, 
 and Thaler, swelling together in liquid sym- 
 phony. His successes, in the estimation of 
 all, indicate not only wisdom, but prophecy. 
 E"o man, a mere man, could have accomplished 
 so much, and so easily. Events had always 
 occurred as he predicted, and they all now see 
 plainly their shortsightedness in not accepting 
 him a seer. If his sagacity and wisdom had 
 
 been occupied with public affairs, it is easy to 
 5* 
 
106 HALF TINTS. 
 
 see how disastrous collisions between nations 
 would have been avoided, and the highest civ- 
 ilization secured to peoples who seem going 
 downward in darkness. And, all glowing, the 
 six simultaneously rise, in unctuous plenitude 
 of sweet praises. What wonder if for a week 
 after they look out upon the fair world and 
 wonder it is not fairer, and that better beings 
 than these people ' are not vouchsafed to min* 
 ister to them. 
 
VIII. 
 
 THE EXCHANGE 
 
VIII. 
 
 THE EXCHANGE. 
 
 THE common room, in which the multitude 
 devour newspapers and tobacco, and talk and 
 write furiously, is too remindful of sober events 
 to linger in. All the great and little bubbles 
 have representatives in it. The intelligent eye 
 will readily classify them. The more desper- 
 ate schemes are represented by men who else- 
 where would pass for clergymen. They are 
 not noisy, nor impatient, but can wait. They 
 prefer to exhibit their maps or specimens or 
 models in sumptuous private parlors, and only 
 to those whose ears are nearest their pockets. 
 Their schemes and services would be cheap- 
 ened by a public display of them ; besides, 
 
110 HALF TENTS. 
 
 they know that birds are not caught by shak- 
 ing the net. These respectable-looking gentle- 
 men have histories and habitations, which 
 have no connection with present purposes, and 
 are not referred to. Nothing, indeed, could 
 so much disturb their equanimity as to meet 
 unexpectedly those who have known them inti- 
 mately. Old matters are so foreign from the 
 new that they are loath to have them compli- 
 cated. Their grand theories and projects of 
 development, seeking great capital to try them, 
 would be embarrassed by the exposure of only 
 failure and fraud in other enterprises of theirs, 
 quite as promising. They prefer to have their 
 arguments of to-day stand for themselves, un- 
 shaken by illustrations from records of decep- 
 tion and ruin. 
 
 Dryden says, that when the nation boils 
 the scum rises, the truth of which, it would 
 seem, has been proven in the course of our war. 
 In the general upheaval and trial of all the 
 elements of society, the alert adventurers have 
 reaped the advantages. Fixed interests might 
 
THE EXCHANGE. Ill 
 
 be advanced, but the danger of their destruc- 
 tion was imminent. Even these were accom- 
 modated as far as possible to the prevailing 
 spirit of speculation. Uncertainty fast be- 
 came the rule, which every new issue of prom- 
 ises, every call for troops, every disaster 
 in the field, helped to establish. Men most 
 faithless in the future of the Republic seemed 
 to thrive best in her darkest hours. After a 
 bad defeat, the faithful citizen, sorrowing and 
 silent, passing through assemblages of desper- 
 ate speculators, such as at night crowded the 
 more public rooms of the great hotels, and 
 observing the crowd jubilant over calamity, 
 suffered an insult to his patriotism which he 
 must ever wonder he could endure. 
 
 That meek-looking man we met as we 
 came in ; did you notice him ? He is a char- 
 acter I have observed with curious interest. 
 He slid by as noiselessly as an apparition. 
 His cat-footed tread, to those who hear it, tells 
 his history. The only man who seems to know 
 him has told me he is rich. You would not 
 
112 HALF TINTS. 
 
 suspect it to look at him. So much modesty 
 and retirement of manner you never saw in a 
 slave. His dress and accessaries betoken any 
 thing but wealth. He is intelligent, but his 
 thoughts have the shakiness of terror. Much 
 as he knows, his life is a lie, and his knowledge 
 is of little worth. He has sailed the Nile, 
 crossed the Great Desert, inspected Pompeii, 
 roamed over the Holy Land, explored the Cat- 
 acombs, climbed Mont Blanc, domesticated in 
 all the great cities, gone down under the ocean 
 into the mines of Cornwall, been shipwrecked, 
 escaped icebergs, more than all, travelled his 
 own country, seeing its mountains, and caves, 
 and rivers, and great personages, yet he steals 
 about as if crime had been his occupation, 
 and every victim was pursuing him. Alas, his 
 only real enemies are the tax-gatherer and 
 himself. His wealth is in securities, and the 
 concealment of it is the mystery and burden 
 of his life. He flits from country to country, 
 from city to city, and is only long enough 
 necessarily anywhere to gather his dividends. 
 
THE EXCHANGE. 113 
 
 His avarice and cowardice have made him 
 shrink and cower till wretchedness and terror 
 express themselves in every lineament and 
 movement. The wreck of an intellect never 
 looked out of a wasted body and empty 
 brain more pitifully than this wretched crea- 
 ture begs concealment and obscurity from 
 every shadow and every man the world over. 
 
 You are reminded of the trader's device, 
 before the steamboat was invented, when the 
 Southwest was infested with red men and rob- 
 bers. Receiving specie at New Orleans for 
 his produce, he put it in a wet buckskin belt 
 of sufficient length to surround the body, 
 which, as it dried, shrunk round the coin, till 
 no amount of shaking would cause it to jingle. 
 Just so is the humanity of this man shrunk 
 round his possessions, till his heart never jin- 
 gles with a manly impulse. 
 
 The middle man of the group before you, 
 with the polished forehead, pulling his beard ; 
 observe him. He is a genius in speculation. 
 So securely poised, his figure would suggest to 
 
TTAT/F TINTS. 
 
 sculpture a statue of destiny. His spinal col- 
 umn must be in a direct line to the centre of 
 the earth, so upright he appears. His leisurely 
 generalizations have the freshness of original 
 wisdom, and are compact enough for proverbs. 
 So far above the ordinary plane, his easy 
 guesses give an impression of prescience. All 
 things in all lights, and his words the essence 
 of all. The clatter of the squad in the corner 
 over the decline in Erie, he hears as he does 
 the oaths and glasses in the room adjoining. 
 The mystery or peril, to the thoughtless talk- 
 ers and drinkers invisible, is patent enough to 
 him ; he seems to know the motives of the manip- 
 ulators, and to divine results. His presump- 
 tion is so supreme that it confuses and blinds. 
 So much composure must be the token of ex- 
 traordinary wisdom. Ephemera, distinguish- 
 able from motes, accept him a sun, and flour- 
 ish in his light, till the market turns. His 
 own means are locked up, or he would risk 
 them all in the scheme his judgment approves. 
 If his friend, who approves also, and who is 
 
THE EXCHANGE. 115 
 
 so fortunate as to have some thousands loose, 
 will let him take it and use it as he would his 
 own, he shall share with him the profits. Of 
 losses, nothing is said. If they occur, his 
 friend will enjoy a monopoly, the philosopher 
 perhaps losing a little in confidence. So he 
 deceives, and betrays, and flourishes. In a 
 clean skin, in fresh raiment, immaculate man- 
 ners, and the repose of virtue, he is the incar- 
 nation of fraud, and he commands the admi- 
 ration, if not the respect, of those he has de- 
 frauded. The man who just now touched his 
 hat to him was nearly ruined by him, I know. 
 The scene revives events of the life and 
 times of John Law. Anecdotes related by 
 Thiers in his memoir of that incomparable 
 schemer, are worth iterating, to illustrate the 
 present, and show how history is repeated, 
 after one hundred and fifty years. All classes 
 of society, says the historian, mingled in the 
 Hue Quincampoix, cherishing the same illu- 
 sions, noblemen, churchmen, traders, quiet 
 citizens, and servants, whom their suddenly 
 
116 HALF TINTS. 
 
 acquired fortune had filled with the hope 
 of rivalling their masters. All the houses 
 in the street had been converted into offices 
 by the stock-jobbers ; the occupants gave up 
 their apartments, the merchants their shops ; 
 houses which had brought a rent of seven 
 or eight hundred francs, were cut up into 
 some thirty offices, and brought fifty or sixty 
 thousand francs ; stock-jobbing made itself 
 felt in rents as in securities. A cobbler, 
 who had converted his stall into an office 
 by placing in it some stools, a table, and 
 a writing-desk, rented it for two thousand 
 francs a day. A humpbacked man, in the 
 course of a few days, acquired one hundred 
 and fifty thousand livres by letting out his 
 hump as a writing-desk. The brokers organ- 
 ized themselves into regular swindling com- 
 panies. They speculated upon the constant 
 rise, but more often still upon the fluctuations 
 which they had the skill to produce. They 
 ranged themselves in a line in the Rue Quin- 
 campoix, ready to act at the first signal. At 
 
THE EXCHANGE. 117 
 
 the sound of a "bell in tlie office of a man 
 named Papillon, they offered, all at once, the 
 shares, sold them, and effected a decline. At 
 a different signal, they "bought at the lowest 
 price that which they had sold at the highest, 
 and in this way brought about a reaction; 
 thus they always ' sold dear and bought cheap.' 
 The fluctuations were so rapid and so consid- 
 erable, that brokers receiving shares to sell 
 had time to make large profits by retaining 
 them only one day. One is mentioned, who, 
 commissioned to sell some shares, was absent 
 two days. It was thought that he had stolen 
 them. ISTot at all ; he repaid the price faith- 
 fully, but meantime had made a million for 
 himself. Servants became suddenly as rich as 
 their masters. One of them, meeting his mas- 
 ter walking in the rain, stopped his carriage 
 to offer him a seat. A footman had gained so 
 much that he provided himself with a fine 
 carriage; but the first day it came to the 
 door, he, instead of stepping into the vehicle, 
 mounted up to his old station behind. Another, 
 
118 HALF TINTS. 
 
 in a similar predicament, brought himself well 
 off by pretending he got up only to see if there 
 was room on the back for two or three more 
 lackeys, whom he was resolved to hire instantly. 
 Law's coachman had made so great a fortune 
 that he asked a dismission from his service, 
 which was readily granted, on condition of pro- 
 curing another as good as himself. The man 
 therefore brought two coachmen to his master, 
 both of them excellent drivers, and desired 
 him to make choice of one, at the same time 
 saying that he would take the other for his 
 own carnage. One night at the opera, a Made- 
 moiselle de Begond, observing a lady enter mag- 
 nificently dressed, and covered with diamonds, 
 jogged her mother, and said, ' I am much mis- 
 taken if this fine lady is not Mary, our cook.' 
 The report spread through the theatre, till it 
 came to the ears of the lady, who, coming up 
 to Madame de Begond, said, 'I am indeed 
 Mary, your cook. I have gained large sums 
 in the Hue Quincampoix. I love fine clothes 
 and fine jewels, and am accordingly dressed in 
 
THE EXCHANGE. 119 
 
 them. I have paid for every thing, am in 
 debt to nobody, and pray what has any per- 
 son to say to this ? ' At another time, some 
 persons of quality beholding a gorgeous figure 
 alight from a most splendid equipage, and 
 inquiring what great lady that was, one of 
 her lackeys answered, 'A woman who has 
 tumbled from a garret into a carriage.' One 
 Brignaud, son of a baker, one of the suddenly 
 rich, being desirous of having a superb service 
 of plate, purchased all the articles exposed 
 for sale in the shop of a goldsmith for forty 
 thousand livres, and sent them home to his 
 wife, with orders to set them out properly for 
 supper, to which he had invited many persons 
 of distinction. The lady, not understanding 
 the business, arranged the plate according to 
 her fancy, and without regard to their real 
 use ; so that when supper was announced, the 
 guests could not forbear from indulging in 
 peals of laughter to see the soup served up 
 in a basin for receiving the offerings at 
 church, the sugar in a censer, and chalices 
 
120 HALF TINTS. 
 
 holding the place of salt-cellars, while most 
 of the other articles were more suited to a 
 toilet than a sideboard. Those who had be- 
 come rich, rushed into those violent pleasures 
 and excesses which the soul of a gambler 
 craves ; they displayed in their newly-acquired 
 mansions that barbarous, monstrous luxury 
 which signalized the age of Roman corrup- 
 tion. 
 
 These incidents, remember, word for word, 
 are gathered, here and there, from the history 
 of John Law and the Mississippi Bubble, Paris, 
 Anno Domini, 1719. Yet the infatuated exalt 
 the arts and conspiracies of the exchange as 
 fresh inventions of genius, and the thoughtless 
 pronounce their results unparalleled. 
 
IX. 
 
 AN INMATE. 
 
IX. 
 
 AN INMATE. 
 
 of nothing, my friend, which causes 
 so much suffering as diseased sensibility. Per- 
 sons of poetic nature, leading an insulated life, 
 are sure to be more or less its victims. A 
 remarkable instance came to my notice during 
 the summer. "Whence the solitary man came, 
 who he was, no one knew, and no one had 
 cared to know. i He paid his bills, and ap- 
 peared a gentleman,' was all they could say 
 of him at the office. How my accidental 
 acquaintance with him commenced, I cannot 
 recall ; but once begun, his siren sympathy 
 and strange wisdom enthralled me. I saw him 
 occasionally, perhaps too often, in his solitary 
 
124 HALF TINTS. 
 
 chamber, in Ms worst and sweetest moods. 
 At times he kept me so vividly reminded of 
 the Opium-Eater's awful Ladies of Sorrow 
 those impersonations of 'the mighty abstrac- 
 tions that incarnate themselves in all indi- 
 vidual sufferings of man's heart ' as to make 
 his presence as terrible as at other times it was 
 charming. Now his eyes were i sweet and 
 subtle ; ' now they were * filled with perishing 
 dreams, and with wrecks of forgotten de- 
 lirium ; ' now they had c the fierce light of a 
 blazing misery.' At such times he was dumb 
 to conscious utterance, and solemnly and pro- 
 foundly abstracted. He paced his room or 
 agonized in bed till the fearful fever or tem- 
 pest was ended, and the cause of it all remained 
 as dark as the hidden forces of nature we con- 
 jecture only from their effects. 
 
 I could see that he regarded the comfort- 
 able hotel as a sort of hospital for his malady. 
 Nobody troubled him with questions. I once 
 heard him say, sadly (he never was harsh), 
 4 The last thing even the most sensible man 
 
AN INMATE. 125 
 
 learns is not to ask questions.' The chamber- 
 girl only, besides myself, seemed to know just 
 when those attacks of himself, so to speak, 
 began and ended. She stepped lightly by his 
 door, and put a finger across her lips to repress 
 any needless noise. Sometimes, during those 
 tedious paroxysms, when his profound nature 
 seemed 'upheaved by central convulsions' 
 when his heart trembled and brain rocked 
 'under conspiracies of tempest from without 
 and tempest from within' he sent for me; 
 but when they had passed, I went to him, 
 unbidden. Going too suddenly in upon him 
 one day, I found him sitting at the table, with 
 a closed Bible in his hand. Pointing me to a 
 seat, he said thoughtfully (I shall never forget 
 his varying emphasis), with his eyes tenderly 
 fixed upon the sacred volume : ' The way to 
 Heaven in a book. Yes, the way to HEAVEN 
 in a book. Yes, the way to Heaven IN A 
 BOOK. Yes, the WAY to Heaven in a book. 
 Yes ' (with an emotional emphasis melting 
 away all creeds), 'THE way to Heaven in a 
 
126 HALF TINTS. 
 
 book.' What more could be said, I thought, 
 and have often thought since. 
 
 His talk upon the commonest topics, if he 
 talked at all, was always refreshing and sug- 
 gestive. He argued nothing; he seemed to 
 have got beyond argument; seeing through 
 all processes, and expressing only results. He 
 was therefore never tedious, but always strik- 
 ing. Assuming that you knew as much as him- 
 self, and that therefore his conclusions must 
 be yours, even the appearance of dogmatism 
 he avoided. Talking with him, you would at 
 times be even more surprised at yourself than 
 at him; for his manner was so encouraging 
 and inspiring as to give to your faculties a 
 startling vigor, emancipating and translating 
 you, mind and soul. When freest he seemed 
 so free of the ordinary auxiliaries to thought, 
 as to make you ashamed too much to rely 
 upon them yourself. Unwittingly, too, you 
 would tell your history, in your free utter- 
 ances, as he told his own in his, if you but 
 understood them. (' For history,' he once said, 
 
AN INMATE. 127 
 
 i is not the story of the man's daily walk and 
 tailor's bills, but of that real life, which we 
 dare not with our lips tell any one. But, in 
 little bits, it tells itself, in part ; and so our 
 friends love us. If it could utter itself wholly, 
 would they, perhaps, hate us, or look at us 
 with awe, as strange genii, issuing in fearful 
 mist from the strong box of their friendship, 
 into which they had locked us as common 
 mortals.') 
 
 His faculties, in his best moods, had a deli- 
 cacy and fineness, so to speak, only exceeded 
 in his acute and trembling sensibility. Where 
 his intellect could not penetrate, his universal 
 sympathy seemed to admit him unquestioned. 
 In life, his heart was with the weak and the 
 struggling. In literature, his taste was most 
 at home in the elevating and emotional. Once 
 I heard him recite Coleridge's sublime Hymn 
 to Sunrise in the Yale of Chamouni, and all 
 I loved and hoped seemed gathered about the 
 summit of Mont Blanc. He seemed trans- 
 ported. When he repeated, with f solemn air,' 
 
128 HALF TESTS. 
 
 the scene of family worship in the Cotter's Sat- 
 urday Night, I found myself on my knees, by 
 the little old chair, at the ' ingle side,' with 
 mother, sisters, and brothers, forming a circle 
 wide,' intent while * the saint, the father, and 
 the husband ' prayed ; and when he dwelt 
 upon the passage where 
 
 The parent pair their SECRET homage pay, 
 And proffer up to Heaven the warm request 
 That He who stills the raven's clamorous nest, 
 
 And decks the lily fair in flowery pride, 
 
 Would, in the way His wisdom sees the best, 
 
 For them and for their little ones provide ; 
 
 But chiefly, hi their hearts with grace divine preside ; 
 
 I felt the tears of penitence and gratitude 
 overflowing my eyes. In A' the airts the 
 wind can blaw, I dearly like the West, he 
 brought me my darling Mary of childhood. 
 When he recited To Mary in Heaven, I 
 heard the 'groans that rend the breast' of 
 every distressed lover. In his repetition of the 
 sweet poem, To the Mountain Daisy, I heard 
 the inspiring song of the 'bonnie lark, wi' 
 
AN INMATE. 129 
 
 speckled breast,' bending the ' crimson-tipped 
 flower 'mang the dewy weet,' and 'upward- 
 springing, blithe, to greet the purpling east.' 
 But- to hear him murmur, Come into the Gar- 
 den, Maud, was a pleasure above description. 
 The ' soul of the rose ' went into his blood, and 
 the ' breeze of the morning' moved in his 
 voice. Led bj the sentiment of the poet, he 
 walked the garden, and the flowers greeted 
 him. You heard the red rose cry, and the 
 white rose weep, and the larkspur listen, and 
 the lily whisper ; and when there fell c a 
 splendid tear from the passion-flower,' one 
 not less splendid broke over his illuminated 
 face. 
 
 Sometimes he made verses -just to amuse 
 himself, he said, as he would play a game of 
 solitaire. If these I quote show the elevation 
 and tone of his feelings when most elastic and 
 expressible, you may guess their depth and 
 darkness when unutterable : 
 
130 HALF TINTS. 
 
 ****** 
 
 Seem'st thou never worn nor weary, 
 Never sad or never dreary ; 
 Weights of others always bearing, 
 Griefs of others always sharing. 
 Heart so tender, timid never, 
 Hands so gentle, willing ever ; 
 Wounds of thine in strength concealing, 
 Wounds of others always healing. 
 
 The stricken heart could not endure, 
 Thy love withheld, its balm and cure ; 
 Despairing want could hope no more, 
 Thy kindness lost, its trusted store. 
 The sun obscured, the sickly plant 
 But feels the more its every want; 
 An hour of cloud, it yields to blight, 
 Despairing ever of the light. 
 
 Tongue of distress, never so dumb, 
 Utters its plaint when thou dost come ; 
 Assured at least a kindly ear, 
 A tender blessing and soothing tear. 
 The burden off, the eyes of care 
 Brighten and beam as heaven were there ; 
 Smoothed the pillow, the throbbing brain 
 Survives the pang and sleeps again. 
 
AN INMATE. 131 
 
 One morning I missed Mm. Inquiring at 
 the office, they said he had departed. In- 
 quiring further, sometime after, I learned, 
 alas, that he had departed this life by his 
 own hand. 
 
X. 
 
 NOT A SERMON. 
 
NOT A SEKMON. 
 
 ' Sra,' said he, the strange man, at the end 
 of our last long interview, i my words are not 
 to teach you, but to refer you to what you 
 know. If you can be taught by preaching, 
 they are not for you. Results, not processes, 
 teach. If they do not show their own growth, 
 narrate their own histories, they are not such, 
 or you do not apprehend them. You are 
 understood to see in a gray hair the vicissi- 
 tudes of a life. You are presumed to know 
 goodness by its fruits, and how utter is sorrow 
 which is unutterable. 
 
 ' The mother may make the boy, but the 
 man must make himself, and the man will be 
 
136 HALF TINTS. 
 
 as incomprehensible to his mother as to his 
 friend. Precepts are so often written in water, 
 while experiences infix themselves as by the 
 point of a diamond. The scar from a wound 
 got in a failing effort, or the great throb felt 
 upon possession of a soul-sought object, will 
 make us shun or pursue as no words could, 
 however wise or sagacious. "We bow to the 
 wisdom of King Solomon's preaching, but do 
 not account for the apostasy of his son Re- 
 hoboam. 
 
 ' The father would have his daughter always 
 immaculate. Her companions he sees as she 
 cannot see them. She does not see them at 
 all. Her eyes are not opened upon them with 
 that view. He knows if they are meet before 
 she has begun to ask herself. The false or 
 corrupt book he has stolen an enjoying glance 
 at himself, he would put from her as certain 
 death. He sees in her the wife, and mother, 
 and guardian of a home. He knows that the 
 truth, and fidelity, and virtue, are not only 
 good in themselves, but that they are neces- 
 
NOT A SERMON. 137 
 
 sary to save society from wreck. His anxieties 
 do not so much result from a love of the good 
 and the right, as from a consciousness of evils 
 and perils to be avoided and escaped. 
 
 4 The fixed expression and filling eye of the 
 parent when the lover of his daughter asks 
 her in marriage, are profoundest mysteries to 
 the youthful petitioner. He cannot conceive 
 the mirage of twenty years of peaceful and 
 tragic life which that moment looms in the 
 vision of the parent, and strains to painful ten- 
 sion his faculties of memory and reflection. 
 The child is seen at every stage of growth and 
 development, from babyhood to maturity, with 
 every obstacle and temptation which beset her 
 path, and every hope and triumph and rapture 
 which inspired it. He has just learned how 
 entirely she is made up of himself, and him- 
 self of her, and how completely her marriage 
 will change their relations with each other 
 and all the world. Her happiness and prog- 
 ress and purity have enlisted his life, and no 
 part of his life worth any thing is separable 
 
138 HALF TINTS. 
 
 from hers. He is asked to surrender the 
 object of every hope, anxiety, and emotion, 
 and trust her to the guidance of blindness and 
 chance. His dumb face and the falling tear 
 are emblems of his life as at that moment he 
 feels it must be when she is gone. 
 
 ' Death is as great a wonder to Youth as 
 life is to Age. Youth .is ever growing and 
 realizing. His look into the sunless grave is 
 blank and bewildered. His round eyes and 
 radiant face are set upon an upward, sunny 
 path. No blow of disappointment has stag- 
 gered his expectation, and left an eternal mark 
 upon him. He employs no spies, and advances 
 without scouts. He has not learned the uses 
 of treachery and caution. Easy advancement 
 has made him bold and confident. He believes 
 the future is in his fist. He does not know 
 that so far all helps have been supplied him, 
 and will continue to be supplied, till he fails. 
 The fledgling, left to flutter alone, is hopefully 
 and trustingly observed by those who know 
 forces and currents. Humanity has generously 
 
NOT A SERMON. 139 
 
 opened a way and given him a start. His 
 sails belly with all good wishes. The world 
 would not have him fail. It will not give up 
 its faith in its best ideal. Individuals acknowl- 
 edge they have failed, but they do not quite 
 get their consent to believe that an individ- 
 ual may not exist who cannot fail. If the one 
 well-remembered fatal thing done or omitted 
 had been omitted or done, they might have 
 been such themselves. The possible man who 
 cannot err nor blunder, and who cannot be 
 betrayed nor baffled, is the universal Messiah. 
 "Wisdom, dumb and grave, and Experience, 
 with doubt and discouragement in every 
 wrinkle, forget truth and life, lose themselves 
 in the contemplation of his beautiful vigor 
 and fleetness, and believe him invincible. 
 They look through the long past, and see 
 themselves in the fascinating being. Prodigy 
 and miracle. Figure erect limbs round 
 veins full and hot skin glistening hair shak- 
 ing out the sunshine. So full of bounding 
 life that his sleep must be disturbed by ravish- 
 
140 HALF TINTS. 
 
 ing dreams of to-morrow. Suggestion of dan- 
 gers in his way would be insufficient to put 
 him on his guard, if time were allowed to hear 
 it. He must learn obstacles by confronting 
 them, and encountering them one at a time, 
 his strong right arm is strengthened by strik- 
 ing them down. He makes a joke of armor 
 and defences, and calls deliberation or hesita- 
 tion weakness. But one day Fraud or Paral- 
 ysis strikes, and new eyes are suddenly given 
 him. He sees so many doubts and difficult! 
 in his way, that he can hardly determine 
 move at all. He learns a new language, 
 applies new names. He discovers motives, 
 and dizzies trying to sound them. His a: 
 ieties and disappointments are hooks in 
 side which turn him over and over in h* 
 Abstraction puzzles him. He will be seeing 
 things without their disguises, and the habit 
 soon becomes his character. Dealing so much 
 with shams and devices, he comes to suspect 
 even the genuine and real, and feels daily the 
 gradual decay and death of the ardor, ingen- 
 
NOT A SEEMOtf. 141 
 
 uousness and confidence which ennobled and 
 inspired the best part of his life. His pene- 
 tration and suspicious second-sight make him 
 acquainted with the little arts and artifices of 
 his fellows, and he acquires a certain strength 
 and mastery by appropriating them. But such 
 a bundle of weaknesses he feels must fall apart. 
 Such an embodiment of frailties, instincts, little 
 qualities, little faculties, and distrust, cannot 
 last. Made up in great part of what is worn 
 out, debauched, wasted, and worthless, the most 
 natural thing, he thinks, is that it should die. 
 6 An attempt by law-makers to define mo- 
 tives, and by judges to punish them, would be 
 puzzling occupation. Penances and penalties 
 can only be affixed to them by ourselves and 
 Omniscience. To a self-observant man nothing 
 can be more interesting and surprising than 
 his own, as they appear to himself, and as 
 they are interpreted by others. Often they 
 seem wholly beyond his comprehension or con- 
 trol. They are prompted he does not always 
 know how nor why, and will lead him he 
 
142 HALF TINTS. 
 
 cannot tell where. Their meanness often hu- 
 miliates him, and he uses the utmost caution 
 and carefulness to conceal them. His com- 
 placency is only preserved by a conscious- 
 ness of the world's ignorance of them. Better 
 motives than the real ones are often attributed 
 to him, which both satirize and dignify his 
 conduct. His greatest achievements often 
 spring from motives so insignificant that he 
 would be ashamed to acknowledge them. His 
 apparent and exemplary virtues would lose 
 much of their effect if the secret crimes which 
 alarmed them into exercise were exposed. 
 Worse motives are also found for his conduct 
 than ever entered his heart, the possession of 
 which would make him a different man. If 
 conspicuous good to others result from an act 
 meant primarily to benefit himself, his saga- 
 cious benevolence is praised, and his char- 
 acter accepted a model. If wrong be inci- 
 dentally or intentionally done his neighbor 
 through his neighbor's simplicity or ignorance, 
 his conscience is soothed by the protecting 
 
NOT A SEEMON. 143 
 
 statute. He has been annoyed by an osten- 
 tatious recognition and acknowledgment of 
 acts, with a parade of assumed systematic 
 intentions, when the real ones so spontane- 
 ously sprung from his humanity that design 
 or calculation was impossible. Their intrinsic 
 goodness was so disparaged and obscured by 
 misinterpretation and flaunting that their 
 promising fruit was stinted in the growth. 
 The sweeter virtues, crushed into life, are 
 embarrassed by being displayed. The silent 
 tear which attends their birth drops away in 
 shame at being discovered. 
 
 'Life, in the remote country, is simple, 
 and does not stimulate exertion. Wants are 
 few and inexpensive. Much money is not 
 needed to get all we desire. It is only when 
 civilization is seen at its centres, where skill 
 and taste and treasure have accumulated incal- 
 culable objects of beauty and comfort, that we 
 apprehend how much there is to enjoy, and 
 how much is required to purchase it all. New 
 and extraordinary incentives to wealth are 
 
144 HALF TINTS. 
 
 awakened by the exhibition of its uses. The 
 wants created by the education and stimula- 
 tion of our senses and sensations soon become 
 exacting and insatiable, and our efforts to 
 satisfy them astonish us by their continuity 
 and desperation. 
 
 'If an apprehension of the many objects 
 of sensuous and esthetic enjoyment in this life 
 makes us so prodigiously diligent in the accu- 
 mulation of the means to enjoy them, how 
 much the more would an unwavering belief 
 in an immortal life of delight and progression 
 make us diligent in the acquisition of the loves 
 and virtues, without which we must lack the 
 resources and capacities to enjoy its beatitudes. 
 As cities awaken and quicken a desire for 
 wealth by exhibiting so many desirable objects 
 which only money can buy, so an abiding 
 belief that in the immeasurable future our 
 enjoyment of its prerogatives and felicities 
 will depend upon our fitness and preparation 
 for them, would inspire the utmost diligence 
 in laying up treasures for Heaven. With, the 
 
NOT A SEEMON. 145 
 
 thought of a future existence perpetually pres- 
 ent, and the belief that this fleeting life is 
 only for purposes of. discipline and culture, 
 all love of ostentation and applause would 
 be precluded. By those whose lives and aims 
 are fitted for this world and limited to it, are 
 its rewards and honors most sought and es- 
 teemed. The simple offices and acquisitions 
 of virtue and goodness, which make little sign 
 and are ill-recognized by men, win the smile 
 which beams immortally. . i 
 
 'As we live, and enjoy, and grow, how 
 content we should be to give up what we have, 
 with a certainty that hence our joys and capa- 
 cities will be increased and perpetuated. The 
 primer must be laid aside for the next book in 
 the course, which will: include" it. The forms'- 
 fall away, but the spirit passes. The chaff, 
 which protected and rounded the wheat, . is 
 left to perish after the winnowing. Dis- 
 cipline and processes, desiderata 'now, if we 
 grow at all, must become gyves. We must 
 put off and put on, until all auxiliaries .- be- 
 
146 HALF TINTS. 
 
 come unnecessary under the guardianship of 
 the Infallible. 
 
 c lf we truly believed and realized that 
 here we begin to be what we are to be ever, 
 how absorbing and resourceful life would be. 
 How conscientiously and persistently we would 
 seek the good and avoid the evil. How suspi- 
 ciously and jealously we would guard our- 
 selves against all which must perish with the 
 body, and how anxiously cultivate all which 
 must survive it. Happiness would not be 
 sought in its transient forms. Life would be 
 appreciated for its resultant uses. The duty 
 of the hour would be the duty of eternity. 
 The good would inhere. The present would 
 be realized as the time to work in ; and having 
 something to do worth doing, we should need 
 all the time we have to do it well. The duties 
 of to-day faithfully discharged, we would not 
 concern ourselves about to-morrow. To-mor- 
 row would be so far provided for that it would 
 be anticipated and made easy, if it come. Re- 
 finement and tenderness and excellence would 
 
NOT A SERMON. 
 
 result from fidelity to duty, and a happiness 
 would be established as serene as it would be 
 unconscious. Living and acting, and getting 
 the pleasure and good of life in duty, we should 
 enjoy a foretaste of fruition and perpetuity.' 
 
XL 
 H APPINES S. 
 
XI. 
 
 HAPPINESS. 
 
 ABOUT midnight. Mrs. Allgot lias just 
 come in, attended by her accredited escort, 
 the accomplished Captain. They have been 
 to the opera, and have stopped an hour at a 
 French restaurant to refresh themselves. Ele- 
 gantly attired and faithfully attended, she has 
 been the admiration of all. Her diamonds 
 sparkle, but do not outshine her brilliant black 
 eyes, retouched with a dazzling lustre by the 
 fat oysters and half-bottle of Gold Seal. The 
 good-humor and fondness of both are over- 
 flowing, but they repress themselves in good 
 taste, and separate politely. Good old Mr. 
 Allgot, the happy husband of so much ra- 
 
152 HALF TINTS. 
 
 diancy, alone in his chamber and sweet bed, 
 has had three solid hours of dreamless slum- 
 ber, and would be a churl to complain of a 
 little disturbance by her who at the court of 
 fashion has conferred upon him so much dis- 
 tinction. Thoughtful and sympathizing, he 
 cannot but participate the pleasure of unlacing 
 and disrobing, after so many hours of tension 
 and splendor. His dull ears, if they hear the 
 rustling silks, only echo the admiration they 
 have excited, and he is less disturbed than the 
 many who envy her. Instead of the splash- 
 ing water agitating his nerves, he feels them 
 soothed in the balmy refreshment it gives to 
 her throbbing temples. The powder out of 
 her hair, and robed in her immaculate linen, 
 she feels in every fibre of her youthful person 
 the exquisite joy of a convalescent. Overcome 
 and spent, what to her are the square limbs 
 and knotted joints of the kind old man by her 
 side ? In the needed sleep will come back to 
 her the caressing kindness of the Captain ; 
 a thousand eyes will reflect her splendor ; and 
 
HAPPINESS. 153 
 
 the generous wine, pervading her blood with 
 a subtle warmth, will lift the curtain of her 
 dreams upon more than earthly ravishment. 
 A remembered swell of music will transport 
 her to rapturous heights, and a white cloud 
 float her to elysium. If her muttered words 
 and agitated slumber keep the old man awake, 
 he remembers that youth is dreamy, and he 
 would not have his chamber dreamless. If 
 he grow tired of the bed when his young 
 darling is most enamoured of it, his accus- 
 tomed early walk will relieve them both. If 
 he move carelessly, in the dim light of the 
 morning, amongst her splendid robes, his 
 crushing them will stir her less than the 
 slightest ordinary contact ; for his opulence 
 bought them, and can buy a thousand, more 
 splendid. The soft dawn upon her mellowing 
 bosom reflects itself in the mirror as he dresses 
 himself, and his pure taste discovers only 
 beauty in the picture, which touching her 
 never so gently would only disturb. The 
 landscape on. the wall beyond, he thinks, 
 
 7* 
 
154 HALF TINTS. 
 
 is not more irradiated by the morning flush 
 than her sleeping beauty. 
 
 Ah, sweet are the uses of civility, and a 
 rough arrangement society would be without 
 it. Feeble as we discover ourselves to be, and 
 too short-lived, with the best faculties, to get 
 much wisdom, we find in it our most conveni- 
 ent solace at last. (It may sometimes be car- 
 ried doubtfully far, as in the case of indulgent 
 old Galba, c who, having entertained Maecenas 
 at supper, and seeing his young wife cast ten- 
 der glances, and complot love by signs, let 
 himself sink down upon his cushion, like one 
 in a profound sleep, to give opportunity to 
 their fondling ; which he himself handsomely 
 confessed ; for at the same time a servant 
 making bold to filch a vase that stood upon 
 the table, he frankly cried : Hold, you rogue. 
 Do you not see that I sleep only for Mae- 
 cenas ? ') The apparently incongruous com- 
 panionships we sometimes see must find their 
 bond of union in a generous civility. Some 
 cynic has said there could be no happy mar- 
 
HAPPINESS. 155 
 
 riage but betwixt a blind wife and a deaf 
 husband, which the bliss of this couple dis- 
 proves. Their liberality forbids them seeing 
 or hearing what might excite distrust or jeal- 
 ousy. His experience and age have taught 
 him the folly of monopoly. Her beauty and 
 youth, so generally acknowledged, have taught 
 her the meanness of selfishness. ' Small is the 
 worth of beauty from the light retired.' She 
 must 'suffer herself to be desired, and not 
 blush so to be admired.' He rejoices in his 
 ability to load her with laces and jewels, and 
 she also. His frailty has taught him humility, 
 and he is glad of his wealth as a resource for 
 her affections. It was natural, in the fulness 
 of his possessions, and her ardor to share them, 
 for him to forget the trifle of manhood. Some- 
 thing is sure to be forgotten, even by the 
 wisest, in the tumult of the tender passion. 
 Tithonus, you know, in love with Eo^, asked 
 to be made immortal, that he might love her 
 forever, but forgot, in his ardor, to ask the 
 little essential of perennial youth. Finding 
 
156 HALF TINTS. 
 
 himself maimed, and left ' to dwell in presence 
 of immortal youth, immortal age beside im- 
 mortal youth, and all he was in ashes,' and 
 deploring that the gods could not recall the 
 terrible gift, asked to be changed, and in pity 
 was, into a grasshopper. 
 
 The worldly philosophy of Balzac, that 
 there are few happy couples but couples of 
 four, if ever true, would appear to be, in a 
 certain sense, in this instance. The old gen- 
 tleman has formed many attachments, begin- 
 ning with his teens and increasing with his 
 years, which are now so essentially a part of 
 him that existence would be dreariness without 
 them. The object of an early passion, living 
 in the next street, for many years the wife 
 of an India merchant, whom he every day 
 visits, and whose society revives every pleasant 
 memory, may be counted the first and ten- 
 derest. With her, he is oblivious of the events 
 of fifty years, and lives over again the halcyon 
 period when the world was best and wisest. 
 His young hopes blossom again in retrospec- 
 
HAPPINESS. 157 
 
 tion. If his relations with her be marked by 
 a touch of tenderness, it is but the response of 
 a thousand memories, and is too sacred ever to 
 be impure. A jest upon it would give him a 
 wound which nothing could heal. Its enjoy- 
 ment is the compensation for unnumbered ills. 
 Any thing may be referred to but that ; that 
 never unkindly. Too hallowed the cherished 
 intercourse for defence or discussion. Another 
 of his attachments is an old friend, with whom, 
 in early years, he was associated in prosperous 
 business. "With him, the schemes and perils 
 of trade are revived, and he is reminded of his 
 energies and successes. Every crisis in their 
 joint enterprises is again and again worked 
 through, and every difficulty seems ever as 
 hard as when their master minds and wills 
 overcame it. Reviewing any one of their 
 achievements the thousandth time, they forget 
 their infirmities, and walk the room with the 
 tread of conquest and defiance. The old fire 
 and 'purpose flash out of their eyes, and all 
 obstacles, so petty and contemptible, melt 
 
158 HALF TINTS. 
 
 away. Rejuvenated by this heroic process, 
 i Old Allgot ' is not to be despised, nor his 
 fellow-champion either. If the latter be a 
 little disagreeable on account of unfortunate 
 habits, he is not to be disparaged nor offended. 
 So great a resource as his society 'twould be 
 perilous to obstruct. It must be permitted as 
 often and as long as either elect, without ques- 
 tioning or impatience. And his ailments, too, 
 are attachments, which he cannot quit if he 
 would. Formed late in life, long after the ten- 
 derer ties, they are just as tenacious and exact- 
 ing. A lumbago, which so long has affection- 
 ately hugged his loins, claims much of his time 
 and attention, and much gentle manipulation 
 and consideration are required to soothe it. 
 And an asthma has crept into his throat, mod- 
 ulating his voice, and making his respiration 
 too sensible to himself and to others. As a 
 profligate son, they must be endured, and a 
 civil and accommodating treatment is neces- 
 sary to make them tolerable. These and other 
 peculiar ties and affections, requiring so much 
 
HAPPINESS. 159 
 
 civility and consideration, have in turn made 
 him considerate and civil. Especially have 
 they made him so to his blooming wife. And 
 he has discovered with pleasure that about in 
 proportion to his liberality and license are her 
 patience and kindness. Her unembarrassed 
 relations with the prudent Captain, instead of 
 diminishing her love, have increased it. Be- 
 fore the pleasant acquaintance was formed, 
 she seemed at times a little indifferent to her 
 husband ; but now her fondness for him is 
 always demonstrative. Under such circum- 
 stances he would be ungrateful to deny her 
 any thing. She is too brilliant to shine for 
 him only. The splendor of her charms would 
 pale if limited to the twilight of decline. Her 
 volatility and vitality would be sure to weary 
 under the continued weight of his heaviness. 
 The Captain, for his fidelity and circumspec- 
 tion, commands his admiration and gratitude. 
 He is delighted that his lovely wife has found 
 so suitable and trusty a friend. So nearly of 
 an age, and so much alike in tastes and tern- 
 
160 HALF TINTS. 
 
 perament, they seem inevitably to have corne 
 together. Her better nature is cultivated by 
 the Captain's many good offices, and her 
 civility and tenderness to her husband are a 
 thousand times increased by the repeated 
 indulgence of her gushing humors. 
 
 [You remember the lines of Waller, On 
 One Married to an Old Man, which we laughed 
 over before'we became philosophers : 
 
 Since thou wouldst needs (bewitched by some ill charms), 
 
 Be buried in those monumental arms, 
 
 All we can wish is May that earth be light 
 
 Upon thy tender limbs ; and so good-night.] 
 
XII. 
 
 POOR BODIES. 
 
XII. 
 
 POOR BODIES. 
 
 IN these material times, when every de- 
 mand is supplied, the fashionable doctor is an 
 indispensable luxury. I encounter him often, 
 in halls and drawing-rooms. He lives in a 
 palace, and fares sumptuously. His carriage 
 at any house goes far to fix the rank of the 
 occupant. He is not to perform miracles, as 
 the world is now too wise to expect the mirac- 
 ulous. The human machine is admitted to be 
 frail, and destined to go to pieces. The house 
 of clay is only to be kept in such repair as to 
 be presentable and comfortably habitable till 
 abandoned. It was not made to resist earth- 
 quakes nor time. Only the every-day storms 
 
164: HALF TINTS. 
 
 and ills may be averted or cured. The one 
 great shock or poison which shatters or rots 
 the structure, the wisest cannot forefend nor 
 baffle. Therapeutics, unfortunately, is not so 
 exact as anatomy. Bones and veins and mus- 
 cles, the same in all men, once discovered, are 
 facts, and, with the aid of chloroform, the med- 
 ical carpenter may cut and saw his poor fellow 
 with certainty. But the million influences of 
 climate and appetite and passion upon these 
 human bodies, as varied by predispositions and 
 habits and ambitions as they are numerous, 
 are past finding out mathematically, and some- 
 times may only be guessed at, as the turns of 
 the stock-market, or the whims of insanity. 
 From the beginning, notwithstanding, the best 
 intellects have been worn and wasted to dis- 
 cover symptoms and invent remedies. In their 
 zeal and preoccupation, pondering the possible, 
 they naturally overlooked the inevitable. In 
 their ardor and sincerity, what wonder that 
 they attempted to fasten by terms and theories 
 what was too illusive for apprehension without 
 
POOR BODIES. 165 
 
 them, .and what wonder that they founded, and 
 dying men patronized, schools to utilize and 
 perpetuate it. Upon a sea of speculation, in 
 doubt and darkness, with only a few obscure 
 truths bundled into theories, they confidently 
 worked to conclusions, but with as little real 
 knowledge of the mystery they sought to ex- 
 plore as the squirrel displays of navigation, 
 who, upon a bit of wood, with his tail spread, 
 floats before the wind. Down the ages, with 
 the drift of superstition, have descended the 
 little fragments of fact, till the accumulation 
 is voluminous. Every school of medicine has 
 its ^philosophers and zealots; and of its nu- 
 merous practitioners, those who do not defend 
 it with ardor are exceptional. The system 
 they have espoused must be right till aban- 
 doned. Wedded to mercury, cold water, or 
 infinitesimals, they are sworn systematically 
 to prescribe, whatever the accident or ex- 
 tremity. "Wholly committed and in earnest, 
 professional pride becomes an essential of 
 personality, and a certain symptom demands 
 
166 HALF TINTS. 
 
 a certain remedy, or risks the character. A 
 dose to the grain is defended by the proud 
 physician as the honor of his household, and 
 the sturdiness of opinion which such cham- 
 pionship of minutiae is apt to beget becomes 
 as often inconvenient as disagreeable. Such 
 a man will not be trifled with. Sincere, and 
 devoted to his calling, he will not accommo- 
 date himself to pretences nor whims. A pro- 
 fessional call means sober business, and his 
 sense of duty commands candor. If indolence 
 or indulgence or vice be the cause of ailment, 
 he frankly announces and characterizes it. 
 The cherished habits, appetites, or desires, 
 must be abandoned before he can begin a 
 cure of their result. Trained to directness of 
 expression as well as of thought, he can hardly 
 describe their effect upon the body without 
 suggesting their blight inevitably and forever 
 upon the character. A faithful physician he 
 believes should be an honest man, and conceal- 
 ment or assumed ignorance he will not admit 
 inseparable from the art of healing. He will 
 
POOR BODIES. 167 
 
 continue to visit a-foot, and live in a hired 
 house, rather than be rich at the expense of 
 integrity and self-respect. 
 
 That interesting character to whom I refer 
 is of another sort and purpose. Consulting 
 only his convictions, he might belong to any 
 of the schools, or none of them, confessedly. 
 His views are material and commercial, and 
 he is willing that the money his profession 
 brings him should measure his ability. Strong 
 beliefs would be inconvenient, and might mount 
 him upon a hobby. Shrewdly occupied with 
 other people's hobbies, one of his own would 
 be sure to embarrass him. The thing of all 
 things he would avoid is a conviction which 
 could make him dogmatic. Free from attack 
 through having nothing abstract to defend, he 
 readily secures the patronage of every folly 
 *by not opposing it. Cognizant of the higher 
 impulses of humanity, he does not forget that 
 but one of many is controlled by them, and 
 his vigilance for the main chance adapts him 
 to the multitude. The patrons of his choice 
 
168 HALF TINTS. 
 
 would be above the average of men if he could 
 have enough of them ; but as society at large 
 will not be elevated to his standard of fancy, 
 he contents and secures himself by accepting 
 it as it is. He prefers to pitch himself to the 
 common rather than the moral sense, that 
 being the more apprehensible and merchant- 
 able. Souls that are regular and strong in 
 themselves, he believes, with Montaigne, are 
 so rare as not justly to have name nor place 
 among men, and considers the time nearly lost 
 in endeavoring to please them. Besides, to 
 attain and maintain their altitude of reason 
 would require a hard and constant effort of 
 intellect, and would unfit him for close obser- 
 vation and appropriation of the instincts and 
 artifices of the general level, where the genius 
 of the shopkeeper is the standard. The great 
 are exceptional, and may not easily be turned 
 to account, while the ordinary are everywhere, 
 and ever in market. The little things of life 
 engross it, and with them he must deal. Every- 
 body is to have a last sickness, but he would 
 
POOR BODIES. 169 
 
 prefer 'never to have a patient in that extrem- 
 ity. The numerous little ailments which annoy 
 life more than they endanger it, but which 
 steadily swell the doctor's bank balance, are 
 easily manageable by simple remedies, if in- 
 deed they need medical treatment at all. To 
 these his arts are adapted, to be estimated 
 and perpetuated in running accounts. If only 
 so fortunate as to be able to confine his prac- 
 tice to them, the life of every patient would 
 attest his ability. Alas, he cannot always 
 dally with the trifling; he must sometimes 
 face the terrible; but in the dreadful extrem- 
 ity he finds safety in counsel. Only sharing 
 the responsibility, his reputation cannot be 
 much endangered. No matter if the dying 
 man still trusts in him ; the poor fellow has 
 received the last visit ; the living friends who 
 mrround are to be retained as patrons; and 
 might be fatal if he alone were remembered 
 dth the calamity. 
 
 So perfect a type of his class, Jack, is this 
 man, it were necessary you should see him 
 
170 HALF TINTS. 
 
 often, and know him as well as any one may, 
 justly to admire him. If you were here I 
 could almost wish you a little sick to secure 
 you a close observation. To know him as 
 your friends know you, no man can ; but most 
 persons who meet him think they know him 
 perfectly at once. Devoting himself to the 
 study and use of their weaknesses, he acquires 
 a peculiar influence over them. As a hunter, 
 he pursues his game with a full pack of pas- 
 sions and intuitions trained to his will. Men, 
 he reasons, are indolent and ambitious, with 
 instincts and impulses ever ready to supply 
 the lack of labor and exalted purposes, and 
 unawares they become artful and mean. 
 Habitually deceiving, they expect deception, 
 and prefer it. The skeleton truth is distaste- 
 ful. Dressed according to mode, it is only 
 presentable. His study is to find out what 
 will suit, and to adapt himself accordingly. 
 He takes the hue of whatever is contiguous. 
 He dances with them that dance ; puffs pre- 
 sumption ; apologizes for ignorance ; excuses 
 
POOE BODIES. 
 
 hypocrisy ; fawns to avarice ; applauds every 
 device of ugliness to entrap beauty ; listens to 
 gossip in a manner to excite new wonder; 
 winks at slander with a kindly smirk ; gives a 
 roguish twinkle at fashionable pruriency and 
 villany ; swells his cheeks expanding evan- 
 escent bubbles which complacency and pride 
 have invented to conceal their emptiness ; in 
 a word, is ever every thing to everybody, and 
 never himself. He is too well drilled to fear 
 an exposure of his semblances. He scents up 
 characteristics, and assumes them so well, it 
 may be said he improves them in the acting. 
 An adept in counterfeiting, he is quick to 
 detect counterfeits; and while his coin is so 
 perfect as always to pass, society can never im- 
 pose upon him a baubee which is not genuine. 
 If thrown with violence against angularity, 
 his india-rubber character never receives a 
 wound in the collision. The only individual 
 he encounters to whom he cannot conform 
 himself is that fortunately rare nuisance of 
 well-bred society, an artless man, with a clear 
 
172 HALF TENTS. 
 
 eye for the truth, and a tongue to utter it; 
 who is so indelicate and uncivil as not to con- 
 fine himself to representations on the stage of 
 life, but obtrudes into the green-room, and sees 
 the faults and follies of the actors, and the 
 difficulties and miseries of rehearsal ; who 
 strips philosophy of cant; poetry of extrava- 
 gance ; painting of unnatural tints ; dogmatism 
 of ignorance ; elegance of mockery ; distinc- 
 tion of props ; diplomacy of ambition ; in fine, 
 sees society as it is, undraped by the fictions 
 which pass for society itself. Such a man to 
 him is fearful. In such a presence, his smiles 
 are ghastly, and his sinuous tongue shrinks 
 into coil, and only hisses. 
 
 To a philosopher, like yourself, who could 
 observe without impatience, so perfect an 
 achievement in art would be pleasing. I 
 think of you always when he makes my wife 
 a visit. Women, you know, even the best of 
 them, will have their way in some things ; 
 always in the choice of a physician. The 
 points of merit must be invisible to our reason. 
 
POOR BODIES. 173 
 
 I will not think my wife so weak a creature as 
 to be charmed by his graces ; she thinks too 
 much of me to believe in them wholly. His 
 rich equipage and faultless manners cannot be 
 all that she sees. There must be a soul of 
 sympathy or ken of wisdom somewhere or 
 somehow visible, or her fine sense has failed 
 her for once. One scene I shall remember 
 while memory of her remains to me. The 
 poor sufferer had been pulled and torn by 
 pain all night, and in the morning, when the 
 paroxysm left her, she was exhausted. Feebly 
 but often she looked at the clock, anxiously 
 counting the minutes till the doctor's arrival. 
 At length he came, and his presence seemed 
 a benediction. His confidential manner and 
 sublime tact compounded a remedy above the 
 skill of the apothecary. His few words, less 
 interrogative than magnetic, seemed to reach 
 the source of anguish, and run through the 
 nerves with vitalizing energy. His hand 
 touched her temple and caressed a pitiful lock 
 as gently as could sunshine or zephyr. Not a 
 
1Y4 HALF TENTS. 
 
 word of drugs ; but a few well-chosen ones of 
 to-morrow and rejoicing promise. Closing the 
 west window a little, and opening the south- 
 ern as much, the air was of a softer climate. 
 Hopeful and composed, with a sweet torpor 
 upon her eyelids, he left her as unconsciously 
 to her as her consciousness. For three hours 
 she slept like a baby, and awoke a new spirit. 
 The scene for some reason reminded me, and 
 always reminds me, of an old experience; 
 perhaps they may illustrate each other. Not 
 at all well, I could not improve on account 
 of business anxieties. My first venture, upon 
 the success of which my whole future seemed 
 to depend, had reached a crisis, and my emo- 
 tions were in a tumult, and had been for days. 
 All my energies had been expended to secure 
 a favorable result, and I could only wait. ]S"ot 
 that I needed his skill, but to be occupied for 
 a few long minutes, I had dropped into the 
 easy-chair of the village barber and yielded 
 to his pleasant manipulations. Unexpectedly 
 and suddenly I fell into a profound sleep, and 
 
POOE BODIES. 175 
 
 when I awoke, an hour afterward, the faithful 
 and kindly son of Ham was still at work, but 
 with a fan meantime having gently lifted me, 
 chair and all, between the open door and win- 
 dow, and disposed my legs and arms for the 
 long forgetfulness. Ever since the world has 
 looked brighter. The scheme of business 
 worked well ; but its failure, and all the skill 
 or ridicule of learned doctors could never have 
 made me forget or underrate the thoughtful 
 and feeling barber. 
 
 Men and women, Jack, are poor creatures, 
 and do not care to be stared at through micro- 
 scopes. Their hearts sore, and faculties weary, 
 they want to be humored and petted. In 
 every man's heart are there not apartments 
 forever locked, the keys forever lost, into which 
 he himself never enters but by a skeleton? 
 The central motive which has harmonized the 
 efforts of a life, and the misfortune which has 
 tempered it, are not to be hunted with the 
 realist's dark-lantern, nor spitted for scientific 
 scrutiny. Personality is within the life as the 
 
176 HALF TINTS. 
 
 world sees it, and not to be invaded if all the 
 resources of that life can protect it. Of this 
 no one can be more perfectly aware than the 
 fashionable doctor. To appearances he is most 
 considerate and respectful, while with the con- 
 cealed and unutterable he makes merchandise. 
 A large proportion, and the most substantial, 
 of his patients, for instance, are only growing 
 old, but they submit to be drugged and drugged, 
 rather than once to be told the wholesome 
 truth. The slight weaknesses and aches, as nat- 
 ural as gray hairs and dim eyesight, pride of life 
 and the physician's arts dignify into illnesses. 
 Thin locks and spectacles are natural enough, 
 and well enough, and rather becoming ; but 
 flattening muscles and cooling circulation are 
 results of over-work or imprudence, and may 
 be restored to roundness and comfortable tem- 
 perature. The doctor's wise prescription is 
 higher living and heavier flannel, with pow- 
 ders and drops now and then as alteratives 
 and tonics, and just soon enough, to a visit, 
 he conducts the delicate case, as they say, to 
 
POOR BODIES. 
 
 m 
 
 a favorable issue. The air of southern Europe 
 is recommended if his patient's patience seems 
 failing, or if, as the real case may be, the ill 
 taste of a stubborn husband is to be corrected. 
 Many of his patients, who are given to gayety 
 and irregular hours, are too frail to bear chil- 
 dren, and his bare hint of the fact is of profit 
 to the monster in a palace whose specialty 
 is such cases. Expressionless eyes and dul- 
 ness would contrast with diamonds and thin 
 dresses, and stimulants in every form are sug- 
 gested to supply the needed lustre and spright- 
 liness, and complete the harmony. Small 
 potions at first are sufficient; and if gradual 
 increase of quantity result unfortunately, the 
 misfortune is disease, to be treated by a still 
 further increase of the cause as a remedy. If 
 the public voice be silenced by the presence of 
 crime in so many households ; if brothels spring 
 up palatially in desirable streets ; if hospitals 
 multiply to exhaust the public purse ; the fash- 
 ionable doctor, who is the genius and patron 
 of them all, is secure in hjis Ijame and opulence. 
 
 8* 
 
XIII. 
 POOR SOULS. 
 
XIII. 
 
 POOR SOULS. 
 
 BUT the creature-comfort of all the sweet 
 meat of the turtle ripened and seasoned to 
 the appetite of worldliness is the fashionable 
 parson. Prized according to price, as every 
 other luxury, he is solace and nourishment to 
 the fortunate who can purchase. In all the 
 variety of his genus, he is the rarity and per- 
 fection. 
 
 The poor have the gospel preached to them 
 according to their ways and wants, and taste 
 is less a requisite with them than earnestness. 
 Their c school of wisdom ' being the ' school 
 of misery,' they are prepared for honesty, even 
 if it goes to the sources of badness, and are 
 
182 HALF TINTS. 
 
 not disappointed if it grates as it goes. Their 
 lives being simple and transparent, in any soft 
 or ingenious disguise to cover or excuse self- 
 ishness, they suspect deceit or cowardice. 
 Life has been too much in earnest, and every 
 little want of it too much a fact, to let them 
 long or very far from its realities. Every 
 muscle and pore has too habitually paid the 
 price of every necessity to permit them igno- 
 rance of intrinsic values. If frugality in them 
 has been a ' substitute for ambition,' it has 
 taught them to esteem humanity. If sacrifice 
 has put a high value upon their little accumu- 
 lations, dependence has taught them a will- 
 ingness to share them. The Saviour, in the 
 midst of the multitude, saw the poor widow 
 making her way to the treasury to deposit her 
 two mites 4 all that she had, even all her 
 living.' The lifting eye of thankfulness, drop- 
 ping a tear when lifted, is easily fixed upon 
 the Throne, at whose right hand there is ful- 
 ness forever. To the broken-hearted and pen- 
 itent, graces of speech but obscure, and strong 
 
POOR SOULS. 183 
 
 figures weaken. To them, as to poor Yorick, 
 to preach, to show the extent of the preacher's 
 reading, or the subtleties of his wit, tinselled 
 over with a few words which glitter, but con- 
 vey little light and less warmth, is a dishonest 
 use of the poor single half hour in a week 
 which is put in his hands ; 'tis not preaching 
 the gospel, but himself. They would rather 
 have five words directed point-blank to the 
 heart. To them, language, as every other 
 help, is so limited to necessity, that in express- 
 ing a want they as little think of the words 
 as of the atmosphere by which they see. A 
 good word and kind hand, offered in fellow- 
 ship and fraternity, will do more to ease the 
 heavy burden and widen the narrow road, 
 than all the arts of rhetoric. Ever consciously 
 dependent, they but the more securely trust 
 to guidance, and esteem this hard life an ad- 
 vantage if it but keep them in the way to a 
 better. Misfortune and penury, driven into 
 side-streets and obscurity, are warmed by the 
 sun, and specially blest. The little mission 
 
184: HALF TINTS. 
 
 church is the temple of the New Jerusalem. 
 The best viands of the beggar are the offal of 
 excess. The last picking is sweetest, being 
 nearest the bone. Opulence, which denies 
 itself nothing, feels independent, and trusts in 
 its ability to . supply itself with every thing. 
 Indigence, which has nothing, is grateful for 
 any thing. Plenty is full-handed, and feels it 
 can make its own terms. Poverty reaches an 
 empty hand to God, and is so near the Giver 
 as to get and realize all the good of the gift. 
 
 A thousand times you have read The De- 
 serted Tillage, and as often turned back to read 
 again that best description in literature of a 
 good minister. If enough like him had lived 
 upon the earth to preach all the sermons, and 
 solemnize all the marriages, and baptize all the 
 children, and compose all the loved ones in their 
 last sleep, what a different world this would be. 
 
 A man he was to all the country dear ; 
 
 And passing rich with forty pounds a year. 
 
 Kemote from towns he ran his godly race, 
 
 Nor e'er had changed, nor wished to change, his place ; 
 
POOK SOULS. 185 
 
 Unpractised he to fawn, or seek for power 
 By doctrines fashioned to the varying hour. 
 Far other aims his heart had learned to prize 
 More skilled to raise the wretched than to rise. 
 
 At church, with meek and unaffected grace, 
 His looks adorned the venerable place ; 
 Truth from his lips prevailed with double sway, 
 And fools who came to scoff remained to pray. 
 
 To relieve the wretched was his pride, 
 And even his failings leaned to virtue's side 
 But in his duty, prompt at every call, 
 He watched and wept, he prayed and felt for all : 
 And, as a bird each fond endearment tries 
 To tempt its new-fledged offspring to the skies, 
 Hex tried each art, reproved each dull delay, 
 Allured to brighter worlds, and led the way. 
 
 You and I are both old enough to remem- 
 ber those heroes in the ministry, who went 
 with the axe and civilization into the forests ; 
 who climbed mountains, swam rivers, and 
 fought savages and wild beasts and hunger, 
 to carry the Word to the careless or erring 
 or wretched in every cabin. How different, 
 think you, were they, and are their successors 
 
186 HALF TINTS. 
 
 generally, from the petted favorite of a rich 
 church in an opulent city, whose membership 
 and attendants sail the dizzying maelstrom of 
 fashion, and move omnipotently in the mys- 
 teries of markets and corporations. The old 
 metal of orthodoxy, in the same tone and 
 measure for ages, has hammered out impres- 
 sively: ' Saved by grace saved by grace 
 saved by grace ; ' but the full chime in the 
 splendid temple, in tones agreeable to ears 
 accustomed to melody, liberally varies it : 
 4 Taste taste saved by taste saved by taste.' 
 The occupant of the carved pulpit, 'whose 
 wants are only imaginary, kneels upon cush- 
 ions of velvet, and thanks gracious Heaven for 
 having made the circumstances of all mankind 
 so extremely happy.' Material demands upon 
 him being paid by checks upon his banker, he 
 is profoundly ignorant of the petty shifts of 
 the multitude. Here and there, in the pews 
 nearest the pulpit, repose in fresh raiment and 
 elegance, representatives of every institution 
 of finance and commerce, and their joint pos- 
 
POOR SOULS. 187 
 
 sessions impress him with the fulness of benefi- 
 cence. To illustrate his theme, he is not 
 limited to average experience, but is expected 
 to range beyond and above it. He is under- 
 stood to know the world in an enlarged way ; 
 and if his figures or examples suggest the 
 successes or power of his hearers, their com- 
 placency is stimulated if their hearts are not 
 softened. He is not to shock by an exposure 
 of subtlety which circumvents, or combination 
 which oppresses, but to soothe by a glittering 
 exhibition of ends and attainments. The pos- 
 session of money, in whatever prodigious quan- 
 tity, is not to be questioned, but only the love 
 of it. A little ingenuity will comfort the 
 possessor by suggesting his expenditures, and 
 make him for the time being as conspicuous 
 in the sanctuary as his equipage makes him in 
 the avenue. Wretches, in degradation and 
 sores, are not to be exposed to eyes accus- 
 tomed to beauty and plenitude, but the great 
 establishment provided for them is displayed 
 and admired exhaustingly in all the terms of 
 
188 HALF TINTS. 
 
 descriptive architecture. The rheumy mendi- 
 cant is at home in the beautiful hospital, 
 happy with his fellows, and generous taxation, 
 not importunity, sustains him. Cases of indi- 
 vidual suffering are covered from view by the 
 general provision, the sight of which would 
 only disgust or humiliate. Discipline turns 
 the key, and the tract society preaches by 
 assortment in bundles. Reduced gentility, 
 the only respectable wretchedness, too proud 
 for the mission, and too helpless to risk soli- 
 tude, is not forbidden the temple, but fills a 
 corner and enjoys patronage. A smiling or 
 waving welcome is generously paid in conde- 
 scension. Self-sacrifice a habit, the means of 
 grace are cheap when purchased by obeisance. 
 Abasement, to the proud, is so allied with 
 humility, that the hungry soul is nourished 
 by it and exalted. The old path is pleasant, 
 and the old company solacing, even if trailing 
 behind at a respectful distance. The bruised 
 heart seems most at home with those who 
 know its bruises. Woe of every sort needs a 
 
POOR SOULS. 189 
 
 certain ear to hear it, and will utter itself to 
 such, if but to be pitied. The light of dia- 
 monds is most coveted by those who once 
 reigned in its splendor. But for these poor 
 ones are not the ministrations of the beneficed 
 ^ divine adapted. His tones are pitched to the 
 ears of those they beseech, to whom he owes 
 all, and from whom he expects even more. 
 Their courtly presence he has enjoyed till 
 their moral atmosphere has become his own, 
 and his passions flow much in the same cur- 
 rents with theirs. To apply Massillon, < he is 
 naturally attentive to refrain from every thing 
 calculated to make them melancholy ; eager 
 to conciliate their affections, and make them 
 pleased with him ; careful to speak to them 
 only the language of peace, confidence, and 
 mercy ; and instead of frightening them on 
 account of their sins, encourages them, and 
 in his mildness furnishes them a resource 
 against the secret alarms of conscience.' It 
 were too much to expect him to pass from the 
 gay saloons of fashion and mammon to the 
 
190 HALF TINTS. 
 
 feet of the altar, c there to pray for himself 
 and his people, there to avert the righteous 
 anger, there to deplore the wickedness of a 
 world he has just applauded, and in which 
 he has taken part, and there to attend upon 
 the holy mysteries with that silence of the 
 senses, that profound recollection, that reli- 
 gious terror, that majestic gravity, and that 
 calmness of heart and mind which are neces- 
 sary in the spiritual employment of the min- 
 istry.' 
 
 His discourses are essays to gratify taste, 
 adorned by allusions to pictures and orna- 
 ments and usages, which his hearers are just 
 now enjoying ; or arguments to qualify and 
 ennoble worldliness, which possesses and in- 
 vests them ; or rhapsodies to solace their indif- 
 ference to uncertainties and perils, which their 
 busy lives of idleness or occupation give them 
 no time to contemplate. Once a year the 
 golden rule is dwelt upon, to harmonize and 
 conciliate commercial niceties. Refinement 
 and speciousness may display themselves upon 
 
POOR SOTJLS. 191 
 
 so sober a generality. If not a vague abstrac- 
 tion, it may be only relative in its application 
 to life, as honesty in the common sense is not 
 integrity. Honor is the practicable and neces- 
 sary rule. The speculator may have it, and 
 trade by it, and reap advantages from it, 
 even if his ingenuous friend be ruined by 
 his scheme. Thief he may morally be, and 
 a beggar his dupe, but the contract must be 
 fulfilled, and justice indorse it. As the ethics 
 to govern in the settlement between man and 
 his Maker, with character only in judgment, 
 the golden rule is unquestionable, but not in 
 the court of the money-changers, where honor 
 alone must gild the edges of promises. With 
 the motives of the heart God may deal. Man 
 must have his due. 
 
 Love and mercy, alternating, are the usual 
 and encouraging themes. Conscience, in the 
 very crises of alarm, has its terrors converted 
 into blessings, by believing consciousness of 
 crime an awakening of contrition. The 
 extremity of evil appears the beginning of 
 
192 HALF TINTS. 
 
 forgiveness. A life wasted by vices drops to 
 be caught in the arms of virtue, and winged 
 hopes are given it by mercy it has only out- 
 raged. Man is abased and degraded that love 
 and mercy may exalt him. Evil is a possible 
 merit if good is to come of it. The use of 
 man to employ a God. Creature and Creator 
 cooperating. Self-love and the attributes of 
 Deity harmonized. 
 
 He is a pretty preacher for young people. 
 His manner moves them like the bursting 
 spring. His similes are of buds and blossoms 
 and fresh verdure. His soft words and gentle 
 gestures winnow fragrance. He expands a 
 flower in advancing to his climax. His bloom- 
 ing virtues inspire goodness, as modest Pic- 
 ciola enforced wisdom. His soft cambric a 
 moment obscures his eyes, as the light snow 
 sometimes conceals the violet; but they get 
 new sweetness from tears, as increased fra- 
 grance results from bruising. Young maidens, 
 blooming with innocence and beauty, and lus- 
 trous with love of every thing lovable, feel a 
 
POOR SOULS. 193 
 
 flush unmoved before by coarser monitors, and 
 aspire afresh to beatitudes just ready for them. 
 The beautiful world, never so beautiful as 
 painted by the beautiful preacher, dissolves 
 in contemplation, and paradise opens and sur- 
 rounds them and all the dear divine in the 
 very midst, as Beatrice appeared in the midst 
 of the great snow-white rose, transfixing her 
 illustrious lover. 
 
 His accuracy and variety of taste make 
 him a connoisseur in every thing pertaining to 
 colors and fabrics. At home everywhere 
 where there, is elegance, contrasts and har- 
 monies have trained him to refinement of 
 observation, and he is at once the artist and 
 arbiter in perplexity. As a relaxation from 
 labor, and to gather resources for the enter- 
 tainment and instruction of his people, he has 
 travelled the Old "World, and seen edifices and 
 pictures and costumes, and his perception of 
 effects is acute and unerring. His indorse- 
 ment of the style of a house, or the beauty of 
 a landscape, or the trimming of a gown 3 is 
 
194 HAJ.F TINTS. 
 
 assurance of grandeur or value or tastefulness. 
 His ethics in the pulpit and sesthetics in the 
 drawing-room are alike acceptable and infal- 
 lible. His fine sense of fitness was illustrated 
 in the choice of a text for his trial sermon : In 
 my Father's house are many mansions. His 
 novel treatment delighted the cultivated pew- 
 owners, and he was chosen at once, leaving 
 the little matter of salary for himself to deter- 
 mine. Orthodox, by the severest test, as far 
 as he went, his sense of architecture and appor- 
 tionment was refreshing. The travelled portion 
 of his audience were reminded, by the exterior 
 he drew, of every renowned structure they had 
 seen, and the more exclusive were delighted 
 by his allotments. Delicate he was, and dis- 
 criminating, to the limit of refinement, but his 
 standard of excellence was not so obscure as 
 not to be sufficiently obvious. Degrees of 
 happiness were determined by development, 
 and that was easy of interpretation. Bliss 
 they had understood before to be relative. En- 
 joyment, as a rule, is measured by capacity. 
 
POOR SOULS. 195 
 
 Incongruity would mar the pleasure even of 
 heaven. Birds of the same plumage have the 
 same song, and would lose their beauty and 
 melody by ill assortment. If on earth division 
 is difficult and temporary, in heaven it must 
 be inevitable and eternal. Beatitude would 
 be qualified if not immutable. Happiness 
 above must have been defined from the foun- 
 dation of the world, as continual jostling would 
 unsettle it. If poor bodies, in faded robes, 
 avoid their betters here, arbitrary mixture 
 hereafter would be oppression. The theory 
 of fitness and likes must solve eternal justice 
 and harmony. Then the appointments of the 
 preacher were as tasteful as his apportionment. 
 Every mansion was differently adorned, and 
 earthly upholstery was shamed by his supernal 
 fancy. The mistresses of mansions received 
 new views of furnishing and ornamentation ; 
 at the same time they were delighted that 
 in so many things their taste was indorsed. 
 In some details he seemed even to describe 
 their own super-terrestrial habitations. Passing 
 
196 HALF TINTS. 
 
 with his imagination from one blissful com- 
 partment to another, they seemed at home in 
 their own parlors and drawing-rooms. Their 
 own gossamer lace curtains, imported by Stew- 
 art, the breezes of paradise fluttered in their 
 faces ; and their own beautiful velvets caressed 
 their footsteps over coverings, not made by 
 hands, eternal. 
 
 In society he is indispensable and charm- 
 ing, and always at ease where angels are 
 sometimes constrained. He pervades and 
 tones the atmosphere like a perfume. His 
 presence harmonizes discords and compounds 
 incompatibles. He contributes of his graces 
 and borrows of its splendors. The gleanings 
 of the week are a resource for Sunday. Like 
 a fish, he gathers food from the living surface ; 
 like a drooping flower, he revives in the sun- 
 shine ; like a wasting soil, he lies fallow for 
 refreshment. Yelvet and damask soothe from 
 his brain its fever. His hand, wearied by 
 composition, rests itself by dalliance. His 
 mind is relieved of weighty reflection by 
 
POOR SOULS. 197 
 
 social philosophy. The long mornings are 
 shortened by confidences. His ear an un- 
 questioned receptacle, he knows more of the 
 mysteries of a household than the householder. 
 Receiving of the gushing tenderness of the 
 lambs of his flock, he unconsciously leads 
 them into green pastures. He composes their 
 ambitions or jealousies or fears, and writes 
 them substantially his followers. They are 
 bound by ties of sacredness, and his honor is 
 at once their stay and sacrament. He is 
 indeed the good shepherd, with the indis- 
 pensable crook and oil, and his protection 
 and consolation are the green thymy nooks 
 of security and promise. 
 
 His relations with society are closer than 
 the physician's, and his services more solemn 
 and responsible. "With the poor body, for a 
 few days or years, the former has to deal, 
 before following it to the grave; the latter 
 has charge of the imperishable, which he must 
 meet in judgment, and answer for. Every 
 taint upon it will appear distinctly in the 
 
198 HALF TINTS. 
 
 luminous light of the great day, and every one 
 he has given it will glare upon him. If he 
 has soothed the conscience to sleep by noxious 
 sympathy or advice, it will pronounce against 
 him in its terrible awakening. If he has 
 stimulated any corrupting desire, in hunger 
 or remorse it will forever haunt him. If he 
 has concealed any wholesome truth, it will 
 flash upon him retributively at the great un- 
 covering. If he has encouraged a lie, its 
 endless effects will discover themselves in con- 
 demnation. If he has pandered to the verge 
 of hypocrisy invented philosophies to flatter 
 worldliness confused worship with ceremony 
 courted power without suggesting respon- 
 sibility helped to degrade integrity to the 
 standard of commercial honor exalted money 
 without regard to the means which obtained 
 it encouraged wine and denounced drunken- 
 ness extolled prodigality and deplored bank- 
 ruptcy admired costly raiment and bewailed 
 demoralization cautioned youth, with only 
 manhood, against marriage, and warned him 
 
POOR SOULS. 199 
 
 of the strange woman counselled with ambi- 
 tious mothers, and inveighed against slander 
 if all or any of these things he has done, he 
 has debauched his holy office, and the mean- 
 est man or woman he has helped to ruin, 
 will forever happy or wretched in sorrow 
 or anger lament that he ever existed. 
 
XIV. 
 
 AND SO FORTH. 
 
XIY. 
 
 AND SO FORTH. 
 
 CKEATTJKE-COMFORTS, Jack, more than are 
 wholesome, are the devil. At least, they are 
 the lap of Delilah. They emasculate and 
 smother. Manliness, the thing every man 
 should stand for, grows without them. Strong 
 roots are made by strong winds. Careful cul- 
 ture and supports give symmetry to the shrub 
 in the conservatory, but the oak of commerce 
 grows alone, amid storms. To the rude soil and 
 the tempest it owes its texture, and it will bear 
 the tests of the seas. You have seen how the 
 branches of trees by the coast or on the moun- 
 tain are sometimes forced by the merciless 
 wind to grow one way; but the wilful roots 
 
204: HALF TINTS. 
 
 combine defiantly and force themselves another. 
 Character is so much resistance and endurance. 
 You remember the indifference of one of our 
 schoolfellows to the freezing November mud, 
 and what a hero he was in the war. Bare- 
 footed generally, he was always at the head 
 of his class. His pitiful luncheon at noontime 
 kept him but a minute from his book. He 
 would be a man, and even poverty helped 
 him. If we jeered, it was cautiously. His 
 calm persistency shamed us. His way was 
 his own, and nothing could divert him. He 
 advanced as if fate led and all invisible powers 
 beckoned. The master even, stern as he was, 
 was subordinate, and seemed never happy but 
 in his service. There is nothing more accre- 
 tive or cumulative than manliness. Every 
 trial gives a new resource, and every conquest 
 a new power. "With each achievement accrues 
 a premium. Growth is obvious, and calcula- 
 ble, and applicable. Every one, boy or man, 
 has read Robinson Crusoe, but every one has 
 not thought why the simple narrative is so 
 
AND SO FOETH. 
 
 205 
 
 interesting. To the curious boy it is the 
 adventures of a man in novel and trying sit- 
 uations ; to the thoughtful adult it is the 
 analysis and display of human powers and 
 resources. It is metaphysics illustrated in 
 intellect on trial. In straits we are to see if 
 the solitary man is to survive a hero. With- 
 out ordinary helps, he is to supply himself by 
 invention. He masters extremity, and appears 
 noble in achievement. He is exalted without 
 applause or patronage. Humanity is vindi- 
 cated and sublimated. ' It is a poor and dis- 
 graceful thing, not to be able to reply, with 
 some degree of certainty, to the simple ques- 
 tions, What will you be ? What will you do ? ' 
 To cut the cable and launch away from con- 
 ventional restraints and helps, is the aspiration 
 of every man at some time in life. His indi- 
 viduality feels fettered and shorn. Before he 
 consents to surrender and subordination, he 
 aspires to be tried by trusts, and perils, and 
 calamities. The natural man is radical, and 
 is reluctant to believe his way not the best. 
 
206 HALF TINTS. 
 
 He would show it, and make others walk in 
 it. Quitting the belief that there is some- 
 thing in him more than appears, is the first 
 death. With it is interred his genius. A 
 record of the solemn entombment is made in 
 all the waste places it leaves. The coldest 
 man who has read Alton Locke has felt a 
 certain kinship to the hero. If he despised 
 his theories, his memory was illumined by 
 the lurid light of his enthusiasms. Mourn- 
 fully were reanimated the aspirations which 
 spent themselves upon restraints which at 
 one time encaged him. True manhood is 
 shy of conventionality and patronage. It is 
 self-asserting, and is rarely arm-in-arm, but 
 for recreation. It gives and takes of its own 
 will. It husbands by determining without 
 counsel. Its reserve conciliates what it may 
 appropriate. The average it can drop to when 
 not avoidable, and as readily rise out of when 
 not indispensable. It is democratic, essen- 
 tially. It requires and permits, alike. While 
 it chooses, it gives choice, without question. 
 
AND SO FORTH. 207 
 
 Freedom it claims and allows, an immunity 
 without gyves. A receptacle, it can wait 
 to receive, and would not obstruct nor be 
 obstructed. A week were not idle if it 
 brought something, but a day would be 
 wasted if employed upon nothings. Its free- 
 dom is its strength, which modish subserv- 
 iency acknowledges in obeisance. Its facul- 
 ties are fitted for work by waiting for work 
 worthy of them. Friction it likes, but not 
 machine movement. The principles it would 
 train to grooves are as virginal and unpolished 
 as when spoken of God. True pleasure be- 
 trays the same shyness and freedom. It is not 
 to be caught and kept by arbitrary provision. 
 Mansions, curtained by clouds, carpeted by 
 woven sunbeams, perfumed by essences of 
 every thing fragrant, filled by loveliest maid- 
 ens on earth, could not lure it to stay forever. 
 It would flutter unbidden into the terrestrial 
 paradise, and fly away as wilfully into an 
 attic, where only a desolate heart awaited it. 
 While its angel-like presence in the brilliant 
 
208 HALF TINTS. 
 
 saloon would be accepted the contribution of 
 a natural guest, its visitation to the skyward 
 chamber would be a gift of Heaven, an answer 
 to despairing prayer, a compensation for all the 
 unnumbered woes of a solitary human soul. 
 Men generally are as indolent as they can 
 afford to be. Unless compelled, they do little 
 which is useful, and utility is the crown of 
 labor. Only now and then a high nature is 
 created which works from love, and is content 
 with a tithe of the harvest. Nine parts to 
 mankind is a generous division, and only a 
 great soul will spare so much. To such it is 
 not a sacrifice ; his return is in multiplied 
 blessings. Exemption from useful labor is the 
 ambition or boast of nearly all. Trifling for 
 selfish ends is therefore the business of most 
 of those who can confine themselves to volun- 
 tary effort. They are perverted by a misuse 
 of means. They rely upon the adventitious, 
 till the natural intrinsic resources deny them 
 service. They go out of themselves for pleas- 
 ure, and return to find themselves empty. 
 
AND SO FORTH. 209 
 
 They build palaces, and exist in them the 
 victims of ceremony and servants. They buy 
 books to adorn libraries, which satirize them. 
 They buy pianos as ambitious ornaments, and 
 patronize the opera. They educate their 
 daughters expensively, and see them accept 
 impertinence and imbecility for escorts and 
 husbands. Their sons are indulged and pam- 
 pered, till amusements are exhausted and 
 occupation is purchased, to keep them respect- 
 able. *They ride in carriages so conspicuously 
 elegant as to make them sacrifice comfort to 
 propriety. Their horsfes represent so much 
 capital that the weather and their health are 
 consulted before using them. Their acquaint- 
 ances are esteemed for ;the rank they have 
 and give. Their houses are heated by fur- 
 naces to secure a uniform temperature, and 
 day and night they inhale a baked atmos- 
 phere, and wonder at disturbed respiration. 
 Pipes conduct cold and warm water into 
 chambers and kitchen, and they take poison 
 in all they drink and eat, and are surprised 
 
210 HALF TINTS. 
 
 by palsy and the increase of nervous disorders. 
 The wine-cellar, meant to be a depository of 
 luxuries, becomes a resource against wasting 
 vitality. The laugh of the fields and the streets 
 is reproduced in ghastly caricature behind the 
 vari-colored goblets. A joke upon the high 
 price of bread redeems a dullard, and the 
 whole table from dulness. The children are 
 cared for by nurses, and their natures modified 
 by restraints and drugs, till feebleness and 
 pitiful cries identify them. The doctor's visits 
 are as indispensable as the baker's or hair- 
 dresser's, and the household eat as they dose, 
 by prescription. The priest drops in to solace 
 the moments between drugging and dressing. 
 Life is taken up by the endless round of arti- 
 ficialities and their effects, till the struggles 
 and wants of the million they deplore compare 
 with them as blessings. The inspiration of 
 work is the spirit of life. Bread for the 
 body, earned by the hardest, is ambrosia for 
 the soul. Sweet for the sweat it costs, it is 
 sweeter for the promise it gives. It satisfies 
 
AND SO FORTH. 211 
 
 the appetite, but not the longing insatiable. 
 The little feast is but a foretaste of fruition. 
 The sickly atmosphere of affluence, tempered 
 to tender throats and low enunciation, is gath- 
 ered from cellars bordered by sewers, and 
 would choke a healthy nature, exhausted and 
 exhaustive by exertion. The great lungs of 
 out-door labor inspire the upper air of heaven, 
 and pant for inspirations from its source. 
 To-morrow, on the way with the sun, will 
 demand a full day's service, which to-day's 
 fidelity must assure. To-morrow and to-mor- 
 row, and then the day supernal, long enough 
 for any longing, an unending harvest and 
 holiday. Making and earning money are 
 different. Earning it is a reality ; making it 
 a fiction. Money makes money ; labor earns 
 it. Bonds, proverbially, like infants, do best 
 by sleeping; labor must be wide awake, and 
 faithful. A dollar, for ten hours in the sun, 
 is precious ; a dollar, got in the dark, which 
 cannot be accounted for, is worse than want. 
 Knotted hands tell of the one ; nimbleness 
 
212 HALF TINTS. 
 
 or nothing tells of the other. We exalt and 
 reverence the poet ; but a machine built from 
 the ore of the mountain is as much a creation 
 as an epic, and fills the imagination of the 
 builder with poetic glories. "Who sings an 
 immortal song may be jealous of the fame 
 of him who trains the elements to pointing 
 pins and sailing steamships. "Who has gone 
 down, down among the machinery of the Great 
 Eastern, and not felt a contempt for his buy- 
 ing and selling and pleasuring occupations? 
 Transfixed in the presence of tremendous 
 power, the genius which discovered and tamed 
 and trained it, loomed in transfiguration, and 
 confused his memories of even Niagara and 
 Yo-Semite. The mastery of the engines over 
 the powers of the sea, overcame his arithmetic, 
 and his bonds and ledgers burnt in the blaze 
 of divinity. The slender crank which rules 
 the waves, appeared to his feeble sense the 
 fiat of Omnipotence. Power is restful and 
 invisible. It slivers the oak, and the splin- 
 tered column is a memorial. The fragrant 
 
AND SO FOKTH. 213 
 
 wood is untainted by the mighty fluid, and 
 smells not of experiment or spent forces. It 
 rives the rock, and its fissured inscriptions 
 Old Mortality may never deepen. Granite is 
 blasted by gunpowder ; millstones are quarried 
 by a gentler but mightier agent. Wedges of 
 dry wood are inserted, and water poured upon 
 them. Over night they swell, and the precious 
 rocks separate, noiselessly as. death treads, free 
 of any treacherous seam, and night and day, 
 for years, like the mills of God, they grind 
 exceeding fine. Gray wrought silently and 
 patiently for a thousand days upon a thousand 
 words, and his matchless Elegy will be the 
 expression of tenderness while any tongue is 
 left to utter it, and will remain in memory 
 when human tongues are silent and superfluous. 
 Goldsmith, hungry and bailiff-hunted, in naked 
 and desolate chambers, nursed through all the 
 years of his prime, through all the sacred 
 watches of consciousness, through the wasting 
 agonies of waiting and depression, through 
 the rare and rapturous moments of exalta- 
 
HALF TINTS. 
 
 tion, his little romance of humanity, and 
 would not let it go till bread, remorseless 
 bread, demanded it. In the silent womb of 
 profound human nature it was nourished by 
 tears and shaped by aspirations, and its birth 
 was an epoch in life and literature. The 
 tawdry in book-making has ever since been 
 cautious of flaunting its meretricious arts, and 
 the simple Vicar is accepted a model in narra- 
 tive, and an encouragement to the pure human- 
 ity it describes. Simple nature is strongest, 
 as simple work is healthiest. Whirled in every 
 little eddy, it would be weakened or wasted by 
 purposeless motion, and would forget the in- 
 spiration of currents. It would be fretted by 
 the incidents of progress, and lose conscious- 
 ness of destination. "Will, even, is perishable, 
 if not in exercise. Purpose alone will nour- 
 ish and exalt it. Amusements give it but a 
 sickly growth, if they do not destroy it. Mere 
 living is not a worthy object of life. True life 
 is above the means which sustain it. Equa- 
 nimity has an eye to results beyond the mo- 
 
AND SO FORTH. 215 
 
 ment. Only the beasts that perish are content 
 to be merely fed. Accessaries are not the 
 purpose of a living picture, much less of life. 
 The nervous tread of a true man means more 
 than movement; it betrays absorbment, and 
 looks to an end worth attaining. Idleness has 
 every gait, and none long. Whim changes it. 
 Nothing to do is the worst want of nature, 
 and the most exhausting. It tests severely the 
 best minds and morals. Ennui is weariness 
 which has nothing to show. The tired hod- 
 man counts the courses in the wall. Languor 
 presses its nose against the pane, and dreamily 
 questions the vitality it muses on and envies. 
 Earned leisure is most relished. Pure joy is 
 a costly article. Diamonds are worn outside ; 
 jewels more brilliant beam within. A little 
 time for pleasure is precious ; time for nothing 
 else is burdensome. Accessaries contribute to 
 happiness, but do not create it. The good 
 goddess is jealous, and shy of rivals. She is 
 reluctant to obtrude where gold and silver 
 images are set up and worshipped in her 
 
216 HALF TINTS. 
 
 stead. Her nature and movements are free, 
 her robes flowing, and she requires room, and 
 a generous welcome. Job, by virtue of his 
 celibacy, is confined to no social set, and his 
 opportunities for observation sometimes make 
 him an authority. In one night he met three 
 companies, made up of as many grades, as 
 they are called, of society. The first was com- 
 posed of persons who begin their labors with 
 the sun, and seven o'clock was the early hour 
 of meeting. The ladies were cheerful in sim- 
 plicity and health and plain dresses, and plain 
 cake and walnuts were the refreshments. The 
 second was gathered from a class of greater 
 pretensions and privileges, and met at the 
 more respectable hour of nine. The ladies 
 and gentlemen were more elaborately dressed, 
 but, by constraint and anxiety of manner, be- 
 trayed uneasiness of position. The wine was 
 tasted and discussed in a way which betrayed 
 that it was not an accustomed beverage. The 
 third assemblage was of the cream of the 
 town, and was arriving and departing in state 
 
AND SO FOKTH. 217 
 
 carriages all the time from ten till early morn- 
 ing. The ladies' dresses were so marvellous 
 in novelty and texture and brilliancy, as to 
 engross attention, and make the poor bodies in 
 them pitiable. The costly refreshments were 
 served by imported servants, undistinguish- 
 able from guests in dress, manners, or lan- 
 guage. Job is a ready and adaptable fellow, 
 and enjoyed each ; but the first, he says, over 
 the plate of walnuts and gingerbread, incom- 
 parably most. Simple, open natures, the light 
 streams through. They are known and read 
 of all men. They are individual, and never 
 mistaken. They stand for ideas, and facts, 
 and deeds. Rectitude identifies them ; ' cele- 
 brated not by cries of joy, but by serenity, 
 which is joy fixed or habitual.' The extrinsic 
 is their foreground ; the inherent their per- 
 spective, illimitable. Trial quickens and re- 
 fines them. Wants supply and pangs console 
 them. Calamities become resources, treasures 
 which do not waste, entailed for precious uses, 
 
 perpetuated in goodness, or fame, or glory. 
 10 
 
218 HALF TINTS. 
 
 A poor mother, whom the care of an afflicted 
 child has hurried to the grave, is crowned for 
 her virtues where there is no suffering. Suf- 
 fering little Charlotte Bronte, on her knee, by 
 the firelight, in the cold parsonage, in painful 
 characters, wrote herself into immortal narra- 
 tive. Through all the rapture and agony of 
 De Quincey's sublime and terrible Confes- 
 sions, is heard the wail and cough of poor 
 Ann. Milton, in the solitude of mortal dark- 
 ness, with an eye strong enough to pierce the 
 sun and rend the veil, saw the invisible and 
 eternal, and painted them in shadows and 
 glories unfading and immortal. 
 
 *, 
 
 
 
 * 
 
XV. 
 
 OUT OF THE WINDOW. 
 
 . 
 
XY. 
 
 OUT OF THE WINDOW. 
 
 A GEEAT city has a certain look of repose, 
 but it is the repose of power. A million of 
 people so crowded together as to be waked by 
 the report of a columbiad, must of necessity 
 be self-possessed, occupied, and in earnest. 
 A hundred hands are in waiting for the con- 
 tents of a pocket. Every one must ever be 
 busy and on his guard or he will starve or 
 be robbed. To look at the million-headed 
 thing, you would think it abstracted or indif- 
 ferent ; but such a convolution of sensations 
 and sensibilities want, plethora, jealousy, 
 pride, ambition, hatred, Conscious crime, de- 
 spairis a congeries of activities the slightest 
 
222 HALF TINTS. 
 
 accident may agitate into a tumult. Its face 
 may dimple at an inharmonious combination 
 of colors in a lady's attire, and a moment 
 afterward it will see the grotesquest of all 
 things without a smile. At one time it will 
 risk its security to avenge a slight, at another 
 endure oppression without a whimper. A 
 man dead in the street may not much more 
 apparently attract its attention than a dead 
 omnibus-horse. One person stopping to ask 
 after the unfortunate man would excuse 
 another to do the same, and the street would 
 be blocked. His curiosity, if he has any, must 
 be stayed till he gets the evening paper with 
 his tea. Nevertheless, every novelty in every 
 shop window is observed, and an aged woman 
 or careless child cannot cross the dangerous 
 street without fastening anxiously every eye. 
 Let the prodigious mass alone, and it will 
 walk round you ; get in its way, and it will 
 close upon you forever. 
 
 In times of civil distress and extremity it 
 most conspicuously displays its shrewdness and 
 
OUT OF THE WINDOW. 223 
 
 power. When the nation is stirred, the material 
 long buried and unrecognized works upward. 
 The burdens put upon it make it active, ner- 
 vous, and irrepressible. A victory or a defeat 
 immediately employs all hands making figures. 
 The blunder of an incompetent commander, 
 and the tempest which scatters a fleet, are 
 shrewdly and sagaciously discounted. The 
 dealers in old clothes, decaying vegetables, 
 poisoned drinks, and the precious metals, have 
 profound theories, which make the schemes of 
 the finance minister tremble and reel. The 
 Sixth Ward and Wall Street agree, without 
 consultation. They see in the diversion of 
 vast numbers of able-bodied men into a new 
 and wasting occupation, that the proportion 
 between those who produce and those who con- 
 sume must be violently affected. They know 
 humanity, its necessities, and its instincts, and 
 scent speculation insensibly. They accept in- 
 flation as the inevitable compensation. They 
 know that with the government for customer, 
 necessitated to buy all the country's surplus, 
 
224 HALF TINTS. 
 
 all they have to do is to mark every thing up, 
 and let the certain results follow. They know 
 that man, so essentially by taste, habit, and 
 necessity, a getting animal, will not neglect 
 so tempting an opportunity to combine against 
 his only customer. A falling stone goes not 
 more directly toward the centre of the earth 
 than the instinct of a trading cit goes to the 
 marrow of a money question. 
 
 The weakness and power of society are 
 exhibited in averages. It reposes in them, 
 and is developed by them. Its classifications, 
 apparently voluntary, are remorseless. All 
 elements must come under control, and be 
 solved. What is not fit for a square hole, 
 must go into a round. Men are classified as 
 trees, and individuals are apparently as alike 
 as the leaves. Heads are so much on a level, 
 that one above the rest is an obstruction. If 
 a quiet blow will reduce it, down it goes. 
 If it will not down, it is out of its grade, and 
 must go into a higher. c To live alone, is the 
 chastisement of whoever will raise himself too 
 
OUT OF THE WINDOW. 225 
 
 high.' What one knows, all are understood 
 to know. Weaknesses and interests are ac- 
 commodated. ~No one has great advantages 
 over another. "What affects one, affects all. 
 Protection to the individual is protection to 
 the class. Plans -he could not originate are 
 ready made. The flow of his life is in a com- 
 mon channel. The full volume and steady 
 current satisfy his efforts, and in the chances 
 of movement float him momentarily to the 
 top. Happy or wretched, he can touch a 
 thousand like him. The best and worst of 
 every thing are at hand, and contiguous. The 
 virtues and vices are organized, and recruit- 
 ing. The great town is the greatest, and he 
 is a part of it. Helping to make it, he does 
 something, and will not have lived in vain. 
 He does not see how, but he would be missed. 
 He expands with the bigness about him. The 
 great assemblage makes him decorous. His 
 conduct disgraces or dignifies it. He dresses 
 to be always presentable to it. It keeps a 
 
 guard over him while he sleeps and knows his 
 
 10* 
 
226 HALF TINTS. 
 
 footsteps when awake. The streets are lit for 
 him. The parks are planted for him. The 
 harbor is broader for his eye. An opera he 
 may hear at the Academy for a guinea, or at 
 the cathedral for a shilling. Church priv- 
 ileges are purchasable or acceptable, at his 
 will. The cemetery, where they bury in 
 tombs and trenches, is one of his possessions. 
 All are his as much as anybody's, and his 
 without exciting anybody's envy or cupidity. 
 Each illustrates the fable of the swimming 
 apples, and applies it to the rest. The little 
 instincts become so marvellously acute, that 
 they assume the dignity of faculties. The 
 faculties are so habitually in use, that they 
 have the look of instincts. In the club, dul- 
 ness becomes respectable. In the town meet- 
 ing, the best heads are in the audience. In 
 the exchange, audacity is wisdom. Wisdom 
 itself is too dumb for an oracle. The street 
 a man lives in fixes his social status. A man, 
 good or great as he may be, is not great or 
 good enough to make his rank. A house on 
 
OUT OF THE WINDOW. 227 
 
 the avenue, a box at the opera, a pew in 
 the church, an establishment for the park, are 
 indices not to be gainsayed. Neither intel- 
 ligence, nor taste, nor virtue, is requisite to 
 possess them. Money, attainable by the worst 
 as well as by the best, and by the worst means, 
 secures them. Neither intellect nor purity is 
 permitted advantages. Distinctions of God 
 were obstructions to men. The standard is 
 determined by possibility. It is the highest 
 attainable by the majority. The universal hat 
 is lifted in condescension and recognition. 
 
 The average wisdom controls society. Pres- 
 idents and assemblies and kings are its crea- 
 tures, or exist by its sufferance. It is the 
 gauge of civilization. It may appear too slow 
 to the seer, or too fast for the philosopher, but 
 the prescience of the one and timidity of the 
 other are not often consulted. It gives a 
 sympathizing ear to the fervid thoughts of 
 reformers and enthusiasts, cooling and util- 
 izing them by diffusion. It takes from the 
 wearied eye and nerve-shaken hand of the 
 
228 HALF TINTS. 
 
 inventor his invention, and puts it to work in 
 the fields and seas. It may have its whimsi- 
 calities, but they are the recreations and gam- 
 bols of power. So generally and intensely 
 preoccupied and absorbed by its occupations, 
 it is but natural that sometimes a little child 
 should lead it. Engaged in emancipating 
 races, it finds time to fill the shop-windows with 
 caricatures of the grotesque side of the tre- 
 mendous process. The few, consciously strong 
 or presumptuous, who have been helped up- 
 ward by its generosity, may fret that it will 
 not always continue to aid and elevate them. 
 The roominess and freedom above are in such 
 contrast with the jostling and competition 
 below, that they cry out for prerogatives. 
 Democracy is good while its uses can be 
 turned to account, but when independence of 
 it is sought and fails, it is complained of as 
 agrarian. Its favoritism is fickle and quali- 
 fied. It delights to scatter its gifts, and limit 
 their tenure to subordination. Individuals 
 may be its favorites until they assume to be, 
 
OUT OF THE WINDOW. 229 
 
 when they are not. The rights it would 
 secure to each are not incompatible with the 
 rights of any. It aims to elevate every citi- 
 zen ; not so much for personal benefit as for 
 public use. It designs opportunity to all, 
 rather than advantages -to any. It means that 
 every man shall have a fair chance to make 
 his own way. Scholarship is not the end; 
 but peaceful and enlightened society, gov- 
 erned by humane and beneficent laws. 
 
 Demonstrations which sometimes appear 
 revolutionary and suicidal, prove -but detec- 
 tive police movements for self-preservation. 
 Masses sometimes seem infatuated by dan- 
 gerous demagogues until thoroughly made 
 acquainted with their designs, when the mis- 
 chief is exposed, and the mischief-makers are 
 overwhelmed. The ready attention given to 
 ambitious factionists beguiles them to ruin. 
 If the public ear can be so easily had, why 
 not its strong right hand, with a dagger in it 2 
 Thousands are got to subscribe a compact of 
 defiance of authority, and the leaders in the 
 
230 HALF TINTS. 
 
 scheme of treason are confident of its suc- 
 cess. The roll of names attains an immeas- 
 urable length, and the time for indiscrimi- 
 nate slaughter of loyalty arrives. The signal 
 agreed upon and perfectly understood is given, 
 when the whole devilish plot appears a failure 
 to its inventors. Those enrolled to participate 
 in the parricidal crime, expose and identify 
 their leaders, join in exultation at their dis- 
 grace and ruin, and a purer patriotism is 
 established. Desperate disorganizers misin- 
 terpret public impatience. Their own hearts 
 corrupted, and bent upon disruption and rev- 
 olution, they assume as much perfidy and 
 baseness in those who listen to and seem to 
 sympathize with them. Popular discontent 
 cannot easily be organized into revolt. An 
 attempt to organize it, while a particle of 
 gratitude or hope remains, will only quicken 
 a remembrance of benefits, and warm the 
 common heart to a more fervid attachment. 
 Once put upon its guard, no temptation can 
 seduce it. 
 
OUT OF THE WINDOW. 231 
 
 In the natural tendency of society to 
 average itself is manifested its security and 
 promise. It is the common sense and the 
 common law of life. It governs the Gov- 
 ernment, and every man. It is the spirit of 
 democracy. American civilization is its best 
 fruit. There the rulers are citizens, and every 
 citizen is a possible ruler. It puts a hope into 
 every heart, and helps it to pray as well as to 
 work. It fosters ideas of progression, which 
 grow into system, and methodize thought and 
 exertion. It makes tests for creeds and plat- 
 forms, and widens their scope and purpose to 
 a generous breadth and humanity. Sects 
 and parties must consult it, or fall apart. In 
 its providence, it cares for all, the little and 
 the great, the strong and the feeble. Its 
 modes may appear levelling processes, but 
 the valleys of shadow are lifted up. The 
 sun, if it does not glitter upon a promon- 
 tory, warms the plain to produce a generous 
 harvest. If genius be a little crippled in its 
 wing, it is to teach it a steadier flight. If 
 
232 HALF TINTS. 
 
 the beauty and grandeur of the everlasting 
 hills be a little obscured by cultivation, the 
 royal vintage will make glad the heart of 
 man. 
 
 THE END. 
 
Half tints. 
 
 832765 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY