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Timothy Titcomb >> Lessons in Life
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LESSONS IN LIFE.
A SERIES OF FAMILIAR ESSAYS.
BY
TIMOTHY TITCOMB,
AUTHOR OF "LETTERS TO THE YOUNG," "GOLD-FOIL," ETC.
PREFACE.
The quick and cordial reception which greeted the author's
"Letters to the Young," and his more recent series of essays
entitled "Gold Foil," and the constant and substantial friendship
which has been maintained by the public toward those productions,
must stand as his apology for this third venture in a kindred
field of effort. It should be--and probably is--unnecessary for
the author to say that in this book, as in its predecessors, he
has aimed to be neither brilliant nor profound. He has endeavored,
simply, to treat in a familiar and attractive way a few of the
more prominent questions which concern the life of every
thoughtful man and woman. Indeed, he can hardly pretend to have
done more than to organize, and put into form, the average
thinking of those who read his books--to place before the people
the sum of their own choicer judgments--and he neither expects nor
wishes for these essays higher praise than that which accords to
them the quality of common sense.
SPRINGFIELD, MASS., _November_, 1861.
CONTENTS.
LESSON I. MOODS AND FRAMES OF MIND
LESSON II. BODILY IMPERFECTIONS AND IMPEDIMENTS
LESSON III. ANIMAL CONTENT
LESSON IV. REPRODUCTION IN KIND
LESSON V. TRUTH AND TRUTHFULNESS
LESSON VI. MISTAKES OF PENANCE
LESSON VII. THE RIGHTS OF WOMAN
LESSON VIII. AMERICAN PUBLIC EDUCATION
LESSON IX. PERVERSENESS
LESSON X. UNDEVELOPED RESOURCES
LESSON XI. GREATNESS IN LITTLENESS
LESSON XII. RURAL LIFE
LESSON XIII. REPOSE
LESSON XIV. THE WAYS OF CHARITY
LESSON XV. MEN OF ONE IDEA
LESSON XVI. SHYING PEOPLE
LESSON XVII. FAITH IN HUMANITY
LESSON XVIII. SORE SPOTS AND SENSITIVE SPOTS
LESSON XIX. THE INFLUENCE OF PRAISE
LESSON XX. UNNECESSARY BURDENS
LESSON XXI. PROPER PEOPLE AND PERFECT PEOPLE
LESSON XXII. THE POETIC TEST
LESSON XXIII. THE FOOD OF LIFE
LESSON XXIV. HALF-FINISHED WORK
LESSONS IN LIFE.
LESSON I.
MOODS AND FRAMES OF MIND.
"That blessed mood
In which the burden of the mystery,
In which the heavy and the weary weight
Of all this unintelligible world
Is lightened." WORDSWORTH.
"Oh, blessed temper, whose unclouded ray
Can make to-morrow cheerful as to-day."
POPE.
"My heart and mind and self, never in tune;
Sad for the most part, then in such a flow
Of spirits, I seem now hero, now buffoon."
LEIGH HUNT.
It rained yesterday; and, though it is midsummer, it is
unpleasantly cool to-day. The sky is clear, with almost a
steel-blue tint, and the meadows are very deeply green. The
shadows among the woods are black and massive, and the whole
face of nature looks painfully clean, like that of a healthy
little boy who has been bathed in a chilly room with very cold
water. I notice that I am sensitive to a change like this, and
that my mind goes very reluctantly to its task this morning.
I look out from my window, and think how delightful it would be
to take a seat in the sun, down under the fence, across the
street. It seems to me that if I could sit there awhile, and get
warm, I could think better and write better. Toasting in the
sunlight is conducive rather to reverie than thought, or I should
be inclined to try it. This reluctance to commence labor, and
this looking out of the window and longing for an accession of
strength, or warmth, or inspiration, or something or other not
easily named, calls back to me an experience of childhood.
It was summer, and I was attending school. The seats were hard,
and the lessons were dry, and the walls of the school-room were
very cheerless. An indulgent, sweet-faced girl was my teacher; and
I presume that she felt the irksomeness of the confinement quite
as severely as I did. The weather was delightful, and the birds
were singing everywhere; and the thought came to me, that if I
could only stay out of doors, and lie down in the shadow of a
tree, I could get my lesson. I begged the privilege of trying the
experiment. The kind heart that presided over the school-room
could not resist my petition; so I was soon lying in the coveted
shadow. I went to work very severely; but the next moment found
my eyes wandering; and heart, feeling, and fancy were going up and
down the earth in the most vagrant fashion. It was hopeless
dissipation to sit under the tree; and discovering a huge rock on
the hillside, I made my way to that, to try what virtue there
might be in a shadow not produced by foliage. Seated under the
brow of the boulder, I again applied myself to the dim-looking
text, but it had become utterly meaningless; and a musical cricket
under the rock would have put me to sleep if I had permitted
myself to remain. I found that neither tree nor rock would lend me
help; but down in the meadow I saw the brook sparkling, and
spanning it, a little bridge where I had been accustomed to sit,
hanging my feet over the water, and angling for minnows. It seemed
as if the bridge and the water might do something for me, and, in
a few minutes, my feet were dangling from the accustomed seat.
There, almost under my nose, close to the bottom of the clear,
cool stream, lay a huge speckled trout, fanning the sand with his
slow fins, and minding nothing about me at all. What could a boy
do with Colburn's First Lessons, when a living trout, as large and
nearly as long as his arm, lay almost within the reach of his
fingers? How long I sat there I do not know, but the tinkle of a
distant bell startled me, and I startled the trout, and fish and
vision faded before the terrible consciousness that I knew less of
my lesson than I did when I left the school-house.
This has always been my fortune when running after, or looking
for, moods. There is a popular hallucination that makes of
authors a romantic people who are entirely dependent upon moods
and moments of inspiration for the power to labor in their
peculiar way. Authors are supposed to write when they "feel like
it," and at no other time. Visions of Byron with a gin-bottle at
his side, and a beautiful woman hanging over his shoulder, dashing
off a dozen stanzas of Childe Harold at a sitting, flit through
the brains of sentimental youth. We hear of women who are seized
suddenly by an idea, as if it were a colic, or a flea, often at
midnight, and are obliged to rise and dispose of it in some way.
We are told of very delicate girls who carry pencils and cards
with them, to take the names and address of such angels as may
visit them in out-of-the-way places. We read of poets who go on
long sprees, and after recovery retire to their rooms and work
night and day, eating not and sleeping little, and in some
miraculous way producing wonderful literary creations. The mind of
a literary man is supposed to be like a shallow summer brook, that
turns a mill. There is no water except when it rains, and the
weather being very fickle, it is never known when there will be
water. Sometimes, however, there comes a freshet, and then the
mill runs night and day, until the water subsides, and another dry
time comes on.
Now, while I am aware, as every writer must be, that the brain
works very much better at some times than it does at others, I can
declare without reservation, that no man who depends upon moods
for the power to write can possibly accomplish much. I know men
who rely upon their moods, alike for the disposition and the
ability to write, but they are, without exception, lazy and
inefficient men. They never have accomplished much, and they never
will accomplish much. Regular eating, regular sleeping, regular
working--these are the secrets of all true literary success. A
man may throw off a single little poem by a spasm, but he cannot
write a poem of three thousand lines by spasms. Spasms that
produce poems like this, must last from five to seven hours a day,
through six days of every week, and four weeks of every month,
until the work shall be finished. There is no good reason why the
mind will not do its best by regular exercise and usage. The mower
starts in the morning with a lame back and with aching joints; but
he keeps on mowing, and the glow rises, and the perspiration
starts, and he becomes interested in his labor, and, at length, he
finds himself at work with full efficiency. He was not in the mood
for mowing when he began, but mowing brought its own mood, and he
knew it would when he began. The mind is sometimes lame in the
morning. It refuses to go to work. Our wills seem entirely
insufficient to drive it to its tasks; but if it be driven to its
work and held to it persistently, and held thus every day, it will
ultimately be able to do its best every day. A man who works his
brains for a living, must work them just as regularly as the
omnibus-driver does his horses.
We sometimes go to church and hear a preacher who depends upon his
moods for the power to preach his best. He preaches well, and we
say that he is in the mood; and then again he preaches poorly, and
we say that he is not in the mood. A public singer who has the
power to move us at her will, comes into the concert-room, and
gives her music without spirit and without making any apparent
effort to please. We say that Madame or Mademoiselle is "not in
the mood to-night." A lecturer has his moods, which, apparently,
he slips on and off as he would a dressing-gown, charming the
people of one town by his eloquence and elegance, and disgusting
another by his dullness and carelessness. We are in the habit of
saying that certain men are very unequal in their performances,
which is only a way of saying that they are moody, and dependent
upon and controlled by moods. I think that, in any work or walk of
life, a man can in a great degree become the master of his moods,
so that, as a preacher, or a singer, or a lecturer, he can do his
best every time quite as regularly as a writer can do his best
every time. Mr. Benedict somewhat inelegantly remarked, when in
this country, that the reason of Jenny Lind's success was, that
she "made a conscience of her art." If we had asked Mr. Benedict
to explain himself, he probably would have said that she
conscientiously did her best every time, in every place. This was
true of Jenny Lind. She never failed. She sang just as well in the
old church where the country people had flocked to greet her, as
in the halls of the metropolis. Yet Jenny Lind was decidedly a
woman of moods, and indulged in them when she could afford it.
The power of the will over moods of the mind is very noticeable in
children. Children often rise in the morning in any thing but an
amiable frame of mind. Petulant, impatient, quarrelsome, they
cannot be spoken to or touched without producing an explosion of
ill-nature. Sleep seems to have been a bath of vinegar to them,
and one would think the fluid had invaded their mouth and nose,
and eyes and ears, and had been absorbed by every pore of their
sensitive skins. In a condition like this, I have seen them bent
over the parental knee, and their persons subjected to blows from
the parental palm; and they have emerged from the infliction with
the vinegar all expelled, and their faces shining like the
morning--the transition complete and satisfactory to all the
parties. Three-quarters of the moods that men and women find
themselves in, are just as much under the control of the will as
this. The man who rises in the morning, with his feelings all
bristling like the quills of a hedge-hog, simply needs to be
knocked down. Like a solution of certain salts, he requires a rap
to make him crystallize. A great many mean things are done in the
family for which moods are put forward as the excuse, when the
moods themselves are the most inexcusable things of all. A man or
a woman in tolerable health has no moral right to indulge in an
unpleasant mood, or to depend upon moods for the performance of
the duties of life. If a bad mood come to such persons as these,
it is to be shaken off by a direct effort of the will, under all
circumstances.
There are moods, however, for which men are not responsible, and
the parent of these is sickness--the feeble or inharmonious
movements of the body. When my little boy wakes in the morning,
his smile is as bright as the pencil of sunlight that lies across
his coverlet; but when evening comes, he is peevish and fretful.
The little limbs are weary, and the mood is produced by weariness.
So my friend with a harassing cough is in a melancholy mood, and
my bilious friend is in a severe and savage mood, or in a dark and
gloomy mood, or in a petulant mood, or in a fearful or foreboding
mood. In truth, bile is the prolific mother of moods. The stream
of life flows through the biliary duct. When that is obstructed,
life is obstructed. When the golden tide sets back upon the liver,
it is like backwater under a mill; it stops the driving-wheel.
Bile spoils the peace of families, breaks off friendships, cuts
off man from communion with his Maker, colors whole systems of
theology, transforms brains into putty, and destroys the comfort
of a jaundiced world. The famous Dr. Abernethy had his hobby, as
most famous men have; and this hobby was "blue pill and ipecac,"
which he prescribed for every thing, with the supposition, I
presume, that all disease has its origin in the liver. Most moods,
I am sure, have their birth in the derangements of this important
organ; and while the majority of them can be controlled, there are
others for which their victims are not responsible. There are men
who cannot insult me, because I will not take an insult from them
any more than I would from a man intoxicated. When their bile
starts, I am sure they will come to me and apologize.
We all have acquaintances who are men of moods. Whenever we meet
them, we try to determine which of their moods is dominant, that
we may know how to treat them. If the severe mood be on, we would
just as soon think of whistling at a funeral as indulging in a
jest; but if the cloud be off, we have a sprightly friend and a
pleasant time with him. Goldsmith's pedagogue was a man of moods,
and his pupils understood them.
"A man severe he was, and stern to view;
I knew him well, and every truant knew:
_Well had the boding tremblers learned to trace
The day's disasters in his morning face_;
Full well they laughed with counterfeited glee
At all his jokes, for many a joke had he;
Full well the busy whisper, circling round,
Conveyed the dismal tidings when he frowned."
While I maintain that a man can generally be the master of his
moods, I am very well aware that but few men are; and it is wise
for us to know how to deal with them. The secret of many a man's
success in the world resides in his insight into the moods of men,
and his tact in dealing with them. Modern Christian philanthropists
tell us that if we would do good to the soul of a starving child, we
must first put food into his mouth, and comfortable clothing upon
his body. This, by way of manifesting a practical interest in his
welfare, and paving our way to his heart by a form of kindness which
he can thoroughly appreciate. But there is more in such an act than
this,--we change his mood. From a mood of despair or discouragement,
we translate him into a mood of cheerfulness and hopefulness; and
then we have a soul to deal with that is surrounded by the
conditions of improvement. There is much more than divine duty and
Christian forgiveness in the injunction: "if thine enemy hunger, feed
him; if he thirst, give him drink." The highest wisdom would dictate
such a policy for changing his mood, and bringing him into a condition
in which he could entertain a sense of his meanness.
It is curious to see how much fulness and emptiness of stomach
have to do with moods. A business man who has been at work hard
all day, will enter his house for dinner as crabbed as a hungry
bear--crabbed because he is as hungry as a hungry bear. The wife
understands the mood, and, while she says little to him, is
careful not to have the dinner delayed. In the mean time, the
children watch him cautiously, and do not tease him with
questions. When the soup is gulped, and he leans back and wipes
his mouth, there is an evident relaxation, and his wife ventures
to ask for the news. When the roast beef is disposed of, she
presumes upon gossip, and possibly upon a jest; and when, at last,
the dessert is spread upon the table, all hands are merry, and the
face of the husband and father, which entered the house so pinched
and savage and sharp, becomes soft and full and beaming as the
face of the round summer moon. Children are very sensitive to the
influence of hunger; and often when we think that we are
witnessing some fearful proof of the total depravity of human
nature in a young child, we are only witnessing the natural
expression of a desire for bread and milk. The politicians and all
that class of men who have axes to grind, understand this business
very thoroughly. If a measure is to be carried through, and any
man wishes to secure votes for it, he gives a dinner. If a man
wishes for a profitable contract, he gives a dinner. If he is up
for a fat office, he gives a dinner. If it is desirable that a pair
of estranged friends be brought together, and reconciled to each
other, they are invited to a dinner. If hostile interests are to be
harmonized, and clashing measures compromised, and divergent forces
brought into parallelism, all must be effected by means of a dinner.
A good dinner produces a good mood,--at least, it produces an
impressible mood. The will relaxes wonderfully under the influence
of iced champagne, and canvas-backs are remarkable softeners of
prejudice. The daughter of Herodias took Herod at a great
disadvantage, when she came in and danced before him and his friends
at his birth-day supper, and secured the head of John the Baptist.
No one, I presume, believes that if she had undertaken to dance before
him when he was hungry, she would have had the offer of a gift equal
to the half of his kingdom. It is more than likely that, under any
other circumstances, he would have been told to "sit down and show
less." It is by means of food and drink, and various entertainments
of the senses, that moods are manufactured, and used as media of
approach to the wills which it is desirable to bend or direct.
I have found moods to be very poor tests of character. Having cut
through the crust of a most forbidding mood, produced by bodily
derangement or constant and pressing labor of the brain, I have
often found a heart full of all the sweetest and richest traits of
humanity. I have found, too, that some natures know the door that
leads through the moods of other natures. There are men who never
present their moody side to me. My neighbor enters their presence
and finds them severe in aspect, hard in feeling, and abrupt in
speech. I go in immediately after, and open the door right through
that mood, into the genial good heart that sits behind it, and the
door always flies open when I come. I know men whose mood is
usually exceedingly pleasant. There is a glow of health upon their
faces. Their words are musical to women and children. They are
cheerful and chipper and sunshiny, and not easily moved to anger;
and yet I know them to be liars and full of selfishness. Under
their sweet mood, which sound health and a not over-sensitive
conscience and the satisfactions of sense engender, they conceal
hearts that are as false and foul as any that illustrate the reign
of sin in human nature. Many a Christian has times of feeling that
God is in a special manner smiling upon him, and communing with
him, and filling him with the peace and joy that only flow from
heavenly fountains, when the truth is that he is only in a good
mood. He is well, all the machinery of his mind and body is
playing harmoniously, and, of course, he feels well, and that is
all there is about it. He is not a better Christian than he was
when he slipped into the mood, and no better than he will be when
he slips out of it. If he really be a good Christian, his moods
operate like clouds and blue sky. The sun shines all the time, and
the cloudy moods only hide it;--they do not extinguish it.
There are many sad cases of insanity of a religious character
which originate in moods. A man, through a period of health, has a
bright and cheerful religious experience. The world looks pleasant
to him, the heavens smile kindly upon him, and the Divine Spirit
witnesses with his own that he is at peace and in harmony with
God. Joy thrills him as he greets the morning light, and peace
nestles upon his heart as he lies down to his nightly rest. He
feels in his soul the influx of spiritual life from the Great
Source of all life, as he opens it in worship and in prayer. But
at length there comes a change. A strange sadness creeps into his
heart. The sky that was once so bright has become dark. The prayer
that once rose as easily as incense upon the still morning air,
straight toward heaven, will not rise at all, but settles like
smoke upon him, and fills his eyes with tears. Something seems to
have come between him and his God. Strange, accusing voices are
heard within him. However deep the agony that moves him, he cannot
rend the cloud that interposes between him and his Maker. This,
now, is simply a mood produced by ill health; and I hope that
everybody who reads this will remember it. Remember that God never
changes, that a man's moods are constantly changing, and that when
a man earnestly seeks for spiritual peace, and cannot find it, and
thinks that he has committed the unpardonable sin without knowing
it, he is bilious, and needs medical treatment. Alas! what
multitudes of sad souls have walked out of this hopeless mood into
a life-long insanity, when all they needed in the first place,
perhaps, was a dose of blue pills, or half a dozen strings of
tenpins, or a sea-voyage sufficiently rough for "practical
purposes."
This subject I find to be abundantly prolific, and I see that I
have been able to do hardly more than to hint at its more
prominent aspects. It seems to me that moods only need to be
studied more, and to be better understood, to bring them very much
under the domain of our wills. A great deal is learned when we
know what a mood is, and know that we are subject to varying
frames of mind, resulting from causes which affect our health. If
I know that I am impatient and cross because I am hungry, then I
know how to get rid of my mood, and how to manage it until I do
get rid of it. If I feel unable to labor, not because I am
feeble, but because I am not in the mood, then I have the mood in
my hands, to be dealt with intelligently. If my reason tell me
that it is only a mood that hides from me the face of my Maker, my
reason will also tell me that my first business is to get rid of
my mood, and that my will must approach the work, directly or
indirectly. We are always and necessarily in some mood of mind--in
some condition of passion or feeling. It is the intensification
and the dominant influence of moods that are to be guarded against
or destroyed. Moods are dangerous only when they obscure reason,
and destroy self-control, and disturb the mental poise, and become
the media of false impressions from all the life around us and
within us.
LESSON II.
BODILY IMPERFECTIONS AND IMPEDIMENTS.
"I that am curtailed of this fair proportion,
Cheated of feature by dissembling nature,
Deformed, unfinished, sent before my time
Into this breathing world, scarce half made up."
RICHARD III.
"None can be called deformed but the unkind."
SHAKSPEARE.
"'Tis true, his nature may with faults abound;
But who will cavil when the heart is sound?"
STEPHEN MONTAGUE.
It is a bright June morning. The fresh grass is loaded with dew,
every bead of which sparkles in the light of the brilliant sun. A
big, yellow-shouldered bee comes booming through the open window,
and buzzes up and down my room, and threatens my shrinking ears,
and then dives through the window again; and his form recedes and
his hum dies away, as if it were the note of a reed-stop in the
"swell" of a church organ. There is such confusion in the songs of
the birds, that I can hardly select the different notes, so as to
name their owners. There is a great deal of bird-singing that is
simply what a weaver would call "filling." Robins and bobolinks
and blue-birds and sundry other favorites furnish the warp, and
color and characterize the tapestry of a flowing, vocal morning;
while the little, gray-backed multitude work in the neutral ground
tones, and bring the sweeter and more elaborate notes into
beautiful relief. Thus, with a little aid of imagination, I get up
some very exquisite fabrics--vocal silks and satins:--robins on a
field of chickadees; bobolinks and thrushes alternately on a
hit-or-miss ground of blackbirds, wrens, and pewees. Into the midst
of all this delicious confusion there breaks a note that belongs to
another race of creatures; and as I look from my window, and see
the singer, my eyes fill with tears. It is a little boy, possibly
twelve years old, though he looks younger, walking with a crutch.
One withered limb dangles as he goes. He is a cripple for life;
yet his face is as bright and cheerful as the face of the morning
itself; and what do you think he is singing? "Hail Columbia, happy
land," at the top of his lungs! The birds are merrily wheeling
over his head, and diving through the air, and moving here and
there as freely as the wind, yet not one among them carries a
lighter heart than that which he is jerking along by the side of
the little crutch.
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