Books: Lessons in Life
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Timothy Titcomb >> Lessons in Life
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"The one red leaf, the last of its clan
That dances as often as dance it can,
Hanging so light, and hanging so high,
On the topmost bough that looks up at the sky."
Any person who sits near Mrs. Flutter Budget, or undertakes to
look at her during divine service, loses all sense of repose, and
all power of reflection. The most solemn exercises in which the
mind engages cannot be carried on with a fly upon the nose, and
any teasing of a single sense, whether of sight, or sound, or
touch, is fatal to religious devotion. I presume that if the
pastor wishes to find the most sterile portion of his field, he
needs only to ascertain the names of those who occupy pews in the
vicinity of this lively little lady. Her husband died two years
ago, of sleeplessness, and a harassing system of nursing.
The Flutter Budgets are a numerous family in America. They are not
all as restless as Madame, but the characteristics of the blood
are manifest among them all. They never know repose; and, what is
worse than this, they dread if they do not despise it. They are
immense workers--not that they do more work, and harder than their
neighbors, but they make a great fuss about it, and are always at
it. They rise early in the morning, and they sit up late at night;
and they do this from year's end to year's end, whether they
really have any thing to do or not. They cannot sit still. They
have an unhealthy impression that it is wrong for them not to be
"doing something" all the time. Nothing in the world will make
them so uncomfortable and so restless as leisure. Mrs. Flutter
Budget could no more sit down without knitting-work, or a sock to
darn, in her hands, than she could fly. As she has many times
remarked, she would die if she could not work. To her, and to all
of her name and character, constant action seems to be a
necessity. The craving of the smoker for his pipe or cigar, the
incessant hankering of the opium-eater for his drug, the terrible
thirst of the drunkard for his cups--all these are legitimate
illustrations of the morbid desire of the Budgets for action or
motion. The man who has the habit of using narcotics is not more
restless and unhappy without his accustomed stimulus, than they
are with nothing to do. In truth, I believe the desire for action
may become just as morbid a passion of the soul as that which most
degrades and demoralizes mankind.
If I were called upon to define happiness, I could possibly give
no definition that would shut out the word repose. I do not mean
by this that no person can be happy except in a state of repose,
but I mean, rather, that no man can be happy to whom repose is
impossible. The highest definition of happiness would probably
designate the consciousness of healthy powers harmoniously
employed as among its prime elements; but there can be no
happiness that deserves its name without the consciousness of
powers that are able to subside from harmonious action into
painless repose. I know a little girl who plays out of doors at
night as long as she can see, and who, when called into the house,
takes up a book with restless greed for mental excitement, and
then begs to be read to sleep after she has been required to put
down her book and go to bed. She would be called a happy child by
those who see her playing among her mates, yet it is easy to
perceive that her happiness is limited to a single attitude and
condition of body and mind. A happier child than she is one who
can enjoy open-air play, and then quietly sit down at her mother's
side and enjoy rest. That is an inharmonious and unhealthy state
of mind which chafes with leisure; and he is an unhappy man who
cannot sit down for a moment without reaching for a newspaper, or
looking about him for some quid for his morbid mind to chew upon.
So I count no man truly happy who cannot contentedly sit still
when circumstances release his powers from labor, and who does not
reckon among the rewards of labor a peaceful repose.
No; Mrs. Flutter Budget is not a happy woman; and, as I have
intimated before, she seriously interferes with the happiness and
the spiritual prosperity of those about her. When she can find
nothing to do, then she worries. Those children of hers are
worried nearly to death. If, in their play, they get any dirt upon
their faces, they are sent immediately to make themselves clean.
If they soil their clothes, they are shut up until reduced to a
proper state of penitence. They are kept out of all draughts of
air for fear of a cold; and if they should take cold, why, they
must take medicine of the most repulsive character as a penalty.
If they cough out of the wrong corner of their mouths, she
suspects them of croupy intentions; and if they venture, at some
unguarded moment, on a cutaneous eruption, they are immediately
charged with the measles, or accused of small-pox. If they quietly
sit down for a moment of repose, she apprehends sickness, and
stirs them about to shake it off. Even sleep is not sacred to her,
for if she finds a flushed face among the harassed little
slumberers, she wakes its owner to make affectionate inquiries.
Her husband, as I have already stated, died two years ago. She
worked upon his nervous system to such an extent that he was glad
to be rid of the world, and of her. I think a man would die, after
awhile, with constantly looking at the motion of a saw-mill. The
jar of a locomotive makes the toughest iron brittle at last; and
the wear and tear of a restless wife are beyond the strongest
man's endurance.
I have noticed that persons who have influence upon the minds of
others, maintain constantly a degree of repose. I do not mean that
those have most influence who use their powers sparingly, but that
a certain degree of mental repose--or what may possibly be called
imperturbableness--is necessary to influence. Mrs. Flutter Budget
always talks in a hurry, and talks of a thousand things, and is
easily excited. Her neighbor, carefully avoiding the causes which
ruffle her, and preserving the poise of her faculties, insists on
her point quietly, and carries it. The repose of equanimity is a
charm which dissolves all opposition. The mind which shows itself
open to influences from every quarter, and is swayed by them, is
not its own master. The mind that never rests is invariably full
of freaks and caprices. The mind that has no repose shows its
dependence and its lack of self-control. There cannot go out of
such a mind as this a positive influence, any more than there can
go forth from a candle a steady light, when it stands flickering
and flaring in the wind, having all it can do to keep its flame
from extinction. There must be that repose of mind which springs
from conscious self-control and consciousness of the power of
self-control, under all ordinary circumstances, before a man can
hope to have influence of a powerful character upon the minds
about him. The driver of a coach-and-six, with all the ribbons in
his hands, and a thorough knowledge of his horses and his road,
sits upon his box in repose; and that repose inspires me with
confidence in him; but if he should be constantly on the look-out
for some trick, and constantly examining his harnesses, and
constantly fussy and uneasy, I should lose my confidence in him,
and wish I were in anybody's care but his.
We do not need to be taught that a restless mind is not a reliable
mind. There is an instinct which tells us this. There can be no
reliableness of character without repose. If I should wish to take
a ride, and two horses should be led before me to choose from, I
would take the one that stands still, waiting for his burden and
his command, rather than the one that occupies the road and his
groom with his caracoling and curveting and other signs of
restlessness. I should be measurably sure that one would bear me
through my journey safely and speedily, and that the other would
either throw me, or wear himself out, and so fail of giving me
good service. Saint Peter was a restless man--an impatient man. He
was always the most impulsive, and the most ready to act, as the
servant of the high priest had occasion to remember; but he both
lied and denied his Lord. It was John reposing upon the breast of
Jesus, who most drew forth the Lord's affection. Martha, worrying
about the house, cumbered with much serving, chose a part inferior
to that of Mary who reposed at the feet of Jesus. It is only in
repose that the powers of the mind are marshalled for great
enterprises and for progress. It is in repose, when passion is
sleeping and reason is clear-eyed, that the military chieftain
marks out his campaign and arranges his forces. He is a poor
commander who throws his troops into the field, and fights without
order, or struggles for no definite end; and there are multitudes
of men who throw themselves into life with an immense splutter,
and fight the fight of life with a great deal of noise, but who
never make any progress, because they have never drawn upon repose
for a plan.
Repose is the cradle of power. It is the fashion to say that great
men are men of great passions, as if their passions were the cause
rather than the concomitant of their greatness. Great elephants
have great legs, but the legs do not make the elephants great.
Great legs, however, are required to move great elephants, and
wherever we find great elephants, we find great legs. Small men
sometimes have great passions, and these passions may so far
overcome them that they shall be the weakest of the weak. The
possession of great passions is often a disadvantage to weak men
and strong men alike, because they furnish so many assailable
points for outside forces. A fortress may be very strongly built,
but if its doors are open, and scaling ladders are run permanently
down from its walls for the accommodation of invading forces, its
strength will be of very little practical advantage. Great
passions are oftener the weak, than the strong points of great
men. Now I do not believe it possible for a man to exercise a high
degree of power upon the hearts and minds of others, and, at the
same time, be under the influence of any variety of passion. A man
cannot be the shivering subject of an outside force, acting upon
him through his passions, and at the same time a centre of
effluent power. Action and passion are opposed to each other; and
when one has possession of the soul the other is wanting. They
involve two distinct attitudes of the mind, as truly as do
thanksgiving and petition.
The world often finds fault with great men because they are cold;
but they could not be great men if they were not cold. A physician
is often preferred by a family or patient because he is "so
sympathizing," as they call it. They forget that a physician is
necessarily untrustworthy in the degree that he is sympathetic
with his patients. A physician may be thoroughly kind, and out of
his kindness there may grow a gentle manner which seems to spring
from sympathy; but I say unhesitatingly that in the degree by
which a physician is sympathetic with his patients, is he unfitted
for his work. A dentist who feels, in sympathy, the pain that he
inflicts upon a child, is unfitted to perform his operation. The
surgeon who sensitively sympathizes with a man whose diseased or
crushed limb it has fallen to his lot to remove, has lost a
portion of his power and skill, and has become a poorer surgeon
for his sympathy. Physicians themselves show that they understood
this when a case for medical or surgical treatment occurs in their
own families. If their wives or their children are sick, they
cannot control their sympathies; and the moment they are aware of
this, they lose all confidence in themselves. They cannot reduce
the fracture of a child's limb, or prescribe for a wife lying
dangerously ill, because their sympathies are so greatly excited
that their judgment is good for nothing. In other words, they are
in an attitude or condition of passion--they are moved and wrought
upon by outside forces, to such a degree that they cannot act.
If an orator rise in his place, and show by the agitation of his
nerves, his broken sentences, and his choked utterances, that
emotion is uppermost in him, he has no more power upon his
audience than a baby. We pity his weakness, or we sympathize with
him; but he cannot move us. He is a mastered man, and until he can
choke down his passion he cannot master us. A man rises in an
audience in a state of furious excitement, and fumes, and yells,
and gesticulates, but he only moves us to pity, or disgust, or
laughter. His passion utterly deprives him of power. We call Mr.
Gough an actor, as he undoubtedly is; and we pretend to be
disgusted with him for simulating every night, for a hundred
nights in succession, the emotions which move us. We forget that
if Mr. Gough should really become the subject of the passions
which he illustrates, he would lose his power upon us, and kill
himself besides. He takes care never to be mastered, and takes
care also that all the machinery which he uses shall contribute to
his mastery of us. I do not deny that passion may be made
tributary to the power of men. Oil is tributary to the power of
machinery by lubricating its points of friction; and warmth, by
bringing its members into more perfect adjustment; but if the
machinery were made to wade in oil, or were heated red hot, oil
and heat would be a damage to it.
I repeat the proposition, then, that repose is the cradle of
power. The man who cannot hold his passions in repose--in perfect
repose--can never employ the measure of his power. These "cold
men," as the world calls them, are the men who move and control
their race. But it is not necessary to cling to great men for the
illustration of my subject. To say that a Christian philanthropist
should not be a sympathetic man would be to say that he should not
be a man at all; but nothing is more certain than that if a man
should surrender himself to his sympathies it would kill him. In a
world where sin and its bitter fruits abound as they do in this,
where little children cry for bread, and whole races are sunk in
barbarism, and villainy preys upon virtue, and the innocent suffer
in the place of the guilty, and sickness lays its hand upon
multitudes, and pain holds its victims to a life-long bondage, and
death leads throngs daily to the grave, and leaves other throngs
wild with grief, a sensitively sympathetic man, surrendering
himself to all the influences that address him, would lose all
power to help the distressed, or even to speak a word of comfort.
We are to apprehend the woes of others through our sympathies, and
to hold those sympathies in such repose that all the power of our
natures will be held ready for, and subject to, intelligent
ministry. The woman who faints at the sight of blood is not fit
for a hospital. The man who grows pale at hearing a groan, will
not do for a surgeon. If we mean to do any thing in this world for
the good of men, we must first compel our sympathies and our
passions into repose.
That which is true of power in this matter is true of judgment. It
is a widely bruited aphorism that "all history is a lie," and this
aphorism had its birth in the fact that historians become, as it
were, magnetized by the characters with which they deal. A man who
writes the life of Napoleon finds himself either sympathizing with
him, or roused into antipathy by him. In short, he becomes the
subject of a passion, wrought upon him by the character which he
contemplates and undertakes to paint; and from the moment this
passion takes possession of him, he becomes unfitted to write an
impartial and reliable word about him. All positive historical
characters have all possible historical portraits, simply because
the writers are subjects of passion. It is because no man can
write of positive characters without being the subject of an
influence from them, that no man can be an impartial historian,
and that all history must necessarily be a lie. If ever a perfect
history shall be written, it will be written by one whose passions
are under entire control, and kept in a condition of profound
repose--who will look at a historical character as he would upon
an impaled beetle in an entomological collection. A man is no
competent judge of a character, either in history or in life, with
which he strongly sympathizes. I have known many a man utterly
unfitted to read the proofs of the villainy of one to whom he had
surrendered his sympathies. A woman in love is a very poor judge
of character. She can see nothing but excellence where others see
nothing but shallowness and rottenness.
Once more, there is no dignity without repose. A restless, uneasy
man, can never be a dignified man. There can be no dignity about a
man or a woman who fumes, and frets, and fusses, and is full of
freaks and caprices. Dignity of manners is always associated with
repose. Mrs. Flutter Budget always enters a drawing-room as if she
were a loaded doll, tossed in by the usher, and goes dodging and
tipping about to get her centre of gravity, without getting it. Her
queenly neighbor comes in as the sun rises--calmly, sweetly, steadily,
and all hearts bow to her dignified coming. What would an Archbishop
be worth for dignity, who should be continually scratching his ears,
and brushing his nose, and crossing and re-crossing his legs, and
drumming with his fingers? Who would not deem the ermine degraded
by a chief justice who should be constantly twitching about upon his
bench? It is a fact that has come under the observation of the least
observant, that the moment a man surrenders himself to his passions
he loses his dignity. A fit of anger is as fatal to dignity as a dose of
arsenic to life. A fit of mirthfulness is hardly less fatal. So it is in
repose, and particularly in the repose of the passions, that we find
the happiness, the influence, the power, and the dignity of our life.
Let us cultivate repose.
LESSON XIV.
THE WAYS OF CHARITY.
"The Holy Supper is kept indeed,
In whatso we share with another's need;
Not that which we give, but what we share.
For the gift without the giver is bare:
Who bestows himself, with his alms feeds three,--
Himself, his hungering neighbor, and me."
LOWELL.
"It may not be our lot to wield
The sickle in the ripened field;
Nor ours to hear on summer eves,
The reaper's song among the sheaves;
Yet, when our duty's task is wrought,
In unison with God's great thought,
The near and future blend in one,
And whatsoe'er is willed is done."
WHITTIER.
I have come to entertain very serious doubts about my "orthodoxy"
on the subject of doing good. If I know my own motives, I
certainly have a desire to do good; but this desire is yoke fellow
with the perverse wish to do it in my own way. I do not feel
myself inclined to accept the prescriptions of those who have
taken out patents for various ingenious processes in this line of
effort. My attention has just been attracted to this subject, by
the perusal of a long story, which must be not far from the one
hundred and ninety-ninth that I have read during the past twenty
years, all tipped with the same general moral. A good-natured
lady, in easy circumstances, and of benevolent impulses, is
appealed to by a poor man in the kitchen. She feeds him, gives him
clothes, sends him away rejoicing, and feels good over it. The man
comes again and again, tells pitiful stories, excites her
benevolence of course, and secures a reasonable amount of
additional plunder. Months pass away; and being out upon a walk
one pleasant afternoon, and finding herself near the poor man's
residence, the fair benefactress calls upon him. She finds the
wife (who was reported dead) very comfortable indeed, and the
destitute family of four children reduced to a single fat and
saucy baby, and the poor liar himself smelling strongly of rum.
Then come the denouement, and a grand tableau: lady very much
grieved and astonished--wife, who has known nothing of her
husband's tricks, exceedingly bewildered--fuddled husband, blind
with rum and remorse, owns up to his meanness and duplicity. He
found (as he confessed) that he could work upon the lady's
sympathies, got to lying and couldn't stop, and, finally, felt so
badly over the whole operation, that he took to drink to drown his
conscience! _Moral:_ Women should not help poor people without
going to see them, and finding out whether they lie.
Now that woman did exactly as I should have done, under the same
circumstances. In the first place, I should never have had the
heart to doubt a man who carried an honest face, and was cold,
hungry, and ragged. I should have regarded his condition as a
claim upon my charity. In the second place, I should have had no
time to call upon his family, and satisfy myself with regard to
their circumstances; and in the third place, I should have felt
very delicate about putting direct questions to them if I had. The
same story tells incidentally of one of these men who do good in
the proper way. He visited a house which presented all the signs
of poverty; but the angel of mercy was too 'cute' to be taken in;
so he walked up stairs. Every thing presenting there the same
aspect of abject poverty that prevailed below, the angel of mercy
looked around him, and discovered a ladder leading to the garret.
The angel of mercy "smelt a rat," and mounted the ladder. In the
garret he found half a cord of wood, and any quantity of goodies
for the table. Another denouement and tableau. _Moral:_ as
before. If the story has taught me any thing, it is that it is my
duty to question every beggar that comes to my door, visit his
house, explore it from cellar to garret, and satisfy myself of
the truth or falsehood of his representations. Otherwise, my
charity goes for nothing, and I do my beggar an absolute
unkindness. In other words, while the law holds every man innocent
until he is proved to be guilty, charity holds every man guilty
until he is proved to be innocent.
It has become the fashion in certain circles to decry that
benevolence which sits at home in slippers, and gives its money
without seeing where it goes; but it is forgotten that the money
dispensed in slippers was earned in boots, and that the man who
has money to give, has usually so much business on hand that he
can make no adequate personal examination of the cases which are
referred to his charity. I can never forget Mr. Dickens' Cheeryble
Brothers, who were so very much obliged to a friend for calling
upon them, and telling them of the circumstances of a poor family.
It was taken as a great personal kindness when they were informed
how and where they could relieve want and distress. They had no
genius for going about and looking up cases of charity, but their
hearts leaped at the opportunity to do good. They did their work
in their counting-room, and had no time and no talent for visiting
those whom they benefited; but who would question either the
genuineness or the judiciousness of their benevolence? The
applications for aid made at the doors of our dwellings come
oftener to the mistresses of those dwellings than to the masters;
and these mistresses, four times in five, are women with the care
of children on their hands, or household duties which demand
almost constant attention. If a beggar come to the door, they are
grateful for the opportunity to afford relief; but they have no
time to visit another quarter of the town, to learn whether their
charities have been well bestowed, nor do they withhold their
charities through fear of being imposed upon.
In my judgment, the character and circumstances of a man determine
his office in the work of charitable relief. I know there are some
persons who have a peculiar natural adaptation to the work of
visiting the subjects of sickness and of need. Their presence and
their sympathy are grateful to those to whom they delight to
minister. They are masters and mistresses of all those thrifty
economies which enable them to manage for the poor. They have
genuine administrative talent in this particular department. They
are cheerful and active, and sympathetic and ingenious; and they
can do more for a poor, discouraged family with ten dollars than
others can do with fifty. I do not suppose that these people are
one whit more benevolent than those whose purses are always open
to the poor, and who at the same time would feel very awkward upon
a visit of charity, and would make the family visited feel as
awkward as themselves. The poor we have always with us; and every
man and woman who possesses means for their relief owes a duty to
them which is to be discharged in the most efficient way. If I
have money, and do not feel that I am the proper person to look
after the details of its dispensation, I will put it into the
hands of one more competent to the business, and I will rationally
conclude that I have done my duty. In the mean time, if a man come
to my door, and ask for the supply of his immediate necessities,
he shall not be turned empty away because I do not happen to have
the means at hand for verifying his story.
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