Francois Coppee - "A Romance of Youth, v2"

Henry Ford - "My Life and Work"

Ludovic Halevy - "L'Abbe Constantin, v1"

Luise von Muhlbach - "Mohammed Ali and His House"

New Philadelphia Book Publisher Highlights Local Talent
Book and Publishing News from Publishers Newswire(tm)

Looking for Child to be on Cover of a New Book, 'The Model Child'
PHILADELPHIA, Pa. -- The Philadelphia literary world will celebrate the launch of two new players today, April 10th: Kay Square Press, a new publishing company focused on Philadelphia-area artists, their stories, and their art; and Kay Square's first release, 'With the Rich and Mighty: Emlen Etting of Philadelphia' (ISBN: 978-0-9815129-0-7), a critical biography by Kenneth C. Kaleta.

FlatSigned Press Alleges Don Imus Remarks Damage Legacy of President Gerald R. Ford
NEW YORK, N.Y. -- Nathan Yungerberg, an accomplished model scout and professional child photographer is launching a nation-wide casting call to find the cover model for his highly anticipated book release, 'The Model Child: A Parents Guide to the Child Modeling Industry' (ISBN: 978-0-9817018-0-6).

Books: Lessons in Life

T >> Timothy Titcomb >> Lessons in Life




"There's no such thing in nature, and you'll draw
A faultless monster which the world ne'er saw."
SHEFFIELD.

Nature calls for room and for freedom--room for her ocean and
freedom for its waves; room for her rivers and freedom for their
flowing; room for her forests and freedom for every tree to
respond to the influences of earth and sky according to its law.
Exceedingly proper things are not at all in the line of nature.
Nature never trims a hedge, or cuts off the tail of a horse.
Nature never compels a brook to flow in a right line, but permits
it to make just as many turns in a meadow as it pleases. Nature is
very careless about the form of her clouds, and masses and colors
them with great disregard of the opinions of the painters. Nature
never thinks of smoothing off her rocks, and cleaning away her
mud, and keeping herself trim and neat. She does very improper
things in a very impulsive manner. Instead of contriving some
safe, silent, and secret way to dispose of her electricity, she
comes out with a blinding flash and a stunning crash, and a rush
of rain that very likely fills the mountain streams to overflowing,
and destroys bridges and booms, and cabins and cornfields.
On the whole, though nature keeps up a respectable appearance,
I suppose that, in the opinion of my particular friend Miss Nancy,
she would be improved by taking a few lessons of a French gardener,
and reading savage criticisms on Ruskin.

I have alluded to my particular friend Miss Nancy. Perhaps I ought
to say, at starting, that Miss Nancy is a man, and that I use the
name bestowed upon him by his enemies, because it is, in a very
important sense, descriptive. Miss Nancy's boots are faithfully
polished twice a day. His linen is immaculate; and the tie of his
cravat is square and faultless. He never makes a mistake in
grammar while engaged in conversation. He is versed in all the
forms and usages of society, and particularly at home in gallant
attention to what he calls "the ladies." He seems to have lost
every rough corner, if he ever had one. In politics and religion,
he is just as proper as in social life. The most respectable
religion is his religion; and the politics that shun extremes are
his politics. I think he is what they call a conservative. At any
rate, I newer knew him to do a rash or impulsive thing, or speak
an improper word in his life. I think he is as nearly perfect as
any man I ever saw.

But, after all, Miss Nancy is not a popular man. He will probably
live and die an old bachelor, because all the women will persist
in laughing at him. He is certainly good-looking, his dress is
unexceptionable, his manners are "as good as they make them,"
and his morals are as proper as his manners; yet I have not yet seen
the woman who would speak a pleasant word of my friend. He is
decidedly a "woman's man," yet no woman will own him, and no
woman feels comfortable with him. His language is so carefully
guarded against all impropriety of style and structure, that she
feels as if he were criticizing every word she utters, as well as
measuring his own. His manners are so very proper that they are
formal and constrained, and make her uncomfortable. His sentiments
and opinions are so very conservative, that they have no vitality in
them. With a curious perverseness, the most gentle and accomplished
women will turn from him with a sense of relief, to join in the society
of a hearty fellow with a loud laugh and a dash of slang, and a free
and easy way with him. It may be difficult to explain all this, but
it is true. An exceedingly proper man is never a popular man. That
life which is controlled by rigid and unvarying rules, and regulated
by conventionalities in every minute particular, and restrained in
every impulse by notions of propriety, is unlovely and unnatural,
and can never he otherwise.

The instincts of men are always right in this and all cognate
matters. All formalism is offensive to good taste. The painter
does not study landscape in a garden. Formal isles, closely-trimmed
trees, rose hushes on the top of tall sticks, flowers tied to
supports, vines trained upon trellises, lakes with clipped and
pebbled margins and India-rubber swans--these are not picturesque.
There is no more inspiration in them than there would be in a row
of tenement houses in the city. The painter looks for beauty out
where nature reigns undisturbed amid her imperfections,--where the
aisles are made by the deer going to his lick; where the trees are
never trimmed save by the lightning or the hurricane; where the
rose-bushes spread their branches and the vines trail themselves
at liberty; and where the lake looks up into the faces of trees
centuries old, and hems itself in with thickets of alders and
green reaches of flags and rushes, and throbs to the touch of the
mountain breeze, while on its bosom

"The black duck, with her glossy breast
Sits swinging silently."

A little child whose head is piled with laces and ribbons,
whose dress is a mass of embroidery, and who is booted and gloved
and otherwise oppressed by parental vanity and extravagance, is
not picturesque, any further than its face goes. The portrait
painter will cling to the face and let the clothes alone. All
this I trickery of art, brought into comparison or contrast with
the simple beauty of nature, is offensive. Yet a little beggar
boy, with an old straw hat on, and with bare, brown feet, and a
burnt shoulder which his torn shirt refuses to cover, would be a
painter's joy. Here would be drapery that he would delight to
paint, simply because there would be no formality about it. It is
impossible for us to know how ridiculous a dress-coat is until we
see it in a statue. We are obliged to put all our modern sages and
heroes into togas and blankets and long cloaks in order to make
them presentable to posterity.

We never find groups of accordant, striking facts like these--and
their number could be largely increased--without finding that they
are all strung together by an important law. All life demands room
and freedom--freedom to manifest itself in every way, according to
the law of its being and the range of its circumstances. All life
is individual and characteristic, and comes reluctantly under the
sway of outside forces. It is not natural to be proper, or to love
propriety. In saying this I simply mean that it is against nature to
bring one's individuality under the curbing and controlling hands
of others--to make the notions of the world the law and limit of
one's liberty, and to square every word and every act by arbitrary
rules imposed by cliques and customs. A man who has been
clipped in all his puttings-forth, and modelled by outside hands
and outside influences, until it is apparent that he is governed
from without rather than from within, is just as unnatural an object
as a tree that has been clipped and tied and bent until its top has
grown into the form of a cube. Thus the reason why Miss Nancy
is not popular, and why the women refuse to delight in him, is,
that he is not his own master--that he has, in himself, no independent
life. It is not proper that he give utterance to his impulses;--so
he suppresses them. It is not proper that he frankly reveal the
emotions of his heart; so he conceals them. It is not proper that
he enter enthusiastically into any work or any pleasure; so he is
a constant check to the enthusiasm of others. It is not proper
that he speak the words that spring to his lips when his weak
sensibilities are touched; so he studies his language, and shapes
his phrases to the accepted models. Thus is he shortened in on
every side, until his individuality is all gone, and the humanity
in him becomes as characterless as its expression. Every utterance
of his life is made with a well-measured reference to certain
standards to which he is an acknowledged slave.

A scrupulously proper man is often a self-deceiver, and not
unfrequently an intentional deceiver of others. I do not say that
he is necessarily a scoundrel or a fool. He may be very little of
either, and he may be a little of both. These two words, which
sound rather roughly, will give us, I think, a faithful index to
his character. A man who is punctiliously proper has usually
become so in consequence of an attempt to cover up his mental
deficiencies or his moral obliquities. Punctilious propriety is
always pretentious, and pretentiousness is always an attempt at
fraud. A shallow mind is very apt to clothe itself with propriety
as with a garment. A brain that cannot handle large things very
often undertakes to manage a multiplicity of little things, and
runs naturally into those minute proprieties of life which are
showy, and which appear to the ignorant to indicate great powers
and acquisitions in reserve. Most proper men are nothing but a
shell, although many of them pass with the world for more. Their
life is all on the outside, and is placed and kept there for show.
We approach them, and very frequently find them so well guarded
that we do not get a look into their emptiness for a long time. We
examine them as we would a hillside strewn with fragments and
planted with boulders of marble. We are obliged to dig to learn
whether the signs we see are from an out-cropping ledge, or an
outside deposition. Sometimes the plunge of a single question will
reveal the whole story. A man with large brains and a large life
in him has something to do besides attending to the notions of
other people. He has at least no motive to deceive the world by
striving to appear to be more than he is.

I have said that there are some men who are punctiliously proper
for the purpose of covering their moral obliquities. The virtue of
a prude is always to be suspected. "So you have been looking after
the bad words," was savage old Dr. Johnson's reply to the very
proper woman who found fault with him for introducing so many
indecent words into his dictionary. There are few men who have not
frequently, during their lives, broken their way through a crust
of punctilious propriety into hearts full of all the blackness of
sensuality and sin. The world is full of hypocrisy, and hypocrisy
is nothing more than appearing to be what one is not. Indeed, I
believe that one of the strongest motives operative in the world
to render men scrupulously proper in their deportment and behavior
is sin. I make no hesitation in saying that shallowness and
sensuality are the leading ingredients in the majority of the
exceedingly proper characters with which I am acquainted.

Leaving this particular phase of my subject, I wish to call
attention to the well-recognized fact that all perfect people are
bores. A perfect character in a novel has no more power over a
reader--no more foothold among his sympathies--than a proposition
in mathematics would have. Of all stupid creations that the brain
of man has given birth to, there are none so stupid as the perfect
men and women whom we find upon the pages of fiction. Sometimes we
find in actual life a character so symmetrical, so rounded off at
the corners, and smoothed at the edges, and polished on the sides,
and unexceptionable in all its manifestations, that we cannot find
fault with it; yet we find it impossible for us to love it. Such a
character gets beyond the reach of our sympathies. Human affection
is like ivy. It cannot cling to glass; it must plant its feet in
imperfections. It is not to be denied that imperfection is the
true flavor of humanity. The mind refuses to sympathize where it
does not exist. What the world would call a perfect man--what
would be adjudged a perfect man by the best standards--would be as
tasteless as a last year's apple. A perfect woman could no more be
loved than she could be hated. I never saw a man with a perfect
face--a face modelled so symmetrically and so perfectly that no
fault could be found with it--who was not more or less a numskull.
A pretty man is always a pretty fool; and the more symmetrical the
features of a woman are, the more does she approach to the style
of beauty and expression and native gifts of a porcelain doll. The
mind and the character can be so symmetrical that they will lose
all charm and all significance. They descend into simple
prettiness, which is simple insipidity.

I say that imperfection is the true flavor of humanity. In
explanation, I ought to say that all individuality is either based
upon it or pre-supposes it. For instance: the preponderance of
certain powers and qualities of mind and character in me, over
certain other powers and qualities, and the weakness and
imperfection of these latter as related to the former, and to the
individualities of others, make my individuality what it, is. If
in me all mental and moral powers were in equipoise--if I were a
symmetrical man, as the first Adam may possibly have been--I
should have no individuality, no qualities that would distinguish
me--no weaknesses that would furnish footholds for human
sympathy--no freshness and flavor. A whole world full of perfect
men and women, each one like every other, would be unutterably
stupid. Where there is no weakness there is no individuality;
where there is no individuality there is no true humanity; where
there is no true humanity there is no sympathy; and where there is
no sympathy there is no pleasure. We demand that a man shall live
according to his law--develop himself according to his law--
manifest and express himself according to his law; and then he
will become the object of our sympathy or antipathy, according to
our law. We demand that the true flavor of every individuality
shall be declared, and not be masked by the imposition of
conventional regulations.

If every tree in the world were perfect, according to any
recognized standard, then all the trees would be alike, and would
cease to be attractive and picturesque. We keep all perfect things
out of pictures, because they are formal and tasteless. A bran new
cottage, with a picket fence around it, and every thing cleaned up
about it, is too perfect to be picturesque. An old, tumble-down
mill, with rude and rotten timbers, and a wheel outside, is
decidedly picturesque, because its imperfections make it informal.
The most unattractive of all houses is a model house. A house that
no man can find fault with, is a house that no man can love. It is
precisely thus with human character and with men. A proper,
perfect, "model" man, is an unlovable man. A sphere cannot be made
to fit an angle, and a spherical character has no point of
sympathy with one that is thrown into the angles necessary for
individuality. So we neither love symmetry and perfection in men,
according to any recognized standard, nor the appearance of them.
We demand not only that men shall have individuality, but that
they shall express it in their language and their lives. In
society we demand variety; and in order to have it, men must act
out themselves. The harmony and sweetness of social life consist
in the adjustment of the strong points of some to the weak points
of others.

With these facts so very evident as they must be to all thoughtful
minds, it is strange that such an effort is made to bring all men
to a certain standard and style of life. I do not believe there is
a country on the face of the earth where public opinion and
fashion and conventional and individual notions, exercise so
despotic a sway as they do in America. There is, in this "free
country," no play to individuality tolerated. No room is made for
the peculiarities of a man--no freedom is given to his mode of
manifestation. A man who has peculiar manners, and whose style of
individuality is marked, has no room allowed to him at all. He is
very likely to be called a fool, and laughed at by his inferiors.
We take no pains to look through the outside to find the heart and
soul, and refuse to see excellence behind manifestations that
offend our notions or our tastes. We go to hear a preacher, and if
he do not happen to have the externals, and the style of delivery
which we most admire, we condemn him at once. We make no room for
his individuality, and allow to it no freedom of manifestation.
Room and freedom--that which the ocean has, that which the rivers
have, that which the forest has, and that from which all of them
derive their beauty and their glory--room and freedom are denied
to men by men who need both, quite as much as their fellows.

The choicest food of the gossips is the personal peculiarities of
their acquaintances. The grand staple of ridicule is this same
individuality, whose importance I have endeavored to illustrate.
All the small wits of society busy themselves upon the eccentricities
of those around them. Church and creed, party and platform,
fashion and custom, all direct themselves against the development
of individuality. Sensitive natures shrink before such an array of
influences, and retire into themselves, drawing back and keeping
in check all their out-reaching individuality. Many a man, indeed,
who would face a cannon's mouth without trembling, flinches
when beset by ridicule. It is not the fault of society that the
whole race of mankind are not reduced to a dead level of character,
and a tasteless uniformity of life. Were it not that God does His
work so strongly, it would have been undone long ago. As it is, we
always have a few men and women who are true enough to God and
themselves to keep the world from stagnation, and give zest to life.
They sometimes shock Miss Nancy, but as they do not happen
to care what Miss Nancy thinks of them, they manage to live
and do something to keep Miss Nancy's friends from settling into
chronic inanity.




LESSON XXII.

THE POETIC TEST.


"I walked on, musing with myself
On life and art, and whether, after all,
A larger metaphysics might not help
Our physics--a completer poetry
Adjust our daily life and vulgar wants
More fully than the special outside plans,
Phalansteries, material institutes,
The civil conscriptions and lay monasteries,
Preferred by modern thinkers." MRS. BROWNING.

The highest poetry is the purest truth. To learn whether any thing
is as it ought to be, we have only to learn whether it is truly
poetical. It is a popular fallacy to suppose that poetical things
are necessarily fanciful, or imaginative, or sentimental in other
words, that poetry resides in that which is both baseless and
valueless. In the popular thought, poetry is shut out of the realm
of truth and reality. The reason, I suppose, is, that poetry demands
more of truth and harmony and beauty than is commonly found in the
actualities of human life.

Let us suppose that in a country journey we arrive at the summit
of a hill, at whose foot lies a charming village imbosomed in
trees from the midst of which, rises the white spire of the
village church. If we are in a poetical mood, we say: "How
beautiful is this retirement! This quiet retreat, away from the
world's distractions and great temptations, must be the abode of
domestic and social virtue--the home of contentment, of peace, and
of an unquestioning Christian faith. Fortunate are they whose lot
it is to be born and to pass their days here, and to be buried at
last in the little graveyard behind the church." As we see the
children playing upon the grass, and the tidy matrons sitting in
their doorways, and the farmers at work in the fields, and the
quiet inn, with its brooding piazzas like wings waiting for the
shelter of its guests, the scene fills us with a rare poetic
delight. In the midst of our little rapture, however, a
communicative villager comes along, and we question him. We are
shocked to learn that the inn is a very bad place, with a drunken
landlord, that there is a quarrel in the church which is about to
drive the old pastor away, that there is not a man in the village
who would not leave it if he could sell his property, that the
women give a free rein to their propensity for scandal, and that
half of the children of the place are down with the measles.

The true poet sees things not always as they are, but as they
ought to be. He insists upon congruity and consistency. Such a
life should be in such a spot, under such circumstances; and no
unwarped and unpolluted mind can fail to see that the poet's ideal
is the embodiment of God's will. The poet's Indian is very
different from the real native American who has been exposed to
the corrupting influences-of the white man's civilization. The
poet insists on seeing in the American Indian a noble manhood,
simple tastes, freedom from all conventionality, heroic fortitude,
and all those romantic qualities which a free forest life seems so
well calculated to engender. He looks upon the deep, mysterious
woods, traversed by nameless streams; the majestic mountains,
haunted by shadows; the broad lakes, swept only by the wind and
the wild man's oar, and he says: "it is fitting, and only fitting,
that out of such a realm should come such a life." Which is the
better and the more truthful Indian--that of the poet, or he who
drank the rum of our fathers and then scalped them? The poet's
village is the model village, and the poet's Indian is the model
Indian. Both are built of the best and truest materials that God
furnishes, and we see that when the actual village and the real
Indian are tried by the poetic standard, they are tried by the
severest standard that can be applied to them. The poet's ideal
embodies God's ideal of a village and an Indian.

The grand, basilar idea of American institutions is human
equality--the idea embodied in the American Declaration of
Independence, that men are created free and equal, each with an
independent, and all with a co-ordinate, right to life, liberty,
and the pursuit of happiness. There is in this idea the highest
poetry, because it is the transcendent truth; and there is no true
poetry this side of the highest truth. Poetry follows the
universal law, and is dependent for its quality upon its
materials. In the degree in which its materials are fictitious and
artificial, is it poor and false. The Pilgrim's Progress is
essentially better poetry than the Paradise Lost, because it
contains more of the truth as it is in the divine life of man.

The poetic test, then, is practically a very valuable one, in all
the important matters that relate to our life. Much of that which
is miscalled poetry has been based upon arbitrary and artificial
distinctions in human society and human lot. The poet has often
sung of thrones and palaces, of kings and queens, of men and women
of gentle blood, of barons and knights and squires, of retainers
and dependents, of patricians and plebeians, and thus drawn his
grand interest from distinctions in which God and Nature have had
no hand. There may be romance, fancy, imagination, sentiment, and
even instruction in such compositions as these, but there is no
poetry. They have not in them the immortal life and the motive
power of truth. We have only to carry distinctions thus attempted
to be glorified to their logical results to land in the slavery of
the masses to the over-mastering few. Now there never was, and
there never can be, any poetry in slavery. Since time began no
true poet has undertaken to write a line in praise of slavery.
Poets have always been, and they must necessarily forever be, the
prophets and priests of freedom. Multitudes of men have undertaken
to justify slavery by the Bible, by expediency, by history, by
necessity, by philosophy, by the constitution of the country; but
no man ever undertook to justify it by poetry. The most brilliant
prize offered by a national committee for the best poem in praise
of human slavery, would not be able to draw forth a single
stanza from any man capable of writing a line of true poetry.
Philosophical defences of slavery can be purchased, political
justifications can be had at the small price of a small office,
and Christian apologies to order, but, thank God! not one line in
praise of slavery could be written by a true poet, if the wealth
of the world were to be his reward.

We have in the present age a sickly, sentimental humanity which is
busily endeavoring to pervert the sense and love of justice in
mankind. It regards the disposition to do wrong as a disease, to
be treated with appropriate emollients applied over the heart, or
some gentle opiate or alterative taken through the ears. It pities
the murderer, and aims to give the impression to him and to the
world that he is a victim to the barbarous instincts of society in
the degree by which his punishment is made severe. It aims to
transform prisons into comfortable asylums, where those who have
been so unfortunate as to burn somebody's house, or steal
somebody's horse, or insert a dirk under somebody's waistcoat, may
retire and repent of their little follies, and in the mean time
get better food and lodging than they were ever able to steal.
Punishment--retribution--these are words which make them shudder.
Nothing in their view is proper but such treatment of the
criminal, be it soft or severe, as will contribute to his
reformation. The criminal has forfeited no rights, and society has
no claims upon him, if he only repents; and all punishment
inflicted beyond the measure necessary to secure repentance is
cruel. We have a great deal of this; and more or less it is
modifying theological systems and vitiating public policy. It is
carried to such an extent, often, as to make of the greatest
criminals notable martyrs. Society and the victim of wrong-doing
are both forgotten in sympathy for the wrong-doer.