Books: Lessons in Life
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Timothy Titcomb >> Lessons in Life
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As I see how cheerfully he bears the burden of his hopeless
halting, there comes back to me the story of the lame lord who
sang a different sort of song--the lame lord who died at
Missolonghi, and whose friend Trelawny--human jackal that he was--
stole to his bedside after the breath had left his body, and
examined his clubbed feet, and then went away and wrote about
them. Here was a man with regal gifts of mind--a poet of splendid
genius--a titled aristocrat--a man admired and praised wherever
the English language was read--a man who knew that he held within
himself the power to make his name immortal--a man with wealth
sufficient for all grateful luxuries--yet with clubbed feet; and
those feet! Ah! how they embittered and spoiled that man of
magnificent achievements and sublime possibilities! It would
appear, from the disgusting narrative of Mr. Trelawny, that he was
in reality the only man who had ever seen Byron's feet. Those feet
had been kept so closely hidden, or so cunningly disguised, that
nobody had known their real deformity; and the poor lord who had
carried them through his thirty-six years of life, had done it in
constantly tormented and mortified pride. Those misshapen organs
had an important agency in making him a misanthropic, morbidly
sensitive, unhappy, desperate man. When he sang, he did not forget
them; and the poor fools who turned down their shirt-collars, and
imitated his songs, and thought they were inspired by his winged
genius, had under them only a pair of halting, clubbed feet.
There is a class of unfortunate men and women in the world to whom
the boy and the bard have introduced us. They are not all lame:
but they all think they have cause to be dissatisfied with the
bodies God has given them. Perhaps they are simply ugly, and are
aware that no one can look in their faces with other thought than
that they are ugly. Now it is a pleasant thing to have a pleasant
face, and an agreeable form. It is pleasant for a man to be large,
well-shaped, and good-looking, and it is unpleasant for him to be
small, and to carry an ill-shaped form and an ugly face. It is
pleasant for a woman to feel that she has personal attractions for
those around her, and it is unpleasant for her to feel that no man
can ever turn his eyes admiringly upon her. A misshapen limb, a
hump in the back, a withered arm, a shortened leg, a clubbed foot,
a hare-lip, an unwieldy corpulence, a hideous leanness, a bald
head--all these are unpleasant possessions, and all these, I
suppose, give their possessors, first and last, a great deal of
pain. Then there is the taint of an unpopular blood, that a whole
race carry with them as a badge of humiliation. I have heard of
Africans who declared that they would willingly go through the
pain of being skinned alive, if, at the close of the operation,
they could become white men. There are men of genius, with plenty
of white blood in their veins--with only a trace of Africa in
their faces--whose lives are embittered by that trace; and who
know that the pure Anglo Saxon, if he follows his instincts, will
say to him: "Thus far,"--(through a limited range of relations,)--
"but no further."
From the depths of my soul I pity a man or woman who bears about
an irremediable bodily deformity, or the mark of the blood of a
humiliated race. I pity any human being who carries around a body
that he feels to be in any sense an unpleasant one to those whom
he meets. I pity the deformed man, and the maimed man, and the
terribly ugly man, and the black man, and the white man with black
blood in him, because he usually feels that these things bear with
them a certain degree of humiliation. I pity the man who is not
able to stand out in the broad sunlight, with other men, and to
feel that he has as goodly a frame and as fine blood and as
pleasant a presence as the average of those he sees around him. I
do not wonder at all that many of these persons become soured and
embittered and jealous. A sensitive mind, dwelling long upon
misfortunes of this peculiar character, will inevitably become
morbid; and multitudes of humbler men than Lord Byron have cursed
their fate as bitterly as he, and have even lifted their eyes to
blaspheme the Being who made them.
The two instances which I have mentioned show us that there are
two ways of taking misfortunes of this character; and one of them
seems to a good deal better than the other. Between the boy who
ignored the withered leg and the crutch, and the proud poet who
permitted a slight personal deformity to darken his whole life,
there is a distance like that between heaven and earth.
I believe in the law of compensation. Human lot is, on the whole,
well averaged. A man does not possess great gifts of person and of
mind without drawbacks somewhere. Either great duties are imposed
upon him, or great burdens are put upon his shoulders, or great
temptations assail and harass him. Something in his life, at some
time in his life, takes it upon itself to reduce his advantages to
the average standard. Nature gave Byron clubbed feet, but with
those feet she gave him a genius whose numbers charmed the world--
a genius which multitudes of commonplace or weak men would have
been glad to purchase at the price of almost any humiliating
eccentricity of person. But they were obliged to content
themselves with excellent feet, and brains of the common kind and
calibre. Providence had withered the little boy's leg, but the
loudest song I have heard from a boy in a twelvemonth came from
his lips, as he limped along alone in the open street. The
cheerful heart in his bosom was a great compensation for the
withered leg; and beyond this the boy had reason for singing over
the fact that he was forever released from military duty, and
firemen's duty, and all racing about in the service of other
people. There are individual cases of misfortune in which it is
hard to detect the compensating good, but these we must call the
"exceptions" which "prove the rule."
But the best of all compensation for natural defects and
deformities, is that which comes in the form of a peculiar love.
The mother of a poor, misshapen, idiotic boy, will, though she
have half a score of bright and beautiful children besides,
entertain for him a peculiar affection. He may not be able, in his
feeble-mindedness, to appreciate it, but her heart brims with
tenderness for him. The delicate morsel is reserved for him; and,
if he be a sufferer, the softest pillow and the tenderest nursing
will be his. A love will be bestowed upon him which gold could not
buy, and which no beauty of person, and no brilliancy of natural
gifts could possibly awaken. It is thus with every case of defect
or eccentricity of person. So sure as the mother of a child sees
in that child's person any reason for the world to regard it with
contempt or aversion, does she treat it with peculiar tenderness;
as if she were commissioned by God--as indeed she is--to make up
to it in the best coinage that which the world will certainly
neglect to bestow.
With the world at large, however, there are certain conditions on
which this variety of compensation is rendered; and a man who
would have compensation for defects of person, must accept these
conditions, or furnish them. Such a man as Lord Byron would have
been offended by pity. To have been commiserated on his
misfortune, would have made him exceedingly angry. He would not
allow himself to be treated as an unfortunate man. He bound up his
feet, and made efforts to walk that ended in intense pain, rather
than appear the lame man that he really was. Of course, there was
no compensation in the tender pity and affectionate consideration
of the world for him; nor is there any for the sad unfortunates
who inherit and exercise his spirit. But for all those who accept
their life with all its conditions, in a cheerful spirit, who give
up their pride, who take their bodies as God formed them, and make
the best of them, there is abundant compensation in the affection
of the world. A cheerful spirit, exercised in weakness, infirmity,
calamity--any sort of misfortune--is just as sure to awaken a
peculiarly affectionate interest in all observers, as a lighted
lamp is to illuminate the objects around it. I know of men and
women who are the favorites of a whole neighborhood--nay, a whole
town--because they are cheerful, and courageous, and self-respectful
under misfortune; and I know of those who are as much dreaded as
a pestilence, because they will not accept their lot--because
they grow bitter and jealous--and because they will persist in
taunts and complaints.
The number of those who are, or who consider themselves,
unfortunate in their physical conformation, is larger than the
most of us suppose. I presume that at least one-half of the
readers of this essay are any thing but well satisfied with the
"tabernacle" in which they reside. One man wishes he were a little
larger; one woman wishes she were a little smaller; one does not
like her complexion, or the color of her eyes and hair; one has a
nose too large; another has a nose too small; one has round
shoulders; another has a low forehead; and so every one becomes a
critic of his or her style of structure. When we find a man or a
woman who is absolutely faultless in form and features, we usually
find a fool. I do not remember that I ever met a very handsome man
or woman, who was not as vain and shallow as a peacock. I recently
met a magnificent woman of middle age at a railroad station. She
was surrounded by all those indescribable somethings and nothings
which mark the rich and well-bred traveller, and her face was
queenly--not sweet and pretty like a doll's face--but handsome and
stylish, and strikingly impressive, so that no man could look at
her once without turning to look again; yet I had not been in her
presence a minute, before I found, to my utter disgust, that the
old creature was as vain of her charms as a spoiled girl, and
gloried in the attention which she was conscious her face
everywhere attracted. It would seem as if nature, in making up
mankind, had always been a little short of materials, so that, if
special attention were bestowed upon the form and face, the brain
suffered; and if the brain received particular attention, why then
there was something lacking in the body.
This large class of malcontents generally find some way of
convincing themselves, however, that they are as good-looking as
the average of mankind. They make a good deal of some special
points of beauty, and imagine that these quite overshadow their
defects. Still, there is a portion of them who can never do this;
and I think of them with a sadness which it is impossible for me
to express. For a homely--even an ugly man--I have no pity to
spare. I never saw one so ugly yet, that if he had brains and a
heart, he could not find a beautiful woman sensible enough to
marry him. But for the hopelessly plain and homely sisters--"these
tears!" There is a class of women who know that they possess in
their persons no attractions for men,--that their faces are
homely, that their frames are ill-formed, that their carriage is
clumsy, and that, whatever may be their gifts of mind, no man can
have the slightest desire to possess their persons. That there
are compensations for these women, I have no doubt, but many of
them fail to find them. Many of them feel that the sweetest
sympathies of life must be repressed, and that there is a world of
affection from which they must remain shut out forever. It is hard
for a woman to feel that her person is not pleasing--harder than
for a man to feel thus. I would tell why, if it were necessary--
for there is a bundle of very interesting philosophy tied up in
the matter--but I will content myself with stating the fact, and
permitting my readers to reason about it as they will.
Now, if a homely woman, soured and discouraged by her lot, becomes
misanthropic and complaining, she will be as little loved as she
is admired; but if she accepts her lot good-naturedly, makes up
her mind to be happy, and is determined to be agreeable in all her
relations to society, she will be everywhere surrounded by loving
and sympathetic hearts, and find herself a greater favorite than
she would be were she beautiful. A woman who is entirely beyond
the reach of the jealousy of her own sex, is an exceedingly
fortunate woman; and if personal homeliness has won for her this
immunity, then homeliness has given her much to be thankful for. A
homely woman who ignores her face and form, cultivates her mind
and manners, good-naturedly gives up all pretension, and exhibits
in all her life a true and a pure heart, will have friends enough
to compensate her entirely for the loss of a husband. Friendship
is unmindful of faces, in the selection of its objects, even if
love be somewhat particular, and, sometimes, foolishly fastidious.
Life is altogether too precious a gift to be thrown away. A man
who would permit a field to be overgrown with weeds and thorns
simply because it would not naturally produce roses, would be very
foolish, particularly if the ground should only need cultivation
to enable it to yield abundantly of corn. Far be it from me to
depreciate physical symmetry and personal comeliness. They are
gifts of God, and they are very good; but there are better things
in this world than a good face, and better things than the
admiration which a good face wins. I am more and more convinced,
as the years pass away, that the choicest thing this world has for
a man is affection--not any special variety of affection, but the
approval, the sympathy, and the devotion of true hearts. It is not
necessary that this affection come from the great and the
powerful. If it be genuine, that is all the heart asks. It does
not criticize and graduate the value of the fountains from which
it springs. It is at these fountains particularly that the
unfortunates of the world are permitted to drink. They have only
to accept cheerfully the conditions of their lot, and to give free
and full play to all that is good and generous in them, to secure
in an unusual degree the love of those into whose intimate
society Providence has thrown them.
It is stated by Dr. Livingstone, the celebrated explorer of
Africa, that the blow of a lion's paw upon his shoulder, which was
so severe as to break his arm, completely annihilated fear; and he
suggests that it is possible that Providence has mercifully
arranged, that all those beasts that prey upon life shall have
power to destroy the sting of death in the animals which are their
natural victims. I do not believe that this power is mercifully
assigned to beasts of prey alone, but that the misfortunes that
assail our limbs and forms, in whatever shape and at whatever time
they may come, bring with them something which lightens the blow,
or obviates the pain, if we will accept it. There is a calm
consciousness in every soul, however harshly the lion's paw may
fall upon the body which it inhabits, that it is itself
invulnerable--that whatever may be the condition of the body, the
soul cannot be injured by physical forms or forces.
Physical calamity never comes with the power to extinguish that
which is essential to the highest manhood and womanhood, and never
fails to bring with it a motive for the adjustment of the soul to
its conditions. The little boy whose "Hail Columbia" has been
ringing in my ears all day, accepted the conditions of his life,
and the sting of his calamity has departed. It is pleasant to say
to him, and to all the brotherhood and sisterhood of ugliness and
lameness, that there is every reason to believe that there is no
such thing in heaven as a one-legged or a club-footed soul--no
such thing as an ugly or a misshapen soul--no such thing as a
blind or a deaf soul--no such thing as a soul with tainted blood
in its veins; and that out of these imperfect bodies will spring
spirits of consummate perfection and angelic beauty--a beauty
chastened and enriched by the humiliations that were visited upon
their earthly habitation.
LESSON III.
ANIMAL CONTENT.
"By sports like these are all their cares beguiled;
The sports of children satisfy the child." GOLDSMITH.
"Ay, give me back the joyous hours
When I, myself, was ripening too;
When song, the fount flung up its showers
Of beauty, ever fresh and new." GOETHE'S FAUST.
I have been watching a family of kittens, engaged in their
exquisitely graceful play. Near them lay their mother, stretched
at her length upon the flagging, taking her morning nap, and
warming herself in the sun. She had eaten her breakfast, (provided
by no care of her own, but at my expense,) had seen her little
family fed, and having nothing further to attend to, had gone off
into a doze. What a blessed freedom from care! Think of a family
of four children, with no frocks to be made for them, no hair to
brush, no shoes to provide, no socks to knit and mend, no
school-books to buy, and no nurse! Think of a living being with the
love of offspring in her bosom, and a multitude of marvellous
instincts in her nature, yet knowing nothing of God, thinking not
of the future, without a hope or an expectation, or a doubt or a
fear, passing straight on to annihilation! At the threshold of this
destiny the little kittens were carelessly playing; and they are
doubtless still playing, while I write. They have no lessons to
learn, they do not have to go to Sunday-school, they entertain no
prejudices, except against dogs which occasionally dodge into the
yard; and I judge, by the familiar way in which they play with
their mother's ears, and pounce upon her tail, that they are not
in any degree oppressed by a sense of the respect due to a parent.
Cat and kittens will eat, and frolic, and sleep, through their
brief life, and then they will curl up in some dark corner and
die.
I remember that in one of the late Mr. Joseph C. Neal's "Charcoal
Sketches," he puts into the mouth of a very sad and seedy loafer
the expression of a wish that he were a pig, and a statement of
the reasons for the wish. These reasons, as I recall them, related
to the freedom of the pig from the peculiar trials and troubles of
humanity. Pigs do not have to work for a living; they undertake no
enterprizes, and of course fail in none; they eat and sleep
through a period of months, and then come the knife and a grunt,
and that is the last of them. Now I suppose this thought of Mr.
Neal's loafer has been shared by millions of men. Not that
everybody has at some time in his life wished he were a pig, but
that nearly everybody who has had his share of the troubles and
responsibilities of life, has looked upon simple animal
carelessness and content with a certain degree of envy. It is not
necessary to go among brutes for instances of this animal content.
It can be found among men. Who does not know good-natured,
ignorant, healthy fellows, who will work all day in the field,
whistle all the way homeward, eat hugely of course food, sleep
like logs, and take no more interest in the great questions which
agitate the most of us, than the pigs they feed, and that, in
return, feed them? Who has not sighed, as he has seen how easily
the simple wants of certain simple natures are supplied? I
remember an old man who quite unexpectedly was drafted into the
grand jury, which sat in the county town less than ten miles
distant from his home; and this was the great event of his life.
He never tired of talking about it--(never tired himself, I mean,)
and a stranger could not carry on a conversation with him for five
minutes, without hearing of something which occurred when
"I was in Blanktown, on the Grand Jury." It is doubtful whether
Napoleon ever contemplated a victory with the complacent
satisfaction that filled my old friend when he alluded to his
connection with "the _grand_ jury," and emphasized the adjective
which magnified the jury and glorified him.
I confess that, when I pass through a rural town, and see the
laborers among the corn, and the boys driving their cattle, and
the girls busy in the dairies, and life passing away quietly, I
cannot avoid a twinge of regret that it would be impossible for me
to be content with the kind of life that I see around me,
especially as I know that there is one kind of pleasure--negative,
perhaps, rather than positive--which that kind of life enjoys, and
in which I can never share. Relief from great responsibilities,
and contentment with humble clothing, humble fare, humble society,
humble aims and ambitions, humble means and humble labors--ah! how
many weary, overloaded men--how many disappointed hearts--have
sighed for such a boon, and sighed knowing they could never
receive it.
It has been the habit of poets to surround simple pleasures and
pursuits with the golden atmosphere of romance,--not because they
would enjoy such pleasures and pursuits at all, but rather because
they are forever beyond their possession. A poet is always
reaching toward the unattainable, and he may reach forward to the
perfections of a life of which the best that he sees around him is
an intimation, or backward to the animal content of a life as yet
undisturbed by the intimation of something better. Bucolics are very
sweet, but their writers do not believe in them. "A nut-brown maid,"
with bare, unconscious feet and ancles, is very pretty in a picture,
but the man who painted her ascertained that she was green, and not
the most entertaining of companions. The truth is, that when we have
got along so far that we can perceive that which is poetical and
picturesque in the simplest form of rustic life, we have got too
far along to enjoy it.
I suppose that much of the charm which simple animal content has
for us, is connected with the memories of childhood. We can all
recall a period of our lives when there was joy in the consciousness
of living--when animal life, in its spontaneous overflow, flooded all
our careless hours with its own peculiar pleasure. The light was
pleasant to our eyes, vigorous appetite and digestion made ambrosia
of the homeliest fare, the simplest play brought delight, and
life--all untried--lay spread out before us in one long, golden
dream. We now watch our children at their sports, and see but little
difference between their sources of happiness and those which supply
the kittens in their play. "Pleased with a rattle, tickled with a
straw," they skip from pleasure to pleasure, and find delight in the
impulsive exercise of their little powers. We were once like them.
Life was once as fresh, and flowing, and impulsive, and objectless,
as it is with them; and when we are weary and oppressed with labor,
and loaded down with responsibility, and filled with thoughts of the
great destiny before us, we turn our eyes backward with a sigh for
days once ours, but lost forever. Lost forever! This is the romantic
pain that fills us in all our contemplations of simple animal
content. It is lost to us, because we are lost to it. Like a
passenger far out upon the sea, adventuring upon a long voyage, we
look back upon the fading hills of our native land, and sigh to
think that the breeze which bears us away can never bring us back.
The question comes to us: "What is there in our present life to
repay us for this loss?" There are multitudes who can ask this
question, and answer honestly, "Nothing." It is sad, but true,
that countless men and women have never found any thing in life
which compensates them for the loss of the simple animal enjoyment
and content of childhood. Sickness, perhaps, has imposed upon them
years of pain. Poverty has condemned them to labor through every
waking hour to win sustenance for themselves and their dependents.
The heart has been cheated of its idol. Friends have proved false,
and fortune fickle. Life has gone wrong through all the avenues of
their being. Yet there are others who, while looking with pleasure
upon the innocent sports of animal life, and recalling the simple
joys of childhood with delight, are content with the lot of
manhood and womanhood, and would look upon a return to their
simpler age as the greatest calamity that could be inflicted upon
them. With brows wrinkled by care and toil, and heads silvered by
premature age, and great burdens upon heart and brain, they glory
in a life within and before them, by the side of which the life of
childhood is as flavorless and frivolous as that of a fly.
I have been much impressed by a passage in the "Recreations of a
Country Parson,"--which, by the way, is one of the best and
cleverest books of its kind in the English language--in which this
question is incidentally touched upon, and so happily touched
upon, that I cannot refrain from transcribing the whole passage.
The writer represents himself to be seated upon a manger, writing
upon the flat place between his horse's eyes, while the docile
animal's nose is between his knees; and it is the horse that he
addresses:--
"For you, my poor fellow-creature, I think with sorrow as I write
here upon your head, there remains no such immortality as remains
for me. What a difference between us! You to your sixteen or
eighteen years here, and then oblivion!--I to my threescore and
ten, and then eternity! Yes, the difference is immense; and it
touches me to think of your life and mine, of your doom and mine.
I know a house where at morning and evening prayer, when the
household assembles, among the servants there always walks in a
shaggy little dog, who listens with the deepest attention and the
most solemn gravity to all that is said, and then, when prayers
are over, goes out again with his friends. I cannot witness that
silent procedure without being much moved by the sight. Ah! my
fellow-creature, this is something in which you have no part! Made
by the same hand, breathing the same air, sustained like us by
food and drink, you are witnessing an act of ours which relates to
interests that do not concern you, and of which you have no idea.
And so here we are, you standing at the manger, old boy, and I
sitting upon it; the mortal and the immortal, close together; your
nose on my knee, my paper on your head; yet with something between
us broader than the broad Atlantic."
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