Books: Lessons in Life

T >> Timothy Titcomb >> Lessons in Life

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There must be something radically wrong in our educational system,
when youth are generally unfitted for the station which they are
to occupy, or are forced into professions for which they have no
natural fitness. The truth is that the stuff talked to boys and
girls alike, about "aiming high," and the assurances given them,
indiscriminately, that they can be any thing that they choose to
become, are essential nuisances. Our children all go to the public
schools. They are all taught these things. They all go out into
the world with high notions, and find it impossible to content
themselves with their lot. They had hoped to realize in life that
which had been promised them in school, but all their dreams have
faded, and left them disappointed and unhappy. They envy those
whom they have been taught to consider above them, and learn to
count their own lives a failure. Girls starve in a mean poverty,
or do worse, because they are too proud to work in a chamber, or
go into a shop. American servants are obsolete, all common
employments are at a discount, the professions are crowded to
overflowing, the country throngs with demagogues, and a general
discontent with a humble lot prevails, simply because the youth of
America have had the idea drilled into them that to be in private
life, in whatever condition, is to be, in some sense, a "nobody."
It is possible that the schools are not exclusively to blame for
this state of things, and that our political harangues, and even
our political institutions, have something to do with it.

What we greatly need in this country is the inculcation of soberer
views of life. Boys and girls are bred to discontent. Everybody is
after a high place, and nearly everybody fails to get one; and,
failing, loses heart, temper, and content. The multitude dress
beyond their means, and live beyond their necessities, to keep up
a show of being what they are not. Farmers' daughters do not love
to become farmers' wives, and even their fathers and mothers
stimulate their ambition to exchange their station for one which
stands higher in the world's estimation. Humble employments are
held in contempt, and humble powers are everywhere making high
employments contemptible. Our children need to be educated to
fill, in Christian humility, the subordinate offices of life which
they must fill, and taught to respect humble callings, and to
beautify and glorify them by lives of contented and glad industry.
When public schools accomplish an end so desirable as this, they
will fulfil their mission, and they will not before. I seriously
doubt whether one school in a hundred, public or private,
comprehends its duty in this particular. They fail to inculcate
the idea that the majority of the offices of life are humble, that
the powers of the majority of the youth which they contain have
relation to those offices, that no man is respectable when he is
out of his place, and that half of the unhappiness of the world
grows out of the fact, that, from distorted views of life, men are
in places where they do not belong. Let us have this thing
altogether reformed.

LESSON IX.

PERVERSENESS.

"Because she's constant, he will change.
And kindest glances coldly meet,
And all the time he seems so strange,
His soul is fawning at her feet."
COVENTRY PATMORE.

"All that we seem to think of is to manage matters so as to do as
little good and plague and disappoint as many people as possible."
--HAZLITT.

It seems to me, either that there is a great deal of human nature
in a pig, or that there is a great deal of pig in human nature. I
find myself always sympathizing with a pig that wishes to go in an
opposite direction to that in which its owner would drive it. It
would be a sufficient reason for me to desire to go eastward, that
a man was behind me, with an oath in his mouth and a very heavy
boot on his foot, endeavoring to drive me westward. We are jealous
of our freedom. We naturally rise in opposition to a will that
undertakes to command our movements. This is not the result of
education at all; it is pure human nature. Command a child--who
shall be only old enough to understand you--to refrain from some
special act, and you excite in his heart a desire to do that act;
and he will have, nine times in ten, no reason for his desire to
do it but your command that he shall not. The youngest human soul
that has a will at all, takes the first occasion to declare its
independence.

Now, I believe this principle in human nature to be, in itself,
good. It is that which declares a man's right to himself--that
which asserts personal liberty in thought, will, and movement. I
believe it existed in Adam and Eve, and that it is more than
likely that the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was
despoiled because our beautiful great-grandmother, (for whom I
confess much sympathy and affection,) was forbidden to touch it.
It is a principle which should always be carefully distinguished
from perverseness, in all our dealings with young and old, and in
all our estimates of human character. When a child obeys a man, or
when one man obeys another, it should always be for good and
sufficient reason. Neither child nor man should be expected to
surrender his right to himself without the presentation to him of
the proper motive. When, yielding to this motive, the soul
consents to be directed or led, it becomes obedient. Compulsion
may secure conformity, but never obedience. If I, as a child or
man, am to yield myself to the direction of any other man, that
man is bound to present to me an adequate motive for the
surrender. God throws upon me personal responsibility--gives me to
myself--and no man, parent or otherwise, can make me truly
obedient without giving me the motive for obedience. When a child
or a man fails to yield to the legitimate motives of obedience, he
is perverse, and it is about perverseness in some of its forms of
manifestation that I propose to talk in this article.

At starting, I must give perverseness a somewhat broader meaning
than that thus far indicated. I will say that that person is
perverse who, from vanity, or pride of opinion and will, or
malice, or any mean consideration, refuses to yield his conduct
and himself to those motives and influences which his reason and
conscience recognize to be pure and good and true. In its least
aggravated form, perhaps, we find it among lovers. Women will
sometimes persistently ignore a passion which they know has taken
full possession of them, and grieve the heart that loves them by a
coldness and indifference which they do not feel at all. Rather
than acknowledge their affection for one whose loss would kill
them, or, what would be the same thing, kill the world for them,
they have lied, grown sick, and gone nearly insane. This is a
perverseness very uncommon. Sometimes lovers have been very tender
and devoted so long as a doubt of ultimate mutual possession
remained to give zest to their passion, but the moment this doubt
has been removed, one or the other has become incomprehensibly
indifferent.

I have noticed that very few married pairs are matches in the
matter of warmth and expression of passion between the parties.
The man will be all devotion and tenderness--brimming with
expressions of affection and exhibitions of fondness, and the
woman all coolness and passivity, or (which is much more common)
the woman will be active in expression, lavishing caresses and
tendernesses upon a man who very possibly grows harder and colder
with every delicate proof that the whole wealth of his wife's
nature is poured at his feet, as a libation upon an altar. It is
here that we see some of the strangest cases of perverseness that
it is possible to conceive. I know men who are not bad men--who,
I suppose, really love and respect their wives--and who would deny
themselves even to heroism to give them the comforts and luxuries
of life, yet who find themselves moved to reject with poorly-covered
scorn, and almost to resent, the varied expressions of affection to
which those wives give utterance. I know wives who long to pour
their hearts into the hearts of their husbands, and to get sympathetic
and fitting response, but who are never allowed to do it. They live
a constrained, suppressed, unsatisfied life. They absolutely pine
for the privilege of saying freely what they feel, in all love's varied
languages, toward men who love them, but who grow harder with
every approach of tenderness and colder with every warm, invading
breath. A shower that purifies the atmosphere, and refreshes the
face of heaven itself, sours cream, just as love's sweetest expression
sours these men.

I have known wives to walk through such an experience as this into
a condition of abject slavery--to waste their affection without
return, until they have become poor, and spiritless, and mean. I
have known them to lose their will--to become the mere dependent
mistresses of their husbands--to be creeping cravens in dwellings
where it should be their privilege to move as radiant queens. I
have known them thrown back upon themselves, until they have
become bitter railers against their husbands--uncomfortable
companions--openly and shamelessly flouting their affection. I do
not know what to make of the perverseness which induces a man to
repel the advances of a heart which worships him, and to become
hard and tyrannical in the degree by which that heart seeks to
express its affection for him. There are husbands who would take
the declaration that they do not love their wives as an insult,
yet who hold the woman who loves them in fear and restraint
through their whole life. I know wives who move about their houses
with a trembling regard to the moods and notions of their
husbands--wives who have no more liberty than slaves, who never
spend a cent of money without a feeling of guilt, and who never
give an order about the house without the same doubt of their
authority that they would have if they were only housekeepers,
employed at a very economical salary. I can think of no proper
punishment for such husbands except daily ducking in a horse-pond,
until reformation. Yet these asses are so unconscious of their
detestable habits of feeling and life, that, probably, not one of
them who reads this will think that I mean him, but will wonder
where I have lived to fall in with such outlandish people.

The most precious possession that ever comes to a man in this
world is a woman's heart. Why some graceful and most amiable women
whom I know will persist in loving some men whom I also know, is
more than I know. I will not call their love an exhibition of
perverseness, though it looks like it; but that these men with
these rich, sweet hearts in their hands, grow sour and snappish,
and surly and tyrannical and exacting, is the most unaccountable
thing in the world. If a pig will not allow himself to be driven,
he will follow a man who offers him corn, and he will eat the
corn, even though he puts his feet in the trough; but there are
men--some of them of Christian professions--who take every
tenderness their wives bring them, and every expression of
affection, and every service, and every yearning sympathy, and
trample them under feet without tasting them, and without a look
of gratitude in their eyes. Hard, cold, thin-blooded, white-livered,
contemptible curmudgeons--they think their wives weak and
foolish, and themselves wise and dignified! I beg my readers to
assist me in despising them. I do not feel adequate to the task of
doing them justice.

There is another exhibition of perverseness which we sometimes see
in families. There will be, perhaps, from two to half a dozen
sisters in a family, amiable all of them. Now, think of the
reasons which should bind them together in the tenderest sympathy.
They were born of the same mother, they were nursed at the same
heart, they were cradled under the same roof by the same hand,
they have knelt at the side of the same father, their interests,
trials, associates, standing--every thing concerning their family
and social life--are the same. The honor of one intimately
concerns the honor of the other, yet I have known such families of
sisters fly apart the moment they became in any way independent of
each other, as if they were natural enemies. I have seen them take
the part of a friend against any member of the family band, and
become disgusted with one another's society. Where matters have
not gone to this length, I have seen sisters who would never
caress each other, or, by any but the most formal and dignified
methods, express their affection for each other. I have seen them
live together for months and years as inexpressive of affection
for each other as cattle in a stall,--more so: for I have seen a
cow affectionately lick her neighbor's ear by the half-hour, while
among these girls I have failed to see a kiss, or hear a tender
word, or witness any exhibition of sisterly affection whatever.

One of the most common forms of perverseness, though one of the
most subtle and least known, is that shown by people who study to
shut everybody out from a knowledge of their nature and their
life. They make it their grand end and aim to appear to be exactly
what they are not, to appear to believe exactly what they do not
believe, and to appear to feel what they do not feel at all. This
is not because they are ashamed of themselves, or because they
really have any thing to conceal. They have simply taken on this
form of perverseness. They will not, if they can help it, allow
any man to get inside of their natures and characters. If they
write you a letter, they will mislead you. They will say to you
irreverent and shocking things, to prove to you that they are
bold, and unfeeling, and unthoughtful, when they tremble at what
they have written, and really show by their language that they are
afraid, and full of feeling, and very thoughtful. If they have a
sentiment of love for anybody, they take it as a dog would a bone,
and go and dig a hole in the ground and bury it, only resorting to
it in the dark, for private crunching. Very likely they will try
to make you believe that they live a most dainty and delicate life
--that the animals of the field, and the fowls of the air love
them, and come at their call--that clouds arrange themselves in
heaven for their benefit, and are sufficiently paid for the effort
by their admiration--that flowers excite them to frenzy--a very
fine frenzy, indeed--and that all sounds shape themselves to music
in their souls. They would have you think that they live a kind of
charmed life--that the sun woos them, and the moon pines for them,
and the sea sobs because they will not come, and the daisies wait
lovingly for their feet, yet, if you knew the truth, you would see
that they sit discontentedly among the homeliest surroundings of
domestic life, with their sleeves rolled up--confound them!

This variety of perverseness seems very inexplicable. I have seen
much of it, but do not know what to make of it. There is doubtless
something morbid in it. It is often carried to such extremes, and
managed so artfully, that multitudes are deceived by it. I know
of some very beautiful natures that pass in the world for rough
and coarse. I know men who have the reputation of being hard and
harsh, yet who are, inside, and in their own consciousness, as
gentle and sensitive as women--who put on a stern air and a
repellent manner, when they are really yearning for sympathy. I
have seen this air and manner broken through and battered down by
a friendly man, who found what he suspected behind it--a generous,
warm, noble heart. This perverseness seems to be akin to that of
the miser who knows he is rich, takes his highest delight in being
rich, and yet dresses meanly, and fares like a beggar rather than
be thought rich. Women hide themselves more than men. They are
generally more sensitive, and their life and circumscribed habits
have a tendency to the formation of morbid moods, and this among
the number.

Of the perverseness of partisanship in politics much is written, and
my pen need not dip into it; but there is a perverseness exhibited by
Christian churches in their quarrels that should be exposed and
discussed, because some people have an impression that it may
possibly be piety. "For _dum squizzle_, read _permanence_,"
said an editor, correcting a typographical error that had found its
way into his journal. It seems as strange that perverseness should
be mistaken for piety, as that "permanence" should be mistaken for
"dum squizzle," but I believe it often is. Let some little cause of
disturbance arise, and become active in a church, and it is astonishing
how both parties go to work and pray over it. The pastor, perhaps,
has said something on the subject of slavery, or he does not preach
doctrine enough, or he preaches the wrong sort of doctrine, or he
does not visit his people enough, or there is "a row" about the
singing, or about a change in the hymn-books, or about repairing
the church, or buying an organ, or something or other, and
straightway sides are taken, and the wills of both parties get
roused. It is sometimes laughable--it would always be, only that
it is too sad--to see how quickly both parties grow pious, as they
grow perverse. It would seem, as the strife waxes hot, that the
glory of God was never so much in their hearts as now. They pray
with fervor, they are constant in their public religious duties,
they pass through the most scrupulous self-examinations, and then
fight on to the bitter end; believing, I suppose, that they are
really doing God service, when they are only gratifying their own
perverse wills.

Churches have been ruined, or divided, or crippled in their power,
by a cause of quarrel too insignificant to engage the minds of
sensible worldly men for an hour. I have heard it said that church
quarrels are the most violent of all quarrels, because religious
feelings are the strongest feelings of our nature. I confess that
I do not see the force of this statement, for it does not appear
to me that religious feelings have much to do with these quarrels.
I can much more easily see why all personal differences should be
adjusted peaceably in a church, for there it is supposed that the
individual will is subordinated to the cause of religion and the
general good. The real basis of the bitterness of church quarrels
is women. There are no others, except neighborhood quarrels, in
which women mingle, and a neighborhood quarrel will at once be
recognized as more like a church quarrel than any other. Women
have strong feelings, are attracted or repulsed through their
sensibilities, conceive keen likes and dislikes, do not stop to
reason, and are, of course, the readiest and the most devoted
partisans. If the mouths of the women could only be smothered in a
church quarrel, it would be settled much easier. Of all the
perverse creatures in this world, a woman who has thoroughly
committed herself to any man, or any cause, is the least tractable
and reasonable. I hope this statement will not offend my sweet
friends, because it is so true that I cannot conscientiously
retract it.

What the books call pride of opinion, is, nine cases in ten,
simple perverseness. I know a most venerable public teacher of
physiology, whose early theory of the production of animal heat--
very ridiculous in itself--is still yearly announced from his
desk, notwithstanding the fact that the whole world has received
another, whose soundness is demonstrated beyond all question. As
he, year after year, declares his belief that animal heat is
produced by corpuscular friction in the circulating blood, there
is a twinkle of the eyes among his amused auditors which says very
plainly--"the old gentleman does not believe this, himself." The
youngest student before him knows better than to give his theory
a moment's consideration. Well, the old Doctor is not alone. The
world is full of this kind of thing. Men adhere to old opinions
and old policies long after they have learned that they are
shallow or untenable, not from a genuine pride of opinion, (I
doubt very much whether there really is any thing that should be
called pride of opinion,) but from genuine perverseness of
disposition. Men will give, in some heated moment, an opinion
touching some one's character or powers, and, though that opinion
be proved to be wrong a thousand times, they will never
acknowledge that they have made a mistake. This is simple
perverseness, of the meanest variety. There are some kinds of
perverseness which impress one not altogether unpleasantly, but
this affects a man with equal anger and disgust.

Perverseness is a sign of weakness--nay, an element of weakness--
in man or woman. It is no legitimate part of a true character. The
generous, outspoken man, who is not afraid to show himself, and
what there is in him, who cares more about the right way than his
way, who throws away an opinion as he would throw away an old hat,
the moment he finds it is worthless, and who good-naturedly allows
the frictions of society to straighten out all the kinks there are
in him, is the strong man always, and always the one whom men
love. Perverseness is really moral strabismus, and I am shocked to
think what a multitude of squint-eyed souls there will be, when we
come to look into one another's faces in the "undress of
immortality."

LESSON X.

UNDEVELOPED RESOURCES.

"The world is God's seed-bed. He has planted deep and
multitudinously, and many things there are which have not yet
come up."--BEECHER.

One of the richest and best of the smaller class of American
cities is New Bedford; and the secret of its wealth and beauty is
_oil_. It is but a few years since the immense fleet of vessels
that made that thrifty port their home went out with certainty of
success in their dangerous enterprises, and came back loaded
down with spoil. All that beautiful wealth was won from the
deep, and for years as many ships came and went as there were
dwellings to give them speed and welcome. But the glory and the
gain of the whale-fishery are past. The noble prey, too
persistently and mercilessly pursued, has retired northward, and
hidden among the icebergs. Now, when a ship's crew win a cargo,
they win it from the clutches of eternal frost. It seems certain
that the fishery will dwindle, year after year, until, at last,
only a few adventurers will linger near the pole, to watch for
the rare game that once furnished light for the civilized world.
All this is very unpleasant for New Bedford; but are we to have
no more oil? Is nature failing? Will the time come when people must
sit in darkness?

A few months ago a man in Pennsylvania took it into his head to
probe the ground for the source of a certain oil that made its
appearance upon the surface. Down, down into the bowels of the
earth he thrust his steam-driven harpoon, until he touched the
living fountain of oil, which, gushing up, half drowned him. Now,
all the region round about him swarms with industry. Thousands of
men are hurrying to and fro; the puff of the engine is heard
everywhere; tens of thousands of barrels of oil are rolled out and
turned into the channels of commerce; eager-eyed speculators
throng all the converging avenues of travel, and a waiting world
of consumers take the oil as fast as it is produced. Men in
Virginia, New York, and Ohio are awaking to the consciousness
that, while they have been paying for oil from the far Pacific,
they have been living within three hundred feet of deposits
greater than all the cargoes that ever floated in New Bedford
harbor. For hundreds, and, probably, for thousands of years, men
have walked over these deposits with no suspicion of their
existence. Geologists have looked wise, as is their habit, but
have given no hint of them.

The simple truth appears to be that when, in the history of the
world, it became necessary for these firmly-fastened store-houses
of oil to be uncovered, they were uncovered. Nature had held them
for untold thousands of years for just this emergency. When the
whales ceased spouting, the earth took up the business; and "here
she blows" and "there she blows" are heard in Tideoute and
Titusville, while New Bedford sits sadly by the sea, and thinks of
long absent crews to whom the cry has become strange.

I cannot but look upon this discovery of oil in the earth as one
of the most remarkable and instructive revelations of the age. It
has shown to me that, whenever human necessity demands any thing
of the world of matter, the demand will be honored. Whenever
animal life, or the muscle of man or brute, has shown itself
unequal to the wants of an age, Nature has always responded to the
cry for help. Inventors are only men who act as pioneers, and who
go forward to see what the human race will want next, and to make
the necessary provisions. An inventor has profound faith in the
exhaustless resources of nature. He knows that if he bores far
enough, and bores in the right direction, he will find that which
the world needs. He is often no more than the discoverer of a
secret which nature has kept for the satisfaction of the wants of
an age. A lake yoked to a coal-bed would generally be voted a slow
team, but the inventor of the steam engine saw how it could be
made a very fast and a very powerful one; and we who live now are
able to see that the discovery was made at the right time, and
that, for the emergencies of this latter day, it has really
quadrupled the power of civilized man.

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