There was nothing in the whole case that tended to condemn public schools, as such; but it was the spirit inculcated by the teachers of public schools, which had spoiled this girl for her place, and which has spoiled, and is still spoiling, thousands of others.
Let us look for a moment into the influence of such a motto as the following, written over a school-house door--always before the eyes of the pupils, and always alluded to by school committees and visitors who are invited to "make a few remarks":
_"Nothing is impossible to him who wills."_
This abominable lie is placed before a room full of children and youth, of widely varying capacities, and great diversity of circ.u.mstances. They are called upon to look at it, and believe in it. Suppose a girl of humble mental abilities and humble circ.u.mstances looks at this motto, and says: "I "will" be a lady.
I "will" be independent. I "will" be subject to no man"s or woman"s bidding." Under these circ.u.mstances, the girl"s father, who is poor, removes her from school, and tells her that she must earn her living. Now I ask what kind of a spirit she can carry into her service, except that of surly and impudent discontent?
She has been a.s.sociating in school, perhaps, with girls whom she is to serve in the family she enters. Has she not been made unfit for her place by the influences of the public school? Have not her comfort and her happiness been spoiled by those influences? Is her reluctant service of any value to those who pay her the wages of her labor?
It is safe, at least, to make the proposition that public schools are a curse to all the youth whom they unfit for their proper places in the world. It is the favorite theory of teachers that every man can make of himself any thing that he really chooses to make. They resort to this theory to rouse the ambition of their more sluggish pupils, and thus get more study out of them. I have known entire schools instructed to aim at the highest places in society, and the most exalted offices of life. I have known enthusiastic old fools who made it their princ.i.p.al business to go from school to school, and talk such stuff to the pupils as would tend to unfit every one of humble circ.u.mstances and slender possibilities for the life that lay before him. The fact is persistently ignored, in many of these schools, established emphatically for the education of the people, that the majority of the places in this world are subordinate and low places. Every boy and girl is taught to "be something" in the world, which would be very well if being "something" were being what G.o.d intended they should be; but when being "something" involves the transformation of what G.o.d intended should be a respectable shoemaker into a very indifferent and a very slow minister of the Gospel, the harmful and even the ridiculous character of the instruction becomes apparent.
There are two cla.s.ses of evil results attending the inculcation of these favorite doctrines of the school teachers--first, the unfitting of men and women for humble places; and, second, the impulsion of men of feeble power into high places, for the duties of which they have neither natural nor acquired fitness. There are no longer any American girls who go out to service in families.
They went into mills from the chamber and the kitchen, but now they have left the mills, and their places are filled by Scotch and Irish girls. Why is this? Is it because that among the American girls there are none of poverty, and of humble powers?
Is it because they are not wanted? Or is it because they have become unfitted for such services as these, and feel above them?
Is it not because they have become possessed of notions that would render them uncomfortable in family service, and render any family they might serve uncomfortable? An American servant, who good-naturedly accepts her condition, and knows and loves her place, who is willing to acknowledge that she has a mistress, and who enters into her department of the family life as a harmonious and happy member, may exist, but I do not know her. People have ceased inquiring for American servants. They would like them, generally, because they are intelligent and Protestant, but they cannot get them because they are unwilling to accept service, and the obligations and conditions it imposes. Where all the American girls are, I do not know. I can remember the time when thrifty farmers, mechanics, and tradesmen took wives from the kitchens of gentlemen where they were employed,--good, intelligent, self-respectful women they were, too--who became modest mistresses of thrifty families afterward;--but that is all done with now. Under the present mode of education, n.o.body is fitted for a low place, and everybody is taught to look for a high one.
If we go into a school exhibition, our ears are deafened by declamation addressed to ambition. The boys have sought out from literature every stirring appeal to effort, and every extravagant promise of reward. The compositions of the girls are of the same general tone. We hear of "infinite yearnings," from the lips of girls who do not know enough to make a pudding, and of being polished "after the similitude of a palace" from those who do not comprehend the commonest duties of life. Every thing is on the high-pressure principle. The boys, all of them, have the general idea that every thing that is necessary to become great men is to try for it; and each one supposes it possible for him to become Governor of the State, or President of the Union. The idea of being educated to fill a humble office in life is hardly thought of, and every b.u.mpkin who has a memory sufficient for the words repeats the stanza:--
"Lives of great men all remind us We can make our lives sublime, And departing, leave behind us Footprints on the sands of time."
There is a fine ring to this familiar quatrain of Mr. Longfellow, but it is nothing more than a musical cheat. It sounds like truth, but it is a lie. The lives of great men all remind us that they have made their own memory sublime, but they do not a.s.sure us at all that we can leave footprints like theirs behind us. If you do not believe it, go to the cemetery yonder. There they lie--ten thousand upturned faces--ten thousand breathless bosoms. There was a time when fire flashed in those vacant orbits, and warm ambitions pulsed in those bosoms. Dreams of fame and power once haunted those hollows skulls. Those little piles of bones that once were feet ran swiftly and determinedly through forty, fifty, sixty, seventy years of life; but where are the prints they left?
"He lived--he died--he was buried"--is all that the headstone tells us. We move among the monuments, we see the sculpture, but no voice comes to us to say that the sleepers are remembered for any thing they ever did. Natural affection pays its tribute to its departed object, a generation pa.s.ses by, the stone grows gray, and the man has ceased to be, and is to the world as if he had never lived. Why is it that no more have left a name behind them? Simply because they were not endowed by their Maker with the power to do it, and because the offices of life are mainly humble, requiring only humble powers for their fulfilment. The cemeteries of one hundred years hence will be like those of to-day. Of all those now in the schools of this country, dreaming of fame, not one in twenty thousand will be heard of then,--not one in twenty thousand will have left a footprint behind him.
Now I believe that a school, in order to be a good one, should be one that will fit men and women, in the best way, for the humble positions that the great ma.s.s of them must necessarily occupy in life. It is not necessary that boys and girls be taught any less than they are taught now. They should receive more practical knowledge than they do now, without a doubt, and less of that which is simply ornamental, but they cannot know too much. An intelligent gardener is better than a clod-hopper, and an educated nurse is better than an ignorant one; but if the gardener and the nurse have been spoiled for their business and their condition, by the sentiments which they have imbibed with their knowledge, they are made uncomfortable to themselves, and to those whom they serve. I do not care how much knowledge a man may have acquired in school, that school has been a curse to him if its influence has been to make him unhappy in his place, and to fill him with futile ambitions.
The country has great reason to lament the effect of the kind of instruction upon which I have remarked. The universal greed for office is nothing but an indication of the appet.i.te for distinction which has been diligently fed from childhood. It is astonishing to see the rush for office on the occasion of the change of a State or National Administration. Men will leave quiet and remunerative employments, and subject themselves to mean humiliations, simply to get their names into a newspaper, and to achieve a little official importance and social distinction. This desire for distinction seems to run through the whole social body, as a kind of moral scrofula, developing itself in various ways, according to circ.u.mstances and peculiarities of const.i.tution. The consequence is that politics have become the pursuit of small men, and we no longer have an opportunity to put the best men into office. The scramble for place among fools is so great and so successful, that men of dignity and modesty retire from the field in disgust. Everybody wants to "be something," and in order to be something, everybody must leave his proper place in the world, and a.s.sume a position which G.o.d never intended he should fill. Look in upon a State legislature once, and you will find sufficient ill.u.s.tration of my meaning. Not one man in five of the whole number possesses the first qualification for making the laws of a State, and half of them never read the const.i.tution of the country. I mean no contempt for the good, honest men of whom our State legislatures are princ.i.p.ally composed, but I wish simply to say that there is nothing in their quality of mind, habits of thought, intellectual power, or style of pursuits that fits them for the great and momentous functions of legislation. They are there, a set of "n.o.bodies," mainly for the purpose of becoming "somebodies," and not for any object connected with the good of the State.
Somehow, all the students in all our schools get the idea, that a man in order to be "somebody" must be in public life. Now think of the fact that the millions attending school in this country have in some way acquired this idea, and that only one in every one thousand of these is either needed in public life, or can win success there. Let this fact be realized, and it is easy to see that the nine hundred and ninety-nine will feel that they are somehow cheated out of their birthright. They desired to be in public life, and be "somebody," but they are not, and so their life grows tame and tasteless to them. They are disappointed. The men solace themselves with a petty justice"s commission, or a town office of some kind, and the women--some of them--talk about "woman"s rights," and make themselves notorious and ridiculous at public meetings. I think women have rights which they do not at present enjoy, but I have very little confidence in the motives of their petticoated champions, who court mobs, delight in notoriety, and glory in their opportunity to burst away from private life, and be recognized by the public as "somebodies." I insist on this:--that private and even obscure life is the normal condition of the great mult.i.tude of men and women in this world; and that, to serve this private life, public life is inst.i.tuted. Public life has no legitimate significance save I as it is related to the service of private life. It requires peculiar talents and peculiar education, and brings with it peculiar trials; and the man best fitted for it would be the last man confidently to a.s.sert his fitness for it.
Thousands seek to become "somebodies" through the avenues of professional life; and so professional life is full of "n.o.bodies."
The pulpit is crowded with goodish "n.o.bodies"--men who have no power--no unction--no mission. They strain their brains to write common-places, and wear themselves out repeating the rant of their sect and the cant of their schools. The bar is cursed with "n.o.bodies" as much as the pulpit. The lawyers are few; the pettifoggers are many. The bar, more than any other medium, is that through which the ambitious youth of the country seek to attain political eminence. Thousands go into the study of law, not so much for the sake of the profession, as for the sake of the advantages it is supposed to give them for political preferment.
An ambitious boy who has taken it into his head to be "somebody,"
always studies law; and as soon as he is "admitted to the bar" he is ready to begin his political scheming. Mult.i.tudes of lawyers are a disgrace to their profession, and a curse to their country.
They lack the brains necessary to make them respectable, and the morals requisite for good neighborhood. They live on quarrels, and breed them that they may live. They have spoiled themselves for private life, and they spoil the private life around them. As for the medical profession, I tremble to think how many enter it because they have neither piety enough for preaching, nor brains enough to practice law. When I think of the great army of little men that is yearly commissioned to go forth into the world with a case of sharp knives in one hand, and a magazine of drugs in the other, I heave a sigh for the human race. Especially is all this lamentable when we remember that it involves the spoiling of thousands of good farmers and mechanics, to make poor professional men, while those who would make good professional men are obliged to attend to the simple duties of life, and submit to preaching that neither feeds nor stimulates them, and medicine that kills or fails to cure them.
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 a.s.surances 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 "n.o.body."
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 inst.i.tutions, 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 mult.i.tude 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 a.s.serts 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. G.o.d 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 pa.s.sion 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 pa.s.sion, 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 pa.s.sion between the parties.
The man will be all devotion and tenderness--br.i.m.m.i.n.g with expressions of affection and exhibitions of fondness, and the woman all coolness and pa.s.sivity, 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 a.s.ses 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 grat.i.tude 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 a.s.sist 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, a.s.sociates, 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 mult.i.tudes are deceived by it. I know of some very beautiful natures that pa.s.s in the world for rough and coa.r.s.e. 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, n.o.ble 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 circ.u.mscribed 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 G.o.d was never so much in their hearts as now. They pray with fervor, they are constant in their public religious duties, they pa.s.s through the most scrupulous self-examinations, and then fight on to the bitter end; believing, I suppose, that they are really doing G.o.d 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 mult.i.tude 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 G.o.d"s seed-bed. He has planted deep and mult.i.tudinously, and many things there are which have not yet come up."--BEECHER.
One of the richest and best of the smaller cla.s.s 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 n.o.ble 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?