CLVB'OF-ONl6 PK5S7=«:G€^ * FROM- TH^ N0Te-300K« OP-^F^* M73sN' WHO • yV\.»&HT - HKve - BeeN-socirtBte CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY FROM The Estate of L.L.^eaman Cornell University Library PS 2738.R3C6 1891 A Club of onexassages from the note-boa 3 1924 022 252 989 Cornell University Library The original of tinis book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924022252989 A Club of One PASSAGES FROM THE NOTE-BOOK OF A MAN WHO MIGHT HAVE BEEN SOCIABLE WITH MARGINAL SUMMARY By the editor BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY iCde Biiber^ite ^^U-, ^i j^^l. nofbeen said befor e, and has sap them in his ownway. Except in the earlier pages, almost all that related to his aches and ailments has been omitted, — the editor knowing perfectly well that his many complaints would very soon weary if not disgust the reader, when iv Editor's Preface the purpose constantly in view was to enter- tain and enlighten him. Another effect has been to keep down the hulk, as the fashion seems to be going out of rating books by the pound. CONTENTS FAGS j4 Birthday Lamentation sparrows waked me long before daylight. A Club of One ig Their multitudinous chatter was not only- disturbing — it was malicious; as there can be no doubt of their happiness over my miseries. They peeped impishly through every space in the blinds big enough to admit a sunbeam. There was something Mephistophelean in their mocking irony. CursM be the man — the enemy of the Amneupon peace of all civilized Americans — who im- imported ported them. He should be incinerated, and his ashes blown by the four winds to the four quarters of the globe. The de- testable little pests should be exterminated by all means. They have no friends but enthusiastic farmers and gardeners, who insist that they live mainly on worms and insects. And they stubbornly refuse to admit that they drive away other birds ! As to that, however, I do not care ; as, in my present humor, the destruction of all birds would be pleasant enough to me. Love for them, so flippantly expressed, is Lm:e/or only, I believe, an affectation. I would /e^JZZ' offer a generous premium for the heads of every hundred sparrows ; or, what might be better and more effective, a very large sum to the leader and authority in ladies' hats in Paris to make them fashionable, as an adornment, for a single season. By 20 Dirty little (kings* A single sparrow spoiled the whole pot. A Club of One whatever means, it is of the utmost im- portance that they should be gotten rid of. They are dirty little things. It is neces- sary for very well-dressed people to adopt every precaution to protect themselves against them. Only yesterday a precious decoction — mellowing in the sun — to be used as a lotion on certain parts of my poor body — was incautiously left un- covered, and a single sparrow defiled the whole pot. They are too dirty to eat, or they would long, since have been consumed by the hungry. Discharges the doctor. Another crisis. I have been obliged to discharge my doctor. The fellow was more and more offensive to me, and finally be- came unendurable. So I sent for him this morning to dismiss him. The Satanic grin on his face when he came in was some- thing exasperating. His utter want of sympathy, and growing tendency to say disagreeable and impertinent things, pre- pared me to be rude to him ; but I re- pressed myself in good taste, and begged him to sit down. It is a wonder tjhe neces- sities of the creature had not made him humble, or at least considerate. How a man as poor as he is can be insolent to A Club of One 21 those who feed hnn is past my compre- hension. He had drawn and drawn upon me, till the balance I owed him was trifling. Ever since I asked him to spend a night with me — a night of unexampled torture — and sleep on the comfortable sofa, so long the bed of my poor departed dog — he has shown a very ugly disposition to- skewed an wards me, in spite of his effort to conceal "»«. it. His ridiculous pride, I suppose, was Hisridim- piqued by the proposition ; but what busi- ness has a poor devil of a doctor with pride, I should like to know. Pride is a luxury appropriate to the opulent. And the smell of tobacco always in his cloth- ing was as offensive to me as his cursed haughtiness. Some outdoor air had to be let in after his visits to dissipate the poison, which as often endangered my ex- istence. The disgust of my olfactories at tobacco is serious enough, but the rude shock of the freezing air off the snow- covered earth is deadly. The relief that I Relief in be- feel in being rid of the miserable creature 'hfm.' might be considered a feeble counterfeit of pleasure, if such a visitation were not im- possible to an enduring sufferer like me. The regular vexation. The quarterly 22 A Club of One Theguar^ bill of the apothecary is just in. A man I^^upm/ of less experience in such things would be '""''' driven to madness by them. The many items, and the swindling aggregate ! It would not do to question the rascality, as being robbed is preferable to being gossiped about by the robber. I very well c tun. me, IS not a good one. He makes the tail of the Judge a serpent, and does not con- ceal the head. An oversight, I should think, of the artist. You go thence into the place appointed for epicures and glut- tons, who set their hearts upon the lowest species of sensual gratification. An un- varying, eternal storm of heavy hail, foul water, and snow, pour down upon them. They are lying prostrate on the ground ; ceriems. and the three-headed monster Cerberus keeps barking over them, and rending them. Dore's conception, in one of the heads, is perfect. Hell itself (of the sen- A Club of One )^ sual) is in the face. It is besotted, as well as merciless. Thence to the region of the prodigal and the avaricious. Plutus is at />/«/«!. the entrance, with " clucking voice." Vir- gil speaks to him : " Peace, cursM wolf ! Consume thyself internally with thy greedy rage." " As sails, swelled by the wind, fall entangled when the mast gives way ; so fell that cruel monster to the ground." Disgusting creature, as he sits crouching out of view. The artist's genius is con- spicuous in the figure. The greediness of the eyes is avarice itself. In the next pic- ?"*« prodi- ture he vividly depicts the prodigal and the avaricious. avaricious: they are forever rolling great weights, and forever smiting each other. " To all eternity they shall continue butting one another." Every muscle seems to be breaking. Thence across the broad marsh, in the fifth circle, where ostentation, arro- gance, and brutal anger are punished, to the " joyless city " of Dis. We cross a The joyless plain, all covered with burning sepulchres. ^ ^ " Tongues of fiercer flame speak out of them. And so on we go, and on, we three, by the river of blood, past the obscene harpies, to the plain of burning sand, where an eter- nal shower of fire is falling ; on again to the crimson stream that runs down to the ^4 A Club of One centre of hell, when a strange and mon- strous shape comes swimming up through cerycn. thc dark air. It is Geryon, the uncleanly image of Fraud. " His face was the face of a just man, so mild an aspect had it out- wardly ; the rest was all a reptile's body." Upon the " haunch of the dreadful animal " we mount, and are conveyed down to the eighth circle. He moves himself with many a sweeping round, and, setting us down, bounds off, " like an arrow from the string." Flatterers, Ou the way, we see flatterers, " immersed liars, sedu- • n^ t a i i ii* cers, in filth, and panders, and lying seducers, hurrying along — meeting one another — all naked, and scourged by horned demons. We stop not to see the peculators, and as- sassins, and tyrants, but take a look at the T/u: wicked " wickcd hcU-bird " on the margin of the boiling pitch — glaring, ready to strike. The hypo- The hypocrites are interesting, as they walk in slow procession, heavy laden with cloaks of lead, which are gilded and of daz- zling brilliancy on the outside. A thief, with a load of serpents on his haunch and a fiery dragon on his shoulders, comes shout- ing along. The shadow of Mahomet, rent asunder from the chin downward, displays the conscious vileness and corruption of his doctrines. From the arch of the tenth crites. A Club of One ^5 chasm are heard the wailings of falsifiers of every kind. Thence along the brim of the Pit, to mighty Antaeus, who takes us in his Antxus. arms and sets us down " into the bottom of all guilt," or lowest part of hell, where eternal cold freezes and locks up Cocytus, the marsh that receives all its rivers. Here is Cain, who killed his brother Abel. Then to the end — the last circle of Cocytus, which takes its name (Judecca) from Judas Iscariot, and gaze in admiration at the arch-traitor Satan himself, " Emperor of satan him- the Realm of Sorrow." He too is pursued by his own sin. All the streams of guilt strea,>a 0/ keep flowing back to him, as their source, ^gbtu^. and from beneath his three faces (shadows of his own consciousness) issue forth the mighty wings with which he struggles, as it were, to raise himself ; and sends out winds that freeze him only the more firmly in his ever swelling marsh. " From Beelze- bub as far removed as his tomb extends is a space, not known by sight but by the sound of a rivulet descending in it, along the hol- low of a rock which it has eaten out with tortuous course and slow declivity." We enter by that hidden road, to return into Return to 1 1 • 1 1 • 1 1 ^^^ bright the bright world : mountmg up through " a ■oiorid. round opening the beauteous things which ^6 A Club of One Heaven bears ; " and thence we issue out, " again to see the stars." co,uinues All honor to Dord for his pictures of the study of Dante. Antseus ! They are tremendous, — the mighty conceptions of genius. But he did not attempt the Devil ! After his success with the poet, in the frontispiece, I wonder that he hesitated. There is gloom there that is profound. It is not at all strange that the people should have pointed at the man with such a face, and said to one an- other as he passed along, " There goes the man who has been in hell." The Knight of The Sorrowful Countenance had a smil- ing face compared with the poet of the damned. Pictures so vivid and interesting as these of Dore's it is an enjoyment to ADantesque study. Hc should havc illustrated a pas- passage . ^^ . , . _^ fromHeine. sagc lu Hcmc that IS SO Dantcsquc in de- scription. It is of a remarkable quarrel in a little hospital at Cracow where he was an accidental spectator, where it was interest- ing to hear the sick mocking and revil- ing each other's infirmities, how emaciated consumptives ridiculed those who were bloated with dropsy, how one laughed at the cancer in the nose of another, and he again jeered the locked jaws and dis- A Cluh of One _J7 torted eyes of his neighbor, until finally those who were mad with fever sprang naked from bed, and tore the coverings and sheets from the maimed bodies around, and there was nothing to be seen but mis- ery and mutilation. Strange ! that the lit- Pace o/the erary outlaw who describes to us so faith- UZ?'^^ " fully the scene should have had a face full of all tenderness — as youthful and beauti- ful as Keats' or Hunt's. And so I go on, on — curiously and reflectingly — lingering over the matchless achievement of the poet and the illustrations of the artist. I contemplate the miserable, and participate in their wretchedness. In an access of Ahun-mai , . misery. abnormal misery, such as comes to me often in these later days of unendurable existence, I feel myself hardly less wretched than the miserable I have been contem- plating. Hence the interest I cannot help expressing. It is but community of feel- ing. Proverbially, misery loves company. Goldsmith expressed the necessity in a Coidsmm letter to Bob Bryanton, though the gentle Goldsmith's misery, I imagine, must have been more a matter of fancy than of reality. " You," said he, " seem placed sit the cen- tre of fortune's wheel, and, let it revolve ever so fast, are insensible to the motion. ^8 A Club of One I seem to have been tied to the circum- ference, and whirled disagreeably around as if on a whirligig." To another, about the same time, he wrote, " I have been for some years struggling with a wretched being. What has a jail that is formidable .' I shall at least have the society of wretches, and such is to me true society." The wniiings of wailings of the damned take the tone of tJie damned. __ . _^, my own sufferings. Their miseries are real, and not fanciful. They are fated, too, and sympathy expended upon them is wasted. Their pains are penalties ; mine, I feel, are vengeful and causeless. Enough perdition here, certainly, for me. Paradise only could compensate. An infinity of de- light must balance a life-time of anguish. The damned, consequently, I can hear howl and rage without being distressed. Justice doomed them, and the divine wrath is un- //eff" and again he seems touched by the wretch- edness he encounters, and gives unmistak- able sign of sympathy. As in the case of meeting the impulsive and surprised lov- ers, Francesca and Paolo : he fell to the ground as if dead, when he heard their painful story : though the manifestation may have been to a degree selfish, as the sigh of Francesca — " There is no greater pain than to recall a happy time in wretch- edness " — must have reminded him of his sainted Beatrice. " I fainted," he says, Beatrice. "with pity, as if I had been dying; and fell, as a dead body falls." The weakness was natural in view of the painful remem- brance. All in all, I think the historian and poet of hell would have been com- panionable to me. He could have under- stood my distresses, and entered deeply into the bottomless abysses of my anguish. When I groaned, his wisdom would pene- trate the cause. When I writhed, his ob- Thetoeto/ servations of the damned would diagnose comfanion. the paroxysm. When the universal pain 40 A Club of One prostrated me, as Pascal was prostrated, hopelessly, his quick sense of misery could conjecture the incalculable endurance. But I must live on, I suppose, to the end, with- out intelligent and proper sympathy. The common mind and common heart are in- capable of it. It would require a genius of observation in misery and the heart of a celestial to properly sympathize with me. Exhausted The time I spent at my desk day before ^ '"^' yesterday and the day before that about exhausted me. Time was when I could write and write, without limit. The words ran away from my pen with the flowing ink. At a time, too, when I had nothing to say. I had not learned to unlearn what I had learned, and knew nothing. We gather and throw away as we ascend and descend the hill of life (wisdom I will not The little Call it). Oucc I saw a little child, in swad- dling clothes, on the floor. Some one gave it a big red marble (too big to put into its mouth), which it took in one hand ; then another marble was given to it, which it took with the other. Hardly had the little thing time to realize its possessions, when a bright golden one appeared to vex it. There were three marbles, now, and it child. A Club of One 41 had but two hands. Another and another and another was presented to it. What was it to do } It dropped and seized and weariedby seized and dropped, till, exhausted by its ef- forts, it fell asleep — the coveted marbles rolling away — not one of them all remain- ing in its possession. So it is with all, — at the top and at the bottom of the hill of life : empty - handed as the little child — the same at the end as at the beginning. Now, when I have something to say, I have not the strength to say it. Literary schemes dreamed out, all had to be abandoned. I had at one time something very compen- dious in contemplation. Years of effort would have been necessary to achieve it. Long ago I destroyed all vestiges of prep- aration. Note-books and note-books went Note-looks into the fire, and a large part of my cher- ished hopes went with them. They were so much of myself. The batteries of the brain — how many ! — had been operated to produce them. The brain ! The mi- nuteness of its parts and the magnitude of its achievements ! A billion of the starry brain-cells, says Holmes, could be packed in a cubic inch, and the convolutions con- tain one hundred and thirty - four cubic inches ! Going too long, the great scheme 42 A Club of One The great abortcd. Thc loss of the half -formed ^^oried. thing left a void that has never been filled. Empty seemed everything for a space, and the ruin it made has many a time reminded me of the lady on the point of marriage, whose intended husband usually traveled by the stage-coach to visit her. She went one day to meet him, and found instead of him an old friend who came to announce to her the tidings of his sudden death. She uttered a scream, and piteously ex- ""'.'?„ claimed, "He is dead!" But then all consciousness of the affliction that had be- fallen her ceased. " From that fatal mo- ment," says the recorder of the incident, " this unfortunate female daily for fifty years, in all seasons, traversed thd distance of a few miles to the spot where she ex- pected her future husband to alight from the coach ; and every day she uttered in a plaintive tone, ' He is not come yet ! I will return to-morrow ! ' " My poor wasted preparatory effort is dead, buried, — I wish The solemn it could bc forgottcn. A record of the entomdment, solemn entombment is inscribed in all the waste places remaining. And here I am writing about the figment, when I ought to be in bed between my blue blankets. My wife — A Club of One 4) Incautiously a section of the blinds was Thebunds left open, and the blazing sun waked me long before my accustomed time to rise. " Sun ! how I hate thy beams ! " once ex- claimed Dr. Johnson, — I imagine under similar circumstances. I quoted the lexi- cographer with emphasis. The sun ! — it makes everything too visible ; and the Doctor, with his enthusiasm of sadness, and observation, which, " with extensive view," had surveyed " mankind from China to Peru," was moved by disquieting disclos- ures. In the shadows only, and through oisemnnan and intra- smoked glass, as it were, men of the type spection. of the Doctor should scan themselves and their fellow mortals. Too much light is ex- posing, as a slab of wood turned over on a bright sunshiny day in June reveals a mul- titude of hideous creatures, of manifold kinds, which scamper and crawl away in terror at the sun's all-seeing rays. I am vexed to madness. A fellow with infuriated a horn in a top room of a tall building in blower. the neighborhood was tugging and tugging away for hours last night at a few notes of detestable " Shoo Fly," to the annoyance or horror of every one who heard, over and over, ever and ever, the same miserable 44 A Club of One few notes. The rascal, blowing so hard and exhaustingly, had to have air in abun- windmas dancc, so his two windows were wide open, and the diabolical sounds produced by his instrument had free exit and opportunity for torture without stint. It is a wonder that Dante, in all the regions of the damned, found no place for horn-blowers. An ctserva- " HcU - firc, kept withiu proper bounds," seifs. Fuseli said to Rogers, " is no bad thing. Limbo might do, if the fellows attempted only the tolerable ; but they keep blow- ing away forever at what they themselves and everybody must hate. A vile tune runs round the world, and is the universal fashion. Hated, too, all the time it is being played, or sung. Strange to think of Whistling. — everybody hates whistling, and every- body whistles. It is the thing that police- men should be specially instructed to knock men down for doing. " Shoo Fly " in fashion, you climb to the top of Popocate- petl and you will find a man there whis- tling it. As, in riding up town in the even- ing, you see an article of dress adorning the persons of thousands which struck you as a novelty when you rode down in the morning. Strange, how imitative men are — monkeys are not more so. And the unt A Club of One 45 versal selfishness ! The horn-blowers and the piano-players never think of how they are vexing nearly all who hear them. Now and then, only, an interested person is found to say it is agreeable. In some houses there is an instrument of torture — instruments stringed, springed, padded, or bored — in every room, which must be endured, — as the very people would punish you for com- plaining of it who complain themselves. The sensitive lady with the sensitive sick child, whose nerves are torn to pieces by the squeaking " organ "of a neighbor, would be furious if her young lady daugh- ter's practicing on the piano by the hour were complained of in the least degree. But that aggregation of discords and hor- a trass- rors — a brass - band — who can compass it ? who invented it ? A friend of mine was at the Boston Jubilee the other day, where there were twelve thousand musi- cians, and he said he had time and again heard a village brass - band of a dozen pieces make more noise than the whole twelve thousand. But, to think of it, nearly every one, at some time in life, has blown a horn, or made a noise on an instru- ment of some sort, to the torment, to a greater or less extent, of every other man 46 A Club of One Memorable mur m uring, horns. At Ronces- valles. who heard him, and he should submit to endure like inflictions of others withou" Horns, too, have played so great a part in the history of this world, that perhaps one should not quite lose all consideration for them. Their effect on Atjericho. the Wall of Jericho is memorably recorded in Holy Writ. Sometimes I have wondered that the walls of buildings in which brass- bands were playing did not tumble down in the same manner. At Roncesvalles, Orlando, in despair, blew so terrible a blast, that he rent his horn and the veins and sinews of his neck ; and Charles, who heard it eight miles off, was hindered by the traitor Ganellon from coming to his assistance. The sound of Nimrod's horn, which Dante heard, on his way, with Vir- gil, to the lowest part of hell, was louder still. " I heard," says the poet, " a high horn sound so loudly that it would have made any thunder weak." The voice of Fingal, in Ossian, was hardly less loud and terrible than the horns of Orlando and Nimrod. When he raised his voice, " Cromla answered around, the sons of the desert stood still, and the fishes of the troubled sea moved to the depths." At the very times when you most dislike to Nimrod^s horn. FingaVs voice. A Club of One 47 hear what they call music, your ears are most open and sensitive to it, and nothing will shut it out. I have heard a music- box — set agoing by some sleepless old bachelor — through a dozen brick walls. I have heard a hand-organ playing a mile away. I have heard a girl singing — a girVs 1 • 11- 1. singing. screaming, screechmg, squalling — when my ears were bound up and smothered with pillows. Fortunately, the barbaric taste generally disappears at manhood, or the world would be a pandemonium, and filled with imbeciles and incapables. The taste for music once become a chronic appe- tite or passion, all hope of practicalness or intelligent application in other fields may be abandoned. Patrick Henry played the Patrick fiddle — and he played it well, they say — but he was a great orator — the greatest perhaps that America has produced. God Almightly works inscrutably, his wonders to perform. He doth the incredible and exceedeth the unimaginable, for his own wise purposes. Exceptions he creates or Exceptions permits for encouragement or example. The old English divine said of strawber- ries, " Doubtless God could have made a better berry, but doubtless God never did." Doubtless God could have - permitted a 48 A Club of One greater nuisance than attempts at music, but doubtless God never has. I have just received a complimentary in- vitation to a wedding. The bridegroom was a man when I was a boy. He must be a good deal past seventy now. The bride, I hear, is not much above twenty. These Incongruous incongruous marriages ! The disparity is marriages. gygggg|.jyg_ Softcning is almost a certain - consequence. Young women do not know what they do when they marry old men. Possibly their hope is in the conclusion of the song — that the old brass their old husbands leave them will buy them wycheriy. ucw paus. Old Wychcrly was wise in the matter, and the promise he exacted from his young wife is a travesty upon it, in the comedian's best vein. I do not like to think of it ; I fear the bursting of a vessel. The old actor, dramatist, and manager, married a girl of eighteen when he was verging on eighty. Shortly after. Providence was pleased, in its mercy to the young woman, to call the old man to another and a better world. But ere he took his final departure from this, he sum- moned his young wife to his bedside, and Dying. announced to her that he was dying ; where- A Club of One 4g upon she wept bitterly. Wycherly lifted himself up in the bed, and gazing with ten- der emotions on his young, weeping wife, said, "My dearest love, I have a solemn Exacts a • . . c 1 I- T • Promise promise to exact from you before I quit /rom hu you forever here below. Will you assure me my wishes will be attended to by you, however great the sacrifice you may be called on to make } " Horrid ideas of Sut- tees, of poor Indian widows being called on to expire on funeral pyres, with the bodies of their deceased lords and masters, flashed across the brain of the poor woman. With a convulsive effort and desperate res- olution, old Wycherly's young wife gasped out an assurance that his commands, how- Assures her ever dreadful they might be, should be obeyed. Then Wycherly, with a ghastly smile, said in a low and solemn voice, " My beloved wife, the parting request I have to make of you is — that when I am gone — (here the young woman sobbed and cried most vehemently) — when I am in my cold grave — (Mrs. Wycherly tore her hair) — when I am laid low — (the disconsolate wife shrieked with grief) — when I am no longer a heavy burden and a tie on you — (" Oh ! for Heaven's sake ! " exclaimed Mrs. Distress oj ^ the poor Wycherly, " what am I to do t ") — I com- «""»«»• ^o A Club of One mand you, my dear young wife — (said the old, dying comedian) — on pain of incurring my malediction, never to — marry — an old man again ! " Mrs. Wycherly dried her eyes, and, in the most fervent manner, promised that she never would ; and that faithful woman kept her word for life. There is not much to be said of incongru- ous marriages after that. It tells the story. Nothing further could be added to it with- Lijicso/ out quoting the lines of Waller, On One Married to an Old Man, which I would rather not repeat. The whole thing is dis- tasteful. An old man — shriveled and shaky — with a pretty young woman on his shrunken arm — is a picture for a satyr to grin at, and a philosopher to deplore. Perverted To be pleascd with it would require a per- verted taste — suggesting the delight of the surgeon, inspecting the blooming can- cer, ripe for his pitiless knife. A poor young plant is the virgin green, that feeds on ruins old. Of right poor food are her meals I ween, in his cell so lone and cold. The incompatibility ! Only the amalgam of mammon could unite such opposites. It is Plutus's best work, — at which he swells himself to his greatest proportions — jing- ling his metallic voice ("clucking voice," taste. A Club of One 5/ Dante calls it), and licking his chaps like a disgusting great boar. Once I attended a wedding of December and May. The tailor December had padded the garments of the bride- "" ''^' groom, and the jeweler had hung his dia- monds on the bride. The smile of senility brightened the countenance of the one with a stagy light, while all the blood of the heart of the other seemed to be concen- trated in her shame-stricken face. What wonder that Hymen blushed, that satyrs grinned, that Virtue felt herself outraged and Religion insulted, when Sin, in priestly robe, with priestly unction, in awful irony, aw/ui pronounced the accursM blessing .'' The . occasion was a Vanity Fair indeed, at which a Death's head on a Venus figure was every- where present ; — at the banquet sitting ; peering over the shoulders of beauty ; drinking its drink from the goblet of Sa- tan; — the latter an invisible and unex- s,itnnanm pected guest, but the happiest, by all odds, of the party. I went home a sadder man, • — ■ with the distressing certainty, that such scenes must continue to be acted before high Heaven, and increase, with the growth of what all men call civilization. For two or three days I have suffered p£Z(y"'' 52 A Club of One supremely, and the utmost I could do was to take care of myself. So long a sufferer, I have learned to do that. I should have been dead long ago if I had trusted other people to look after me. Some very im- portant matter they would have regarded as a very little thing, and I should be no more. So, long since, I perceived the importance of attentive, perpetual observation and care A utile took of mysclf. I have a little book of duties, which I have religiously kept for years, in which is set down mathematically every little and great thing pertaining to my health — when to do certain things, to the minute, and when to avoid them altogether ; by which means, and by reason of special sagacity and acumen in all things in which I myself am interested, 1 have become a A genius in vcry genius in self-observation and care- care-a mg. ^g^j^jj^g (Coddliug, thc brutc of a doctor I lately discharged called it, on one of his last visits.) But, with all my care, I sometimes forget a duty, and suffer in consequence. When I had concluded my last bit of desk- work, the time had arrived for my ninety- two paces on the veranda. To my horror, and, I fear, my everlasting injury, I took ninety-eight ! And, not observing the tem- perature as I should (fifteen degrees above A Club of One 5^ freezing), I wore my light-weight muffler, and my heavy gloves, without lining. The effect of the excess in exercise, and neglect Effect of ex in not sufficiently protecting myself against the severe cold, very soon announced itself in a cough, the most distressing I have had for years. The doctor, however, was prompt, with heroic remedies, and I am better again, thank the Lord ! The man seems to know his business, and me, es- pecially. Though he did miscalculate, when he asked me my age ! Impertinence ! I did n't have the patience or self-possession of About's Greek servant, who, when asked Ahoufsser- his age, answered, imperturbably, " My mother wrote it on a piece of paper, and the wind blew it away." Better for doctor and patient if both had had the tact and kindness displayed under not dissimilar cir- cumstances by two eminent English peo- ple. Horace Walpole, dining (it is stated) ivaipoUani with the Duchess of Queensberry on her '" birthday ■ (when she had just finished her eightieth year), soon after the cloth was removed, very politely drank her health in a bumper, and added, " May you live, my Lady Duchess, till you begin to grow ugly ! " "I thank you, Mr. Walpole," re- plied her Grace ; " and may you long con- ^4 A Club of One Age aTid ugliTtess. Fontenelle. Living. Other peo- ■ple's sins. tinue your taste for antiquities ! " Ah ! age and ugliness ! " I remember," says the mother of Fanny Kemble, "the dreadful impression made upon me by a story Sir Thomas Lawrence told my mother of Lady J , (George the Fourth's Lady J ,) who, standing before her drawing-room looking-glass, and unaware that he was in the rooms, exclaimed : ' I swear it would be better to go to hell at once than to live to grow old and ugly.' " Some one asked Fontenelle how old he was. He parried the impertinence delicately : " Hush ! Pray don't speak so loud ; death seems to have forgotten me, and you may perhaps put him in mind of me." When I get de- cidedly better, and the conditions are favor- able, I mean to express myself at length of this detestable practice. Meantime, discre- tion ! To live to do so important a thing I must look to living. Living ! Could some one teach the art ! We should all flock to him to learn. Other people we are very wise about. Of ourselves we are ig- norant enough. We are constructed to see outwardly, says old Montaigne. Other peo- ple's sins trouble us. But here I am, run- ning on. Philosophy to the moon ! What care I for it or anything in comparison with A Club of One 5^ myself. It is when I forget myself that I suffer most. The consequences of even a moment's abstraction have sometimes been nearly fatal to me. Dreaming one day over some choice sweet amid the treasures of my library, I mistook the tiger on my rug for the veritable beast from Bengal, and started, in a manner to upset all my Hhmrves nerves. Yet " BlessJd are the Books, I say. For honey of the soul are they.'' And I will enjoy them, and dream over them, to the end. Any deprivation before that. The doctor, by the by, promises me an evening of social converse in my library soon. We shall enjoy it together, I think. He has the stuff of a thinker in him : I hope he has good taste. If he should be- tray a liking for the modern society novel The modem . socieiynovel. — written to be read without reflection — as a procession or masquerade is viewed, in which one has the slightest interest — I could not help losing respect for him. I 1 do not expect the man to be a Solomon in wisdom, an Emerson in taste, or an angel in virtue. I should be unfit for him if he were. As to angels, they are fancies. Leigh Hunt's conception is the very best. Hunt.': idea xi'iii" 1 1 lA of an angeL \ think, that literature has produced. An ^6 A Club of One angel (he says) is the chorister of heaven, the page of martyrdom, the messenger from the home of mothers. He comes to the tears of the patient, and is in the blush of a noble anger. He kisses the hand thaf gives an alms. He talks to parents of their departed children, and smooths the pil- low of sickness, and supports the cheek of the prisoner against the wall, and is the knowledge and comfort which a heart has of itself when nobody else knows it, and is the playfellow of hope, and the lark of as- piration, and the lily in the dusk of adver- Twistedinto sity. After such a passage, to be twisted cm or wm. j^^^ contortious by a toe-ache is to suffer a pang of memory and a discouragement to hope unknown outside the nethermost abyss of the doomed. A twinge of the gout, I suspect. Hales dhpu. I hatc disputation. My wife — It is not discussion. It IS next thing to scolding. Gentlemen ought to be able to talk without disputing ; though no gentleman will intro- duce into conversation a subject upon which gentlemen might differ with feeling. That is the test. A very good man, as the world goes, sometimes comes in to sit with me an evening. The politenesses have hardly A Club of One 57 been exchanged, when he asks my view of Badmanr something. The view he at once takes to be a deliberate opinion, and falls to com- bating it, by giving me his opinion of it, to the contrary. As if I cared particularly what he thought about it ! He is too good a man to cultivate tempestuousness. It has been said wisely that no dispute is managed without passion, and yet there is scarce a dispute worth a passion. Anthony Trottote. Trollope is said to have been very fond of disputation for its own sake, and once at dinner to have roared out to some one at the end of the table, " I totally disagree with you. What was it you said } " Fen- cooler's story. imore Cooper related to Moore an anec- dote of a disputative man. " Why, it is as plain as that two and two make four." " But I deny that too ; for 2 and 2 make twenty-two." On one occasion when they were together. Dr. Campbell said some- or. camp- thing, and Dr. Johnson began to dispute it. Johnson. " Come," said Campbell, " we do not want to get the better of one another ; we want to increase each other's ideas." When the erudite Casaubon visited the Sorbonne Casauion. they showed him the hall in which, as they proudly told him, disputations had been held for four hundred years. " And what," of Voltaire. 38 A Club of One said he, "have they decided?" It is ex- pected by nearly every one that everybody will take a side of everything presented, and at the same time show very marked feelings of partisanship — to the point, even, of belligerence. On first nights, in /« the time thc timc of Voltairc, when play-goers were unusually excited, each spectator was asked, as he entered the parquette, " Do you come to hiss?" "Yes." "Then sit over there." But if he answered, " I come to applaud," he was directed to the other side. Thus the antagonistic bodies were massed for action. So, in society, every man is ex- pected to range himself on one side or the other of every subject. Whatever the in- sufficiency of information and light, he must decide the question, and all questions, at once, that may be presented to him. Alas ! to reflection nothing could be more Mon- ridiculous. Montesquieu, in one of the Persian Letters, says : " The other day I was at a gathering where I saw a very amusing man. In a quarter of an hour he decided three questions in morals, four his- torical problems, and five points in physics. I have never seen such a universal de- cider." Unreasonable and intemperate partisanship prevents intelligent agree. tesquieu. y4 Club of One ^g ment. Lord Burleigh, we are told, was LordBur- once very much pressed by some of the "^'' divines of his time, who waited on him in a body, to make some alterations in the Lit- urgy. He desired them to go into the next room by themselves, and bring him in their unanimous opinion upon some of the disputed points. They returned, however, to him very soon, without being able to agree. " Why, gentlemen," said he, " how can you expect that I should alter any point in dispute, when you, who must be more competent, from your situation, to judge than I can possibly be, cannot agree Doctors dis- among yourselves in what manner you would have me alter it." Benjamin Lay, a violent reformer and enthusiast, was con- temporary with Dr. Franklin, who some- times visited him. Among other schemes of reform he entertained the idea of con- Astocon- 1-1 y-~'i'*' T«' verting all vertmg all mankind to Christianity. This mankind. was to be done by three persons — himself and two other enthusiasts, assisted by Dr. Franklin. But on their first meeting at the doctor's house, the three " chosen ves- sels " got into a violent dispute on points of doctrine, and separated in ill-humor. The philosopher, who had been an amused listener, advised the three sages to give up 6o A Club of One the project of converting the world until they had learned to tolerate one another. It was Froude, I believe, who sometimes in impatient moments wished that the laity DisMatiaus would treat their disputatious divines as two gentlemen once treated their seconds, when they found themselves forced into a duel without knowing what they were quar- reling about. As the principals were being led up to their places, one of them whis- pered to the other, " If you will shoot your second, I will shoot mine." A man called to ask me to sign the Total Abstinence Pledge. He seemed to be a man of sense. I begged him to stay till I prepared a little pledge for him to sign. phdge-mak- Hc wcnt away. As if pledge-making and tfedge-iak- pledgc-takiHg were not for two ! As it any one existed who could not be embar- rassed by a pledge of some sort. As if any man on earth could subscribe to the Ten Commandments and the Sermon on the Mount without reservation or qualifica- tion. As if — The north- The wlud is from the northeast. I felt east wind. it approaching very sensibly, long before it came, and prepared for it as I could. I tng. A Club of One 6i put on my pink shirt over a chamois jacket. I poured some Number Six into my boots. I breakfasted appropriately. I looked to the window stripping, and double-sashed the windows. Forewarned, forearmed. When it came I was ready for it. Mad to be Madtobs barred out, it went skirring round and round for a hole to get in at. It dashed down the flue, filling the room with poison- ous gases and smoke. It appeared where least expected, and where nothing would keep it out. Ah, the northeast wind ! — the universal dread. Once hear a Britisher assail it ! Boreas is a ruffian and a bully, but the northeast is a rascal. .iEolus has a rascal. not such a vicious, ill-conditioned blast in his puffy bags. It withers like an evil eye ; it blights like a parent's curse ; is less kind than ingratitude ; more biting than forgot- ten benefits. It comes with sickness on its wings, and rejoices only the doctor and the sexton. When Charon hoists a sail, it is the northeast that swells it ; it purveys for famine and caters for pestilence. From the savage realms of the Czar it comes with desolating sweep, laden with moans Ladmwuh moans. from Siberian mines, and sounding like echoes of the knout ; but not a fragrant breath brings it from all the rosaries of 62 A Club of One Persia, so destitute is it of grace and char- ity. While it reigns, no fire heats, no rai- ment comforts, na walls protect — cold without bracing, scorching without warmth. It deflowers the earth, and it wans the sky. The ghastliest of hues overspreads the face Nature of things, and collapsing nature seems ex- ieews expir~ . . _ , , , , . , , ing. pirmg of cholera. The cock m the barn- yard is sullen and solitary ; the horse in the stable has a whipped look ; the donkey at the stack erects his ears, and shows metal in his heels ; the pigeons moan, like the undercurrent of the brook ; all men are shy and silent ; the children are quarrel- some and perverse ; the sparrows, even, are Engines dumb and comfortless looking ; eneines groan, *Sr groan with their loads, and spit spitefully their scalding steam ; engineers see obsta- cles at every curve, and shiver ; passengers snuggle poutingly into corners, and wonder if ever so many disagreeable people were in the same space before ; the boy munches his apple with tenfold offensiveness ; the baby misses the way to its mouth with its candied fist ; the pug on the rug snaps and Marrcm, snarls Ukc mad ; marrow congeals ; the spi- nal column gives sign of insecurity under the burden of a leaden brain. Alas, alas ! A northeast wind must have been blowing A Club of One 6^ to account for an incident at a military exe- rncMe?:t /» cution in Hyde Park long ago — mentioned ^ ^ by Gilly Williams. A grave man, witness- ing it, turned about, and said to a by- stander, "By G — , I thought there was more in it ! " And shot himself very soon afterwards. A northeast wind must have been blowing to account for an event in Event m ° Pans Paris streets the day Robespierre was guil- streets. lotined — noted by Carlyle. From the Pa- lais de Justice to the Place de la Revolu- tion, it is one dense stirring mass ; all windows crammed ; the very roofs and ridge-tiles budding forth curiosity, in strange gladness. All eyes are on Robespierre's Raies- tumbril, where he, his jaw bound in dirty tiimbru. linen, with his half-dead brother, and half- dead Henriot, lie shattered ; their seven- teen hours of agony about to end. The gendarmes point their swords at him, to show the people which he is. A woman springs on the tumbril ; clutching the side of it with one hand ; waving the other sib- yl-like ; and exclaims : " The death of thee gladdens my very heart." Robespierre [thought by many to be dead] opened his ofem his eyes : " Scoundrel ! Down to hell with the curses of all wives and mothers ! " I can imagine an east wind blowing when they 64 A Club of One took Jesus out — bearing the cross for him- self — to the place of a skull, and crucified him, between two thieves. I like to think of something to palliate the crime of Pilate and the mob. My Uncle Toby had a word to say for Satan, and Burns too, I think, in one of his poems. Age^nd Age and Want, oh ! ill-matched pair! A iVant. . beggar was just now at the door — an old man. Seventy-five years of age, I should say, at least. The air was cold, and I did not encourage him to linger ; though he did not seem inclined to relate a pitiful tale. He had evidently seen better days, and ap- peared to have a good deal of the pride of manhood left. There was nothing of obse- quiousness in his manner, and the thankful- ness he expressed was in the language of Irish heg- self-respect and intelligence. The Irish beggars, as Thackeray describes them, come crawling round you with lying prayers and loathsome compliments, that make the stomach turn ; they do not even disguise that they are lies ; for, refuse them, and the wretches turn off with a laugh and a joke, a miserable grinning cynicism that creates distrust and indifference, and must be, one would think, the very best way to close the et^rs. A Club of One 65 purse, not to open it, for objects so un- worthy. An old man, obliged to beg, is a pitiable character. I do not like to think of the extremity. Preserve, just Providence ! (exclaims Jean Paul) the old man from J^fn Pturs exclatna- want ! for hoary years have already bent t'"'^- him low, and he can no longer stand upright with the youth, and bear heavy burdens on his shoulders. I know of nothing more ter- rible to contemplate than the inconceiv- able poverty and distress of the people of xheteopuof Thibet, as described by a traveler in that country. There are no plains save flats in the bottoms of the valleys, and the paths lead over lofty mountains. Sometimes, when the inhabitants are obliged from fam- ine to change their habitations in winter, the old and feeble are frozen to death standing and resting their chins on their staves, remaining as pillars of ice, to fall Menaspa- only when the thaw of the ensumg sprmg commences ! " Did you ever observe," asks Macdonald, in one of his novels, " that there is not one word about the vices of the poor in the Bible — from beginning to end.?" "We talk," said Douglas Jerrold, " of the intemperance of the poor ; why, when we philosophically consider the crush- ing miseries that beset them — the keen The ntock~ ery of lux~ ury. Life jnore iiLterestittg to tll£ pOOT' Carlyle. 66 A Club of One suffering of penury, and the mockery of luxury and profusion with which it is sur- rounded — the wonder is, not that there are so many who purchase temporary ob- livion of their misery, but that there are so few." The blessedness of life, remarks the Scotch author quoted, depends far more on its interest than upon its comfort. The need of exertion and the doubt of success render life much more interesting to the poor than it is to those who, unblessed with anxiety for the bread that perisheth, waste their poor hearts about rank and reputation. If men could discriminate be- tween needs and wants, what fortunate changes would occur in their condition. Goldsmith wrote, " Man wants but little here below." Man needs but little here below, would have been nearer the truth. His necessities are few indeed ; his wants include everything. They are as hungry as his desires. Sense can support herself (says Carlyle) handsomely, in most coun- tries, for some eighteen pence a day ; but for fantasy, planets and solar systems will not suffice. It is right that poverty in old age should be impressively held up to young people, and economy intelligently inculcated as the means to forefend it. A Club of One 67 " Ye immortal gods ! " exclaimed Cicero ; cken. " men know not how great a revenue econ- omy is." "Economy," said Voltaire, "is the source of liberality." Thackeray, com- mending Macaulay's frugality, admonishes, MacmUay's " To save be your endeavor, against the ■^''"^"^"^ night's coming, when no man may work ; when the arm is weary with long day's labor ; when the brain perhaps grows dark ; when the old, who can labor no more, want warmth and rest, and the young ones call for supper." An aged husbandman, as the German allegory runs, was working in his a German rich and wide-spread fields, at the decline " ^■^'"^' of day, when he was suddenly confronted by a spectral illusion, in the form of a man. " Who, and what are you .' " said the aston- ished husbandman. "I am ZoXor^on, 'dx^ soiomm, the wise," was the reply, " and I have come to '^""' inquire what you are laboring for .' " "If you are Solomon," said the husbandman, "you ought to know that I am following out the advice you have given. You re- ferred me to the ant for instruction, and hence my toil." "You have," said the ap- parition, " learnt but half your lesson ; I ' directed you to labor in the proper season nepropcy for labor, in order that you might repose Sr? ""^ in the proper season for repose." 68 A Club of One Very wretched. Modern humorists. The saga- zious fellow. I have been very wretched for the last few days. Every ill, it seems to me, that could afflict a man, has attacked me. Pains, pains, the most searching and excruciating, in every part of my miserable body. I thought again and again that my poor brain would split into pieces. The doctor seemed attentive and anxious, and his pow- ders and drops have brought me to a toler- able state again. And he himself continues to be endurable, though he did last night quote from one of the modern humorists — there are dozens of them — who rely upon extravagance, bad grammar, bad orthogra- phy, and slang, to relieve the essential stu- pidity of their pages. Seeing my blank expression, he said, "You haven't read him, perhaps." I didn't reply. The sa- gacious fellow, not to know my detestation of such stuff ! Still, he seems a good doc- tor, and reads to me sometimes, as a solace. He is a natural reader. His reading is like good talking. After his allusion to the coarse humorist, he read to me, in a charm- ing way, one of Zschokke's tales, and I for- gave him. Again he declared his intention to spend a long evening with me in my li- brary, socially. I want to enlighten him a little as to one thing. His limited means, A Club of One 69 he thinks, will not permit him to purchase books, so, I suspect, he has fallen into the easily acquired habit of relying too much AneasUyac- upon newspapers and such books as fall m his way for intellectual food. He pleads a want of time too, and sets down to that his ignorance of good literature and defec- tive literary taste. I hope, when I have the opportunity, to give him an object-les- son that will cure him effectually of his complaints. Ah ! that searching pain in Apainmhis my left elbow ! I can hardly hold the pen for the agony I suffer ; but I must write a little now and then for occupation and va- riety. I cannot be always reading, and re- cording my pains. (Another book, for the doctor's special edification.) I feel myself about worn out. Everything distresses me. I am tired of the town, — man made it ; I T' " "Ay, but Anamusmg 111- • 1 1 i,»Ar compliment. your lordship misses them so clean ! Af- ter his overthrow, Hannibal took refuge at the court of Prusias, King of Bithynia. There Scipio came on an embassy. The 96 A Club of One Ingres. scifioand two grcat rivals met, and in conversation Hannibal, g^.^.^ ^^^^^ Hannibal whom he considered the greatest commander. "Alexander," was the reply. " And who next .? " " Pyrrhus." " And who after him .? " " Myself." " And what would you have said if you had beaten me at Zena } " " In that case I should have put myself before Alexander and Pyrrhus and all other generals." Mademoiselle Ra- Racheia,td chcl was vcry anxious to have her portrait taken by Ingres, and made an appointment with him at his studio to talk the mat- ter over. In the course of conversation he remarked that in order to do justice to his model he should require at least fifty sittings of from two to three hours each. " How long will it be before the portrait is completed .■" " she inquired. " Four or five years," was the painter's reply. " Misery ! " exclaimed Rachel ; " then I must abandon the idea, for I may be dead and buried be- fore you have immortalized me." "Ma- demoiselle," answered Ingres, with a smile, " I have no such pretension ; your own genius has already saved me the trouble." Allen, one of Leigh Hunt's school-fellows, was so handsome, that running one day against a barrow-woman in the street, and turning round to appease her in the midst One of Hvnfs school- fellows. A Club of One 97 of her abuse, she said, "Where are you driving to, you great hulking, good-for- nothing, beautiful fellow, God bless you ! " Voltaire, being on a visit to a very lovely voUaire. woman, said to her, "Your rivals are the curious works of art ; you are the most com- plete work of nature." Dr. Johnson paid a fine compliment to the wife of Dr. Beattie, when he wrote to Boswell, "Of Dr. Beattie Johnson to Boswell. I should have thought much, but that his lady puts him out of my head ; she is a very lovely woman." Colley Gibber alluded to coiiey the Duchess of Marlborough as possessing something that distinguished her above all the women of her time, — a distinction which she received not from earthly sover- eigns, but " from the Author of Nature ; " that of being " a great-grandmother with- Duchess out gray hairs." But the most extravagant "borough. compliment — the most magnificent dis- play of gallantry — is recorded by Madame de Genlis, in her Memoirs. Madame de Blot, then very young, one day said in the presence of the Prince of Gonti, that she wished to have the portrait of her canary in a ring. The prince offered to give her the portrait and the ring, which Madame Madame tu de Blot accepted, on condition that the ring should be mounted in the simplest manner. p5 A Club of One The ring, and not sct With stOHCS. The ring was, in fact, only a hoop of gold, but instead of a glass to cover the portrait, a large dia- mond had been used, which was ground as thin as glass. Madame de Blot discovered this piece of prodigality, and returned the diamond ; upon which the Prince of Conti caused the diamond to be ground into pow- der, and used it to dry the ink of the letter The princes hc wrotc OH the subject to Madame de gallantry. _^ . ait- • i 1 • Blot. And so I run on in a rambling way, dwelling on pleasant things in my library, as a resource and remedy for my desperate malady. But I cannot close my record of the day without referring to an incident pleasanter than any I have cited to a man in my lone, lorn, miserable condition — mentioned by Dr. Johnson. " I knew, " A very fret- Said the doctor, " a very pretty instance of a little girl, of whom her father was very fond, who once when he was in a melan- choly fit, and had gone to bed, persuaded him to rise in good humor by saying, ' My dear papa, please to get up, and let me help you on with your clothes, that I may learn to do it when you are an old man.' " Ah ! solar systems for such a child ! Lord Chancellor Brougham was once A Club of One 99 asked to define a lawyer. "A lawyer," he Brougham's ^ ^. , definitimi of said, "is a learned gentleman who rescues a lawyer. your estate from your enemies and keeps it himself." My observation and experi- ence, too, prove to me the truthfulness of the definition. My agent came to me yes- terday to say that the claim left in the hands of a lawyer in Illinois for collection is lost ! — the rascal having pocketed the amount, in addition to moneys from time to time advanced to him as fees. The vil- lainy is a surprise and a great vexation, Anvn/^ieas- , ■ , 1 ant surprise. for the reason that the rascal was highly recommended to me for probity and honor. How many comforts that thousand dollars or so would have bought me ! How many physician's visits and apothecary's bills it would have paid ! The debtor, it appears, was an honest man ; the incorruptible at- torney employed to hunt him down turns The lawyer 1 1 1 • r rr-. • 1 1 ^^ thief. out to be the thiei. Time was when such villainy might have, been punished. Not now. The profession stand together for mutual protection. Now and then an ef- fort is made to disbar an attorney for crim- inal practices, and as often it fails. Deal- ing so habitually in tricks and perjuries, the feeble promptings and declarations of truth are unfelt and unheeded. It was loo A Club of One Caleb Bai- Caleb Balderstone, I believe, the faithful erstone. ggjiggchal at Wolf's Crag, that was always telling " lees " for the " credit of the fam- ily." So the legal profession, quarrel as they may and do, amongst themselves, — ■ saying things to one another that go to the sources of character, — are neverthe- less always ready in words of excuse, de- fense, and approbation of one another. No matter how many estates they swallow up, they are innocency incarnate. The fly once into the parlor of the spider, it is the holy of holies. And the spiders are in league with one another. They inveigle Peter- to ruin. Peterborough is made to say by borough. . . .^^,._ Landor, and very justly, "It an English lawyer is in danger of starving in a mar- ket-town or village, he invites another, and both thrive." The more the better. They inspire quarrels, and grow rich settling them. They suggest the indispensable testimony, and it is supplied. " I want to go into a coal-mine," said Tom Sheridan, " in order to say I have been there." "Well, then, say so," replied the admirable Lying. father. Lying is so easy, ai)d is so freely excused. " To lie for a friend," said Vol- taire, " is friendship's first duty. Lying is a vice only when it does harm ; it is a very A Club of One loi great virtue when it does good." There is a story of an Irishman on his trial for a story o/an felony who brought witnesses to speak for his character. They bore their testimony but too effectually, — the catalogue of the novel virtues which were attributed to him so perplexed his imagination that he cried out in court, " My lord, if I had but known what I was, I would not have done it ! " The effect was just as surprising but very different in a case of Serjeant Ballantine's, a cas,of reported m his mteresting Experiences. One of his first briefs was given to him by a rather shady attorney of the Jewish per- suasion : and being at that time without experience, young Ballantine yielded im- plicitly to his instructions. A young gen- tleman of the same faith, he says, was called as a witness. My client suggested a question. Blindly I put it, and was met by a direct negative. " What a lie 1 " ejaculated my client, and dictated another question : the same result followed, and a similar ejaculation. By his further in- struction I put a third, the answer to which completely knocked us over. My Knocked client threw himself back. " Well," said '""^' he, " he is a liar, he always was a liar, and always will be a liar." " Why," remarked I02 A Club of One I, "you seem to know all about him." " Of course I do," was the reply ; " he is Lying. my own son ! " Lying, says Leigh Hunt, is the commonest and most conventional of all the vices. It pervades, more or less, every class of the community, and is fan- cied to be so necessary to the carrying on of human affairs, that the practice is tacitly agreed upon ; nay, in other terms, openly avowed. In the monarch, it is kingcraft. In the statesman, expediency. In the churchman, mental reservation. In the lawyer, the interest of his client. In the merchant, manufacturer, and shop- keeper, secrets of trade. Says Taine, the best of men in Paris lie ten times a day ; the best of women twenty times a day ; the fashionable man a hundred times a day. No estimate has ever been made as to how many times a day a fashionable woman lies. Father Holt, the Jesuit, in Esmond, said to the boy, Henry, " that if to keep silence is not to lie, as it cer- tainly is not, yet silence is, after all, equiv- alent to a negation, and therefore a down- right No, in the interest of justice or your friend, and in reply to a question that may be prejudicial to either, is not criminal, but on the contrary, praiseworthy ; and as law- Secreis of trade. Father Holt. A Club of One loj ful a way as the other of eluding a wrong- ful demand." The bad in human nature riietadin human rta- is generously accommodated. There are ture. good and bad notes in most voices, it is said — I know little about it myself. On one occasion, in Italy, a composer wrote his solos for one of his opera singers in a way to bring in all his worst notes very frequently ; but it was to get rid of him. Happy if the exposure of evil in the legal Professional profession resulted in the same manner. ^'' But hired sin becomes brazen, and virtue, as a consequence, shamefaced. It has been remarked as a noticeable fact that all contributions to the " conscience fund " are made anonymously. Can it be, it has been asked, that the man with a con- science is ashamed of it .■■ Too tender a conscience has been remarked upon by Goethe as objectionable. He spoke of a boy who could not console himself after he had committed a trifling fault. " I was sorry to observe this," said Goethe, "for Goethe on ■ , 1 t_ , 1 • 1 ■ 1 (^ ioo ie7ider it shows a too tender conscience, which conscience. values so highly its own moral self that it will excuse nothing in it." Such a con- science, he thought, makes unhealthy char- acters, if it is not balanced by great ac- tivity. Two consciences are suggested as I04 A Club of One Two can- uscful by Talleyrand. A distinguished servedby pcrsonage remarked to him, " In the upper Talleyrand. . , , -, r ^ chamber at least are to be found men pos- sessed of consciences." "Consciences," replied Talleyrand, " to be sure : I know many a peer who has got two." Society grows more and more lenient towards vil- s/aiuies and lainy. Statutcs, more and more, are being ""^ "'' framed by the criminal lawyers for the benefit of criminals. Penalties, too, are being lessened and lessened. A breach of verbal contract is not any very great mat- ter in these days of universal enlighten- ment and much preaching ; but think of the penalty for it in the Zendavesta — liability of the next of kin to the ninth degree, and three hundred years in hell ! The^rst The first lawyer, I believe, that we have any account of in Holy Writ is Jonadab, who is described by the inspired writer as a "very subtile man." He was consulted by Amnon in the sin against Tamar his sister. He was an arch pettifogger, I have no doubt. He gave the devilish advice and disappeared from the scene. Jonadab, the " subtile man : " a fair type, I should think, of too great a proportion of the lawyers ^i°sisa!S^ — next in the order of approximate total fitdgff. depravity to the hypocritical priests and A Club of One lo^ corrupt judges. A convenient, elastic con- science, subtilty, and what is vulgarly- called " cheek," are indispensable. " I would rather have your cheek," said a gen- tleman to a petty attorney, " than a license to steal." Any way to accomplish an ob- ject ; but the audacious or cunning way, being most professional, is preferred. In their covert practices they sometimes re- mind me of the blood-sucking bats of South Biood-sucu- America, described by Wallace. The ex- "'^ act manner in which the animal attacks is not positively known, as the sufferer never feels the wound. The motion of the wings fans the sleeper into a deeper slumber, and renders him insensible to the gentle abra- sion of the skin either by teeth or tongue. Thus ultimately forms a minute opening, the blood flowing from which is sucked or lapped up by the hovering vampire. " Keep Advice o/ out of chancery," said old Krook, in " "" ' Bleak House. "For," said he, "it 's being ground to bits in a slow mill ; it 's being roasted at a slow fire ; it 's being stung to death by single bees ; it 's being drowned by drops ; it's going mad by grains." As to advocacy, I have long thought with Carlyle, that it is a strange trade. " Your intellect, your highest heavenly gift, hung io6 A Club of One up in the shop-window like a loaded pistol for sale ; will either blow out a pestilent scoundrel's brains, or the scoundrel's salu- tary sheriff's officer's (in a sense), as you please to choose for your guinea." Some- times, in a generous mood, I am re- Economy in minded of Paddy's suggestion of economy in justice, and feel like commending it as a stroke of policy. It occurred in the case of an outlaw, who was a blacksmith, con- demned to transportation for life, but who excited powerful sympathy on the score of his professional merits. He lived in a hunting county where his aid was thought so valuable that an application was made to the judge in order that his sentence might be mitigated. " He is the only man, your honor," said the influential dep- utation, " who can shoe a horse for miles about us." " Impossible, gentlemen," re- impiacahie pHcd thc Rhadamanthus ; " an example thus. '""" must be made." "Very true," observed the applicants ; " but, you see, we have got only one blacksmith, whilst we have a number of attorneys. Could n't you take one of the attorneys .■' " Though com- mending the suggestion, I am happy to re- cord that I know at least one lawyer who is an honest man. His big brain is the A Club of One lOj home of wisdom, and " the Ten Command- ments are written on his countenance." Integrity, entireness, soundness to the integrity. core. I do Klce an honest man. He re- alizes the precept, in passing every day as the last, and in being neither violently ex- cited nor torpid, nor playing the hypo- crite. He stands a man, responsible to all men for all the manhood there is in him. He is known and read, and his life is in no sense a lie. He so lives with man " as considering that God sees him, and so speaks to God as if men heard him." " I look upon the simple and childish virtues of veracity and honesty," says Emerson, veradty " as the root of all that is sublime in char- acter. Speak as you think, be what you are, pay your debts of all kinds. I prefer to be owned as sound and solvent, and my word as good as my bond, and to be what cannot be skipped, or dissipated, or under- mined, to all the eclat in the universe." Society could not exist for a day without moral honesty ; it is as the hair in the Moral hon- mortar which holds the elements together. "^' There must be integrity, if everything is not to be artificial and conventional. Gen- eral Thomas said that the prime essential io8 A Club of One vmmust in dealing with the Indians was to tell the *t"th^i^^ truth, to tell the truth always, and to keep '"'"' a promise, because to the white man when you failed to keep a promise you could give an apology that might be compre- hended, but the Indian never understood if you did not keep your agreement. Va- lerius records that Fabius redeemed cer- tain captives by the promise of a sum of money ; which when the senate refused to confirm, he sold all the property he pos- sessed, and with the produce paid down the stipulated sum, caring less to be poor in lands than poor in honesty. Confucius Asayingof Said, "At first, my way with men was to Con/ucim. . . I- r hear their words, and give them credit for their conduct. Now, my way is to hear their words, and look at their conduct." " They that cry down moral honesty," said old John Selden, " cry down that which is a great part of religion, my duty towards God, and my duty towards man. What care I to see a man run after a sermon, if he cozens and cheats as soon as he comes KeKgian homc ? " Rcligion were emptiness and moral lion- prctcnce without moral honesty ; and only sentimentalists and illuminists in religion denounce it. When a preacher, of good sense, fairly upon his feet, inveighs against A Club of One 109 morality, I set it down mathematically that he is either uncandid or mercenary. I have noticed that such (when not irre- whatheiiad sponsible from enthusiasm) almost invari- ably illustrated their discourses in a way unconsciously to denote their irrepressi- ble, constitutional thrift ; and threatened to resign their pastorates if their salaries were not promptly paid. It was apparent enough that they knew perfectly well that houses are not built by beginning at the roof ; yet they reasoned preposterously that characters could be built in that ab- surd manner. Balloons, that move with the air, are not structures to resist the tempests ; temples, that outlast the storm, have rock foundations. At the bottom of the edifice which is destined to stand, and to show no crack or flaw for ages, are great, invisible, well-dressed stones, per- fectly leveled, and perfectly laid in ce- ment. So at the foundation of the charac- Attke/am- ter of every honest man there are virtues every L^esi and elements, cemented and established, """'' that are destined to make it worthily ev- erlasting. They are invisible, and were not for a moment thought of as to be seen by the architect. The honest man feels himself continually searched by the eye of no A Club of One Substance and shadow. Conscience and con- sciousness. God, and the observation and estimate of the world are of secondary importance to him. He distinguishes between the real substance, character, and its shadow, repu- tation. He is careful about repeating the Lord's Prayer, as he cannot help regard- ing it as a test of himself, as well as an act of adoration to the Deity. Before pronouncing the words. Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debt- ors, he hesitates, and inquisition begins. Conscience dons the ermine, and con- sciousness testifies. Conceit of superex- cellence is not a natural result of such self-examination. The ideal seems further from attainment with every effort ; but ef- fort is encouraged to become habitual by increased sense of responsibility. An in- dividual, not responsible to party or sect, he has a conscience directly toward God. Doing his best to live virtuously and walk humbly, he confidently trusts the Creator to take care of the creature. With the highest standards of conduct practicable or attainable, he judges himself not less TheGciden Severely than others. The Golden Rule he believes to be particularly for self-ap- plication. His moral anchorages are fixed and habitual. There are things that un- A Club of One 1 1 1 der no possible circumstances would he do. His principles are in such constant prmcipies use that they have the look of instincts. "mmIs. His morals are so constantly applied that they have the appearance of habits. He has realized the precept of Plutarch, that habit soon makes right conduct easy. Habit, indeed, he has discovered to be omnipotent. "All is habit," says Metas- tasio, — "even virtue itself." In brutes, even, he has seen the controlling effect of discipline. It is related that during the Franco-German war, after the slaughter at Vionville, a strange and touching spectacle a touching was presented. On the evening call bemg sounded by the first regiment of Dragoons of the Guard, six hundred and two rider- less horses answered to. the summons, — jaded, and in many cases maimed. The noble animals still retained their disci- plined habits. But deeper than discipline or habit — far down below either — the character of a thoroughly honest man takes root. Hawthorne said of his trusted as- sistant in the custom-house at Salem, that his inteeritv was a law of nature with him integHtya o J law of iia- rather than a choice or a principle. The t^r^- life of the thoroughly honest man, as I have said, is in no sense a lie. His acts 112 A Club of One A cis and fro/essions. A ivful hy- pocrisy. Conduct in extremity. are better than his professions. He per- forms, if possible, his promises. In a pub- lic or fiduciary capacity he acts as if his re- sponsibilities were personal. He does not turn thief when elected to office. He does not sink his soul in a corporation. He knows no friend in court. He does not deliberately swallow up estates by manipu- lating weak judges and procuring straw- bail, and afterward mercifully call the at- tention of the Almighty to the sins and short-comings of the women and children and imbeciles he has swindled and ruined. He does not live and flourish at a great rate at others' expense. The dollar in his pocket is not his if he owes any man a dol- lar. Scrupulous in meeting his obliga- tions, he is careful about incurring them. Patches on his clothing are of little mo- ment compared with blotches of discredit on his character. If by fraud or an act of God his affairs have suffered, his creditors are the first to be notified. He does not go on from bad to worse till his neighbors who have trusted him are cheated and con- founded. He does not with the wheels of his equipage splash the mud of the streets upon poor pedestrians, when his whole ef- fects would pay only a small part of his A Club of One 1 1^ indebtedness. He makes a clean breast Fairtoaii to his butcher and baker, as well as to his banker, that neither may have any advan- tage over the other. He takes no advan- tage of oversight or neglect, and meets misfortune more than half way. His pre- cepts and practices agree. If he or one of his children finds a sum of money, the act is not so hidden as to make it a theft. He will not have one penny that is not his — that cannot be accounted for. Clean hands, a clean conscience. There is a story of an old merchant who, on his death- Death-bed bed, divided the result of long years of Li»! labor, some few hundreds in all, amongst his sons. " It is little enough, my boys," were almost his last words, "but there isn't a dirty shilling in the whole of it." Every man with a generous share of good blood in him begins life a democrat and a reformer. " I am no more ashamed of hav- ing been a republican," says Southey, saymgso/ "than I am of having been a child." L^rdEido,^ Lord Eldon said in his old age, that " if he were to begin life again, he would be damned but he would begin as agitator.'' There was a time in my own life when making the whole world over seemed to woman. 114 A Club of One me not a very difficult or gigantic thing. For six For as much as six whole weeks the proc- yormcr"' CSS Seemed very simple and easy. All that was requisite, it appeared to me, was for the sinless to get together and deter- mine upon a plan to convert the sinful, — to make them sinless as themselves. Sim- plicity itself ! and as practicable as easy. The good had only to agree upon the man- ner of making over the bad, and the work was accomplished, — neatly, and with dis- patch. An old Latin author gives an ac- A pmuerfid couut of a womau who believed that she "could shake all the world with her fin- ger," and was afraid to close her hand, lest she should crush it like an apple. So easy the achievement of universal reformation seemed to be that the obvious reason for delaying it was the same that restrained the powerful woman, — a merciful hesita- tion of power, — a shuddering dread of dis- turbing things. Ah ! the omnipotence of edict, fiat, decree, ukase, act of parliament, act of congress, act of assembly, ordinance of council ! I did not then know of the Decidstat- countless statutes that are inoperative or dead from indisposition or inability to en- force them. What suggestive great books could be made by collecting them ! — mock- ntes. A Club of One ii^ ing commentaries upon the conceit and im- potence of statesmanship. My scheme for Hh scheme delivering the world from evil was for the reformed of every place to assemble them- selves together ; — those who never drink ; who use no pernicious drugs ; who never gorge themselves at table ; who are never concupiscent ; who are never unchaste in thought, lan- guage, or conduct ; who perfectly control their appetites and passions ; who never deceive ; who never lie, prevaricate, or conceal the Th^gcod. truth ; who do not love money ; who do not oppress or insult the poor ; who do not envy or impugn the rich ; who do no wrong thing ; — to take into consideration the miserable multitude, who do drink ; who do make use of deleterious drugs ; who do overtax their digestive powers ; who are now and then concupiscent ; nebad. who are sometimes unchaste in thought, language, and conduct ; who do not control their desires and appe- tites : I [6 A Club of One who deceive ; riwse luho who lie, prevaricate, and conceal the truth ; who underestimate and grind the poor ; who love money ; who envy the rich, and impugn their mo- tives and conduct ; who do many wrong things ; — and at once, then and there, devise irref- ragable prohibitory laws for the absolute and complete reformation of their imper- Thegoodto feet brethren. To prohibit was to pro- converi the , ., . a i- i "-ti i iad, andkiii hibit. An exceedmg great army to kill the devil. The earth to be made a paradise again. But the world got in and possessed me before the great scheme was an- nounced. My opportunity was lost, and things have gone on in the usual bad way. Can it be, at last, that reforming is much a personal matter, to each one of us .' Each to " cease to do evil, and learn to do well." It would seem so. The agony I suffered all of last night ! I believe it is the gout. The doctor doesn't think so ; but doctors differ. " If your Asayingof ■physAcizn," says Montaigne, "does not Montaigne. . : . . , ^ ° ' think It good for you to sleep, to drink wine, or to eat such and such meats, never trouble yourself; I will find you another A Club of One iiy that shall not be of his opinion." He calls it acute rheumatism, and says I read too much ! As if that had anything to do with gout ! Though I do admit the close relation of mind and body, and know how MindmU curiously they sometimes affect each other. I mean to make a study of their interde- pendence, and know more of it. But how a few hours of study in my library could produce a fit of the gout is incomprehen- sible to me. From whatever cause, it is here, and must be removed. My limb in a vise, with two giants twisting it, would not be more horrible than the ag- ony I suffer. The Duke of Northumber- land suffered from gout. He had tried, he said, every remedy for it, as he believed, except one, which, in the case of a friend of his, proved efficacious, viz., the basti- rttetasti- nado. This had been applied to his friend gout. when traveling in Turkey, who was dis- abled by gout from descending from his palanquin to pay the required homage to the Grand Vizier ; and it actually cured him ! I trust so fearful a remedy may not be necessary in my case. I feel, and watch, and count my pulsa- cmmtsMs tions by the hour sometimes George ii8 A Club of One Washington died watching his pulse, and I believe I shall do the same. Haller Haiier did kept fccling his pulse to the last moment, and when he found that life was almost gone, he turned to his brother physician, observing, " My friend, the artery ceases to beat," and almost instantly expired. The same remarkable circumstance had AndHar- occurred to the great Harvey; he kept ^'''' making observations on the state of his pulse when life was drawing to its close ; "as if," as was said, "that he who had taught us the beginning of life, might him- self, at his departing from it, become ac- quainted with that of death." Everything I know about the circulation terrifies me. The heart a. The heart — what a wonderful thing it is ! wonderful _^ , ^ . , thing. To it we refer our joys, our sorrows, and our affections ; yet when grasped with the fingers, it gives no information of the fact to the possessor, unmistakably responding at the same time to the varied emotions of the mind. I think of these mysteries, in hours of sleeplessness, till I am almost dis- Accidents tractcd. Then the accidents and contin- a?id cotUin- • r i T a i eencies. gcucies 01 lire appear to vex me. A thou- sand of them, it seems to me, appear to my mind at the same time. Though happen- ings, I try to think they are not always A Club of One iig misfortunes. There was that remarkable Dinner at . , Barrire^s. dmner, one hot day, at Barrere s — men- tioned by Carlyle in his History. At this dinner, the day being so hot, the guests all stript their coats, and left them in the drawing-room: whereupon Carnot glided out ; groped in Robespierre's pocket ; found a list of forty [to be butchered by the guil- lotine], his own name among them ; "and tarried not at the wine - cup that day ! " At that fearful time, human life was noth- ing, and human bodies were treated as brutes. At Meudon, says Montgaillard, there was a tannery of human skins ; such a tannery r . .,, . . , in of human of the guillotmed as seemed worth liay- skins. ing : of which perfectly good wash-leather was made ; for breeches and other uses. The skin of the men, he remarks, was su- perior in toughness and quality to cham- ois ; that of the women was good for al- most nothing, being so soft in texture. Which reminds me that after the battle of Munda, on the Guadalquivir, near Cor- dova, where Ca^sar routed the Pompeians, Munda (says Froude in his life of Caesar) was at once blockaded, the inclosing wall a wait bunt ■ — savage evidence of the temper of the indies. conquerors — being built of dead bodies pinned together with lances, and on the I20 A Club of One top of it a fringe of heads on sword's points with the faces turned towards the town. Self-righi- eousjtess. SenttTnen- tdlistn and cant. A man and a woman called to know if I was supplied with the Bible ! There was nothing about them to remind me of " the shepherd " and " the mother-in-law " in Pickwick. Oh, no ! Though I did detect a degree of self-righteousness lurking in their countenances. I might have shown them our Bible in every English version, and the bible of the Hindoos, of the Par- sees, of the Mahometans, and of the Mor- mons. Respectfully they retired. I did not remark the least condescension. The woman had, I thought, somewhat the look of old grandmother Falconer, who was a terror to her neighborhood ; be- cause, being a law to herself, she would therefore be a law to other people. The healthy heart that said to itself, " How healthy am I ! " was already fallen into the fatalest sort of disease. Is not sen- timentalism (I am quoting Carlyle) twin sister to cant, if not one and the same with it .? Is not cant the materia prima of the devil ; from which all falsehoods, imbecilities, abominations body them. A Club of One 121 selves ; from which no two things can come ? For cant is itself properly a dou- ble-distilled lie ; the second power of a lie. The brain (says Dean Swift), in its Qm^es natural position and state of serenity, dis- poseth its owner to pass his life in the common forms without any thought of subduing multitudes to his own power, his reasons, or his visions ; and the more he shapes his understanding by the pattern of human learning, the less he is inclined to form parties after his particular notions ; because that instructs him in his private infirmities, as well as in the stubborn ig- norance of the people. But when a man's fancy gets astride on his reason ; when imagination is at cuffs with the senses ; i«"tgitMiwn at cuffs with and common understanding, as well as the semes. common sense, is kicked out of doors, the first proselyte he makes is himself; and when that is once compassed, the difificulty is not so great in bringing over others ; a strong delusion always operating from without, as vigorously as from within. For cant and vision are to the ear and the eye the same that tickling is to the touch. Those entertainments and pleasures we Theenter- most value in hie are such as dupe and andpuas- play the wag with the senses. For, if we ■^ai-m. 722 A Club of One Hood's de- testation of canters. Less rever- ential than a Mohawk squaw. take an examination of what is generally understood by happiness, as it has respect either to the understanding or the senses, we shall find all its properties and adjuncts will herd under this short definition : that it is a perpetual possession of being well deceived. Thomas Hood, of all men, had the greatest detestation of canters. An awful widow, it is stated, having long pes- tered him with her insolent tracts and impious admonitions, he at length turned upon her, and wrote her a letter, — his Tract, as he styled it, — in which, perhaps, he used language somewhat too violent. He seems to have thought so himself, and concluded his performance with an apol- ogy. "And now, madam, farewell. Your mode of recalling yourself to my memory reminds me that your fanatical mother insulted mine in the last days of her life (which was marked by every Christian virtue) by the presentation of a Tract ad- dressed to Infidels. I remember also that the same heartless woman intruded her- self, with less reverence than a Mohawk squaw would have exhibited, on the cham- ber of death, and interrupted with her jargon almost my very last interview with my dying parent. Such reminiscences war- A Club of One 123 rant some severity ; but if more be want- ing, know that my poor sister has been excited by a circle of canters like yourself into a religious frenzy, and is at this mo- ment in a private mad-house." Goodness, Goodness Till , , 1 ■ blows no says Lamb, blows no trumpet, nor desires trumpet. to have any blown. "How beautiful, great, and pure goodness is ! It paints heaven on the face that has it ; it wakens the sleeping souls that meet it." "The throne of the gods is on the brow of a righteous man." Alas ! the devil lurks in many faces. The Arabs tell a thousand stories of certain hot waters in a grotto, which they call Pharaoh's Bath ; among others, pkamoKs . , f i. . , Bath. that it you put tour eggs in it, you can take out but three, the devil always keep- ing one for himself. Innocence, unmiti- gated, is with the angels in heaven, and in pure little children on earth. " You wished to see Adam and Eve, who were our first parents ; there they are ; " said the dau- phine to her children. Then she left them in great astonishment before Titian's pic- ruian's ture, and seated herself by the bedside of the king, who delighted to watch the chil- dren. " Which of the two is Adam } " said Francis, nudging his sister Margaret's elbow. " You silly," replied she ; " to know 124 A Club of One that, they would have to be dressed." Said a sweet little boy, five years old, to his mother, " Which am I, a boy or a girl ? I forget." Pretty incidents like these, in contrast with the ugly philanthropy that invaded my quiet with its self-righteous- A signif- ness, recalls the significant Hindoo fable : Z./J&"' Vishnu spake, " O Bal ! take thy choice ; with five wise men shalt thou enter hell, or with five fools pass into paradise." Gladly answered Bal, " Give me, O Lord, hell with the wise ; for that is heaven where the wise dwell, and folly would make of heaven itself a hell ! " A visH/rem Cousin Tom, whom I have not seen for Tom!'"" forty years, came unexpectedly to spend a few days with me. He has, to say the least, interested me very much. He is one of those persons they call professional invalids. The first words he said after his arrival were words of complaint. The great, lusty fellow came steaming in, com- plaining of the cold, when the mercury was only about twenty degrees above zero. I was glad to see him, and glad to have an A„ interest- Opportunity of studying such an interest- ter. ing character. Tidmgs of him had reached me from time to time through letters from A Club of One 12^ my aunt Jane, — who always mentioned him kindly, but with slight expression of inextinguishable disgust at some of his ways. He troubles everybody about him with his perpetual complaints, but never Aiwaysmn- in his life was he seriously sick. He weighs two hundred pounds, and is as round-limbed and muscular as he was at twenty. His teeth are all sound, and shine like ivory. " Sovereignty would have pawned her jewels for them." A marvel of health, he is ever repeating the litany of his little miseries. To see him eat, and then to hear him complain of his digestion ! He clears voraciously , his plate, piled up heaping with the richest viands, and then laments that he is not an Laments anaconda! It makes a sick man ashamed an ana- to see a well man such a fool. Nothing in the world is the matter with him but crop-sickness — the disgusting result of habitual over-feeding. His cough, that he has been dying of for twenty years, is of the stomach, sheerly and unmistakably. He feeds excessively, and suffers some- what, of course — why not .'' Is the man's Hhheadof , no use to head of no use to him .'' Else, why persist i^'m. in his folly .? Is there, to think of it, any- thing so common that is of so little use as 126 A Club of One heads ? The eggs and the sausages that the man ate for breakfast yesterday, and the cups of strong coffee that he drank to hasten them down ! And then to hear swsars at him swcar at his digestion, and envy the tfon^anden- healthy! I had to endure it all, though vies the rr • i * ^ c healthy. suitermg at the time most acutely irom an abscess, or rupture, or something, that is threatening my life. While he was moan- ing and groaning over his slight uneasi- nesses — the result of his enormous indul- gence and intemperance — I could n't help wishing that he could be really sick awhile, to know what real sickness is, and be cured of his pretenses. Later in the day his Scolds his abused nerves came in for a share of scold- ing, when he had devoured and burned to- bacco enough to poison a peccary. But why lecture him about his disgusting ap- petites .'' The stomach has no ears. Self- command does n't come of preaching — it is a result of self-training, self-denial, and Madame de cndurance. Madame de Genlis was born with numberless little antipathies ; she had a horror of all insects, particularly of spiders and frogs. She was also afraid of mice, and her father made her feed and bring up one. He obliged her to catch spiders with her fingers, and to hold toads A Club of One 127 in her hands. At such times, though she felt that the blood had forsaken her veins, she was forced to obey. And so a habit ThehabHo/ ' . . . , . seIf-co7n~ of self-command was established m the ^^^d. woman who afterward became so com- manding in the French capital and at the court of France. Lamenting and wishing in such a case would have done no good, while discipline accomplished so much. Says Saadi : — " Had the cat wings, no sparrow could live in the air ; A verse Had each his wish, what more would Allah have to ^'''"" ^'^'''• spare ? " If some such a result attended my cousin's indulgence as the story illustrates, there would be some compensation in it. It is of a workman pulling his wife out of a ditch, with the remark, " Why, Nanny, you are drunk." "And what do that ar- gify, if I am happy .-' " Charles Mathews, one of in one of his amusing entertainments, used Mathews' to tell a story of a certain innkeeper, who made it a rule of his house, to allow a candle to a guest only on condition of his ordering a pint of wine. Whereupon the guest contends, on the reciprocity system, for a light for every half-bottle, and finally drinks himself into a general illumination. But the belly-gods get no pleasure from 128 A Club of One their indulgence except while they are eat- ing. They are hardly away from the ta- ble, when they begin to complain of their aches. It is a wonder that they don't get CrM Rob- provoked at their own growling. Crabb barki°/gdcg. Robinson refers to the continued barking of a dog, irritated by the echo of his own voice, which was made by Wordsworth the subject of a sonnet. In human life this is constantly occurring. It is said that a dog has been known to contract an illness by the continued labor of barking at his own echo. My cousin Tom is invariably seized Tom" Jit of with a fit of coughing whenever a cough couffhinff. jg recollected, referred to, or heard. A re- membrance of his own pretended ailment is sure to be followed by a violent, sono- rous expiration. It is a wonder that his whole breathing and swallowing apparatus was not long ago torn to pieces by his per- sistent straining ; and not a bit surprising that something like an asthma should have crept into his chest — the direct result, not so much of his stomach cough, as the habit of indulging and cultivating it. At- tending to his cough has been a great part HUcoughan of hls busiucss for twenty years — a trans- excuse/or ^ ■' idUn^ss. parent excuse for his chronic idleness. If he had had to earn each one of his dollars A Club of One i2g by ten hours in the sun, his cough, as he calls it, would never have existed. Occu- occufatwn pation is the great blessing ; we must be UeSng engaged at something or suffer. Diana was chaste because she was never idle, but always busy about her hunting. But for every day's diligence in my library I do believe I should not myself be able to sur- vive. Nothing but my books could enable me to endure my distresses. There is a story of a gentleman who was under close confinement in the Bastile seven years ; a story o/ , . .... , , , . , r . , the Bastile. during which time he amused himself with scattering a few small pins about his chamber, gathering them up again, and placing them in different figures on the arm of a great chair. He often told his friends afterwards that unless he had found out this piece of employment, he verily believed he should have lost his senses. Sir Astley Cooper, when in re- sirAstuy tirement, satiated with wealth and honors, is described as looking over the trees of his park with a conviction that some day he should hang himself from one of them. He had spent his life in routine work, and it was too late to educate his mind to any- thing else. Ennui, as Madame Roland de- fines it, is the disease of hearts without i^o A Club of One feeling, and of minds without resources. A writer in the London Spectator calls it a mental low fever. It has also been de- fined to be an afflicting sensation for want iMeuess the of a scnsation. Whatever it is, idleness is cause of ennui. tjjg prime cause of it. Montaigne relates that when once walking in the fields he was accosted by a beggar of Herculean frame, who solicited alms. "Are you not ashamed to beg 1 " said the philosopher, with a frown, — " you who are so palpably able to work ? " " Oh, sir," was the sturdy knave's drawling rejoinder, "if you only knew how lazy I am ! " Jeremy Taylor said to a lady of his acquaintance, who had been very neglectful of the education of {Z'Treli"^' ^^"^ ^°"' " Madam, if you do not choose to fill your boy's head with something, be- lieve me, the devil will." The Turks have a proverb that the devil tempts all other men, but that idle men tempt the devil. In general, says Montesquieu, we place idleness among the beatitudes of heaven ; it should rather be put among the tor- ments of hell. For one, I believe and affirm that the rheprofes- idlc, self-lndulgeut, professional invalid valid. ought to be put out of the way. He de- A Club of One iji presses and irritates and aggravates and infuriates everybody who is much with him or about him. The atmosphere he carries with him is blighting. The infi- nite ill effects of permitting him to live is Effects o/ . _ perniittuig illustrated in the results of the mistaken himtoihe illustrated. humanity of the philosopher in his treat- ment of the flea, described so felicitously by a veracious Frenchman. Causes and effects are set down numerically. I. The former, having been bitten by the latter, seized and was about to dispatch his foe, when he reflected that the little insect had only acted from instinct, and was not to be blamed. Accordingly, he deposited the flea on the back of a passing dog. II. This dog was the poodle of a lady, and she was Thefoodu ° ^ ■ -; ^ of a lady. very fond of the pretty animal. On his return to the house, his mistress took him upon her lap to caress him, and the flea embraced the opportunity to change his habitat. III. The flea having in the course of the night engaged in active business operations, awakened the lady. Her hus- band was sleeping peacefully beside her, and in the silence of the chamber she heard him in his dreams whisper, with an jeahusy access of ineffable tenderness, a name ! The name was that of her most intimate 132 A Club of One The big damning discovery. Reconciled, friend. IV. As soon as it was day the outraged wife hurried to the house of her rival, and told the rival's husband of the big damning discovery she had made. He, being a man of decision, at once called out the destroyer of his household's peace, and ran him through. V. The widow, when her husband was taken home to her on a shutter, was so terribly smitten with re- morse that she precipitated herself from the fourth story window. VI. The other lady convinced her husband that he had wronged her by entertaining any suspicion as to her fidelity, and, becoming reconciled with him, seized an early opportunity of poisoning him. VII. Inasmuch as the ju- rors of that country had never heard of " ex- tenuating circumstances," and the Chief Magistrate, thinking that he could not put a murderer to better uses than by guillo- tining him, the guilty woman was duly be- Thesoiesur- headed, and the sole survivors of the trag- vivors the philosopher edy were the philosopher and the flea. It would not do to provide hospitals for the professional invalids. The effect of herd- ing them would be much the same as that resulting from the habit of old Jews from all parts of the world, who go to lay tbeir bones upon the sacred soil (described so and the Jlea. A Club of One /^_j vividly by Kinglake in his matchless little book of travel). "As these people," he a suggestive says, " never return to their homes, it fol- /romKing- lows that any domestic vermin which they may bring with them are likely to become permanently resident, so that the popula- tion is continually increasing. No recent census had been taken when I was at Tibe- rias, but I know that the congregation of fleas which attended at my church alone [what could be more remindful of the numberless irritating effects of voluntary invalidism i"] must have been something enormous. It was a carnal, self-seeking a camd, congregation, wholly inattentive to the ^Li^eg^ service which was going on, and devoted to the one object of having my blood. The fleas of all nations were there. The smug, steady, importunate flea from Holy- well street — the pert, jumping, 'puce' from hungry France — the wary, watch- ful ' pulce ' with his poisoned stiletto — the vengeful ' pulga ' of Castile with his ugly knife — the German ' floh ' with his knife and fork — insatiate — not rising from table — whole swarms from all the swarms Russias, and Asiatic hordes unnumbered "' '^ — all these were there, and all rejoiced in one great international feast. After pass- 1^4 ^ ^^^^ °f ^^ ing a night like this [bad enough, but not to be compared with three whole days with Giadtopick Tom], you are glad to pick up the wretched 'mains"j rcmains of your body long, long before morning dawns. Your skin is scorched — your temples throb ; your lips feel with- ered and dried ; your burning eyeballs are screwed inwards against the brain. You have no hope but only in the saddle, and in the freshness of the morning air." Un- Pro/essionai happily, thcsc miserable professional inva- privileged hds that I am writmg about and illustra- ting constitute a privileged class or society. Charles Lamb called them "kings." Such persons, whether their imagined diseases be of the mind or body, in the opinion of the dissecting Hawthorne, are made acutely conscious of a self, by the torture in which it dwells. Self, therefore, grows to be so prominent an object with them, that they cannot but present it to the face of every carnal passer-by. This cousin of Totally mine is so wrapped up in himself — is such a sublime egotist — that when I men- tion a real distress of my own — that threatens life itself with its awful gravity — he gives but a lazy, half-attention — amounting to no more, at best, than what Coleridge calls a mental yawn. To have A Club of One /^5 one's ills aggravated in that manner by a mere pretender in misery is enough to awaken all the Satanic in human nature. I wish my cousin would go away. Even whheshis sick people, I think, with Montaigne (who 'g"away" was much of an invalid himself, and talked quite enough of his maladies), should pub- lish and communicate their joy, as much as they can, and conceal and smother their grief. He that makes himself pitied with- out reason is a man not to be pitied when there shall be real cause ; to be always complaining is the way never to get sym- pathy ; by making himself out always so miserable, he is never commiserated by ^ever com- any. He that makes himself dead when ""^"'"^ • living is subject to be held as though alive when he is dying. " We are apt," says Hawthorne again, " to make sickly people more morbid, and unfortunate peo- ple more miserable, by endeavoring to adapt our deportment to their especial and individual needs. They eagerly accept our well-meant efforts ; but it is like re- turning their own sick breath back upon themselves, to be breathed over and over again, intensifying the inward mischief at every repetition. The sympathy that thytiS^'^ would really do them good is of a kind a^mgola. 136 A Club of One Discmirag- hig to 171- validism. A hahii of wolves. that recognizes their sound and healthy parts, and ignores the part affected by dis- ease, which will thrive under the eye of a too close observer like a poisonous weed in the sunshine." Herodotus speaks of a tribe who treated their sick in a way pe- culiarly discouraging to invalidism. When any one fell sick, his chief friends told him that the illness would spoil his flesh ; whereupon he would protest that he was not unwell ; but they, not agreeing with him, would kill and eat him. Naturalists tell us that if one of a flock of wolves wound himself, or so much as limp, the rest eat him up incontinently. Oh ! Mercy on me ! Three days more of my cousin Tom would kill me. Will he never go away } In rearranging my books this morning I encountered a favorite volume that I had missed the sight of for a year or two. I was glad to see it — a valuable old friend. Fosters Es- It is a little, rude copy in boards of Foster's Essays — Andover, 1826. This is one of those little books that have had incalculable influence. It is filled with vigorous, cast- iron thought, from the first word to the last. The author often spent hours on a single A Club of One i ^y sentence. I know of nothing in literature that is a better stimulant for the mind, or tonic for the character, than the essay on Decision. And, strange to say, these es- says were written as love epistles to the ivrittenas lady who afterward became his wife. She '^'"f"""- had intimated to him that she could never consent to be the wife of a man who could not distinguish himself in the literature of his country ; and the famous essays were written to her in the form of letters, to prove to her that he possessed the requisite ability. Miss Maria Snooke, I think, was miss Maria the name of the notably exacting maiden. She must have been a remarkable woman. He describes her in his Diary (at the time he was courting her) as "a marble statue, surrounded by iron palisades." Long ago, when I was a bit of a boy, I saw it stated that a distinguished American orator and statesman, then living, had said that he owed incomparably more to Foster's Es- says than to any other one book in litera- ture. Remembering the statement, I tried again and again to buy the book ; but the Efforts to bookseller knew nothing about it. At last, book. I found it in a gentleman's library, offered for sale in pecuniary extremity ; he being one of those rare individuals who could be down to him. ij8 A Club of One economical in everything but in books. It was put up by the auctioneer only a minute after I had dropped in, and I was so de- lighted at the prospect of being the owner of the long-sought volume, that I bid three quarters of a dollar for it at once, and it was Knocked as quickly knocked down to me, — the gap- ing bystanders, of course, laughing heart- ily at me for giving so much for a little half -worn book that I might as well have had for a shilling. I went home elated with my purchase, and spent half the night over it. It was very evident that its former owner was an intelligent and close reader, for some very significant marks and reflec- tions covered the margins of some of the pages. Wherever I went, I always carried The treas- the trcasurc with me ; and later, it was one of the few books I always kept in my down- town office. It was one of the most com- fortable offices in the block, and two or three of the dozen women employed by the jani- tor, by permission, enjoyed its comforts on Sundays and at odd hours when I was ab- sent. One of them was a remarkable per- son, and I have often thought of her since. Margaret. Margaret, I remember, was the girl's name. She must have had the blood of kings in her veins. Of the books on the shelf, she ure< A Club of One . i^g liked Foster's Essays best, she said ; of which both the appearance of the volume and her acquaintance with it gave indubita- ble evidence. She had a very strong mind and magnificent passions. There was maj- esty in her mien, though a poor working wo- man. Regal she was, in countenance, sug- Rigaim „ -, — cauntetiance. gestmg Zenobia or Cleopatra. She seemed to me to be "clad in the usual weeds of high habitual state," so commanding and noble was her bearing. Her hair was so abundant as to appear a burden to her. But her remarkable eye is most distinct in my memory. It was a true Irish eye, — "gray, with long, dark lashes, and with lids deep set and well chiseled, — an eye speak- ing mingled innocence, mirth, and tender- ness quite unmatched by any human orb." Once I saw it when it seemed to hover and melt over the dear spot and dear ones in her far-away, never-forgotten home, on the other side of the sea. Moore's pen would have run wild describing her. But the black drop was somehow mingled in her rkeUack rich nature. " The beautiful river ! The Zui"e. "'' beautiful river ! " she exclaimed, looking down out of the fourth story window, with that pensive far-away expression so pecu- liar to her; and a moment after she was 140 A Club of One picked up in the court, a pitiful, quivering mass of dead humanity. At the inquest I had an opportunity of paying tribute to her strong understanding and lofty moral na- ture. I set this down at a time when every faculty of my mind seems floating in rem- iniscence. It takes two at least, it seems, to make Theferfect z pcrfcct ballad. " What can be prettier," ballad. — , . r i • • • i says Cowper, m one of his exquisite letters, " than Gay's ballad, or rather Swift's, Ar- buthnot's. Pope's, and Gay's, in the What do you call it .^ — ' 'T was when the seas were roaring ' .' I have been well informed that that most celebrated association of clever fellows all contributed to it." And I suspect Gay had like help in the composi- tion of Black Eyed Susan — another of his ballads not less remarkable for its perfec- johnAnder- tion. John Anderson, my jo, John, all the John. ' world has been in the habit of regarding as another perfect ballad, till a verse lately added to it by a gentleman in northern Ohio proved it to have been, as Burns left it, far from being perfect. The additional verse was sent to me in manuscript, as taken from the lips of the author, and should make his name famous if he never wrote A Club of One 141 another line. I have copied it into the margin of my Burns, alongside the poem, and also copy it here, to preserve it further, in case the book should be spirited away. "John Anderson, my jo, John, An addi- We winna mind that sleep ; ""'"-^ '"'"' The grave sae cauld and still, John, The spirit canna keep : But we will wake in Heaven, John, Where young again we '11 grow. And ever live, in blessed luve, John Anderson, my jo." How Burns and the author of this stanza will strike hands on the other shore! I should like to witness the meeting of the two bards. Ah! the matchless poet of humanity ! " Since Adam," said Margaret Fuller, "there has been none that ap- proached nearer fitness to stand up before God and angels in the naked majesty of manhood than Robert Burns." But she Bunw. speaks of the "serpent in his field also." Though two nieces of Burns, living in the suburbs of Ayr, believed, when talked to by an American lady about Burns' intem- perate habits, that they had been greatly exaggerated. Their mother was a woman twenty-five years old and the mother of three children when he died, and she had never once seen him the " waur for liquor." 142 A Club of One " There were very many idle people i' the warld, an' a great deal o' talk, " they said. Byro,h " What," asks Byron, in his Journal, qitestion. it-* -i i • e ■ ■ i " would Burns have been, it a patrician ? We should have had more polish — less force — just as much verse, but no immor- tality — a divorce, and a duel or two, the which had he survived, as his potations must have been less spirituous, he might A reference have Hved as loug as Sheridan, and out- to Slieridan. t^ ■ i i » ^~v r r-« lived as much as poor Brinsley. Of Scot- land, it has been significantly remarked, the creed is the Westminster Confession, but the national poet is Burns. It is Saint Valentine's Day, and there is A dance at a daucc at the house opposite. I can just the house op- . , -, . poiite. see, through the lace curtains, the " floating radiances " swimming and gliding about. How it all carries me back ! Ah ! at twenty, with a sweetheart of sixteen ! Happy then, miserable now. At the recollection, my heart " flows like a sea." It is the touch of a maiden's hand, according to the Orien- tal legend, that causes the trees to bloom. " For the first time," says Jean Paul, " I held a beloved being upon my heart and The one Hps. I have nothing further to say, but that pearl o/a . . , , t- ■ i minute. it was thc ouc pcaH of a minute, that was A Club of One 14^ never repeated ; a whole longing past and a dreaming future were united in a moment, and in the darkness behind my closed eyes the fire-works of a whole life were evolved in a glance. Ah, I have never forgotten it — the ineffaceable moment! " Madame Madrmc T-» 1 1 • • 1 Ml Roland. Roland, at sixteen, is described as most fascinating in mind and person. Many suit- ors began to appear, one after another, but she manifested no interest in any of them. The customs of society in France were such at that time, that it was difficult for any one who sought the hand of the young lady to obtain an introduction to her. Con- sequently the expedient was usually adopt- ed of writing first to her parents. These letters were always immediately shown to her. She judged of the character of the writer by the character of the epistles. Her father, knowing her intellectual superiority, looked to her as his secretary to reply to all Her/ather's secretftry tii these letters. She consequently wrote the deUcatemat- answers, which her father carefully copied and sent in his own name. She was often amused with the gravity with which she, as the father of herself, with parental pru- dence, discussed her own interests. In subsequent years she wrote to kings and to cabinets in the name of her husband ; 144 A Club of One Guided tke coitncils pf tuitions. story. and the sentiments which flowed from her pen, adopted by the ministry of France as their own, guided the councils of nations. Beauty is in the eye of the gazer, and is beauty still, however you disguise it. The Due de Richelieu had a portrait gallery of contemporary beauties, each attired in the costume of a nun. The magic of the ten- Lamar- dcr passiou ! Raphael, in Lamartine's pas- tine^s pas- ^ f ' f ^/fJr"'" ''^^' sionate love-story, regarded his Julie as one of those delusions of fancy, one of those women above mortal height, like Tasso's Eleonora, Dante's Beatrice, Petrarch's Lau- ra, or Vittoria Colonna, the lover, the poet, and the heroine at once ; forms that flit across the earth, scarcely touching it, and without tarrying, only to fascinate the eyes of some men, the privileged few of love, to lead on their souls to immortal aspirations, and to be the sursum corda of superior im- aginations. But the disillusion, after being wrought up by the dazzling contemplation ! An old book of English legal reminiscences tells us that on the Norfolk circuit the fa^ mous Jack Lee was retained for the plain- tiff in an action for breach of promise of marriage : when the brief was brought him, he asked whether the lady for whose injury he was to seek redress was good-looking. Disillusion, A Club of One 14^ "Very handsome, indeed, sir," was the as- surance of Helen's attorney., "Then, sir," rephed Lee, " I beg you to request her to be le^'s re- in court, and in a place where she can be ^""' ' seen." The attorney promised compliance ; and the lady, in accordance with Lee's wishes, took her seat in a conspicuous place. Lee, in addressing the jury, did not fail to siogmtice insist with great warmth on the "abomi- nable cruelty " which had been practiced towards " the lovely and confiding female " before them, and did not sit down until he had succeeded in working up their feel- ings to the desired point. The counsel on the other side, however, speedily broke the spell with which Lee had enchanted the jury, by observing that his learned friend in describing the graces and beauty of the plaintiff had not mentioned the fact — that the lady had a wooden leg ! The court was r& court convulsed with laughter, while Lee, who was ignorant of this circumstance, looked aghast ; and the jury, ashamed of the influ- ence that mere eloquence had had upon them, returned a verdict for the defendant. ''Ah, poor Pen ! " exclaims Thackeray, when Pen was no longer in love with the Foth- eringay, " the delusion is better than the truth sometimes, and fine dreams to dismal 146 A Club of One waking." Though, . happen what may, we will recur to the good times agone, and con- Thackenfs sole ourselvcs in the philosophic manner of ly. ^^ same great master : " I am," he says, " tranquil : I am quiet : I have passed the hot stage^: and I do not know a pleasanter and calmer feeling of mind than that of a respectable person of the middle age, who Old sweet- can still be heartily and generously fond of all the women about whom he was in a passion and a fever in early life. If you cease liking a woman when you cease lov- ing her, depend on it, that one of you is a bad one. You are parted, never mind with what pangs on either side, or by what cir- cumstances of fate, choice, or necessity, — you have no money or she has too much, or she likes somebody else better, and so forth ; but an honest Fogy should always. Should ai- unless reason be given to the contrary, weiio/them. think Well of the woman whom he has once thought well of, and remember her with kindness and tenderness, as a man re- members a place where he has been very happy." But the dance at the house oppo- site. The movement seems to me too rapid. There is not enough of repose, so to speak, in the modern dancing. I should like once more to see a minuet, in the old-time style. A Club of One 147 The minuet was the dance of kings, the rhcda„ceoj poetry of the courtly salon. George Wash- ington was at home in the stately move- ment, and he has been pronounced "the most decorous and respectable person that ever went ceremoniously through the reali- ties of life." Hawthorne imagined he was born with his clothes on, and his hair pow- dered, and made a stately bow on his first appearance in the world. I should like to set down the circumstance of Gouverneur Morris's rebuff, upon approaching familiarly the great American idol — related so inter- tiu Amer- estingly by an early annalist ; but my hand is weary with too much writing. The doc- tor will scold. I can only refer to the con- trast of the ancient, reposeful minuet, with the unceremonious, rapid, familiar waltz of the moderns, and quote some piquant lines, inclosed by Sir Thomas Lawrence to Lord Mountjoy : — ON WALTZING. On waltz- ing. " What ! the girl I adore by another embraced ! What ! the balm of her breath shall another man taste ! What ! pressed in the whirl by another's bold knee ! What ! panting, recline on another than me ! Sir, she 's yours. You have brushed from the grape its soft blue ; From the rosebud you 've shaken its tremulous dew : What you 've touched you may take — ■ pretty waltzer adieu ! " 1^8 A Club of One Books. My books ! What would my life be with- out them ? They are my meat and my drink. They employ my mind and lift me out of myself. In hours of mental exalta- tion I forget my miserable body. I have a book for every mood and every condition. When my mind is strongest and clearest and freest, I range the uppfer fields of phi- piato. losophy with Plato ; when I am most in- clined to pure reason, I listen to brave Socrates ; when I am in temper for obser- vation, I read .(Esop ; when I want to real- ize the power of light over darkness, I tread the dawn with Epictetus ; when I want to breathe the atmosphere of the Cae- sars, I follow Suetonius ; then I walk with Cicero and his nomenclator in the streets of the Eternal City, and study the arts of the Roman politician ; of moral exaltation, I find a rare example in the heathen em- Marcm An- pcror Marcus Antoninus ; gods, and demi- gods, and heroes fight for me in Homer ; if I want to sup with horrors, I sit down in terror with -lEschylus, witnessing the ghost of Clytemnestra rushing into Apollo's tem- ple, and rousing the sleeping Furies ; if I want a refreshing ride in the chariot of the sun, I take a seat with Phaeton, in Ovid ; at will, I range paradise with Mil- toninus. A Club of One 149 ton, and explore perdition with Dante ; when I hunger for the world, and want to see every type of man and woman per- fectly represented, I read Shakespeare ; s/uih- when I want to study human nature, I ^^"''"'' take Don Quixote, Pilgrim's Progress, and Faust ; to feel the inspiration of freedom, I scale the heights and storm the fast- nesses with Schiller ; I gossip with wise old Montaigne ; think with Pascal ; moral- MontaigM. ize with Sir Thomas Browne ; quote and comment with Burton ; rummage with Dis- raeli ; laugh with Rabelais ; enjoy the sug- gestive experiences of Gil Bias ; am always amused and entertained with Tristram Shandy ; Tom Jones — who could ever tire of it ? or of Humphry Clinker ? or of Rod- erick Random ? or Swift's Gulliver ? though I am terrified sometimes with its pitiless wisdom ; I go a-fishing with Izaak, and izaak pvai. participate (the slightest) his meekness and sweet contentment ; I listen to sermons from Bourdaloue, and Bossuet, and Mas- sillon, and Barrow, and South, and Chal- mers, and Wesley, and Hall ; I take down Foster when I want to read a little and think more of times gone by and difficulties overcome ; then I philosophize with Sou- vestre in his Attic ; then enjoy the caustic i^o A Club of One wit and keen satire of Thackeray, and con- template his immortal creations ; then the Dickens. humanitics of Dickens quicken me to tears, and a long procession of the creatures of his teeming brain move before me ; Sir Walter, too, who is history enough for me Burns. now ; and Burns — the oae _Lmmortal bard of humani ty — to be cherished and sung while man is man, ever and ever ; and phil- osophic Wordsworth ; and poetic Shelley and Keats ; and the moral and wise Sam Johnson ; and the gentle and exquisite Goldsmith ; and the storming Carlyle, — mighty hater an d smiter of cant and shams; then I discourse with Coleridge ; pun and turn over rare old books with Lamb. gentle Elia ; luxuriate with abounding Ma- caulay ; dream with De Quincey ; expa- tiate with Hazlitt and Hunt ; then to the Brontes — Charlotte especially ; then to Miss Austen — so healthy, serene, and pure ; then to something more thoughtful again — to Emerson, the reflective, the wise, the exalted — fit society for Plato in the empyrean ; then to Hawthorne — dis- sector, interpenetrator of hearts and lives ; to scholarly, witty, s hrewd Lowell — critic, Holmes. poet, ambassador J to Holmes — so acute, humorous, suggestive, and philosophical in A Club of One. i^i the Autocrat and Elsie — altogether unique in literature ; and when a taste for some- thing light, and finished, and exquisite, seizes me, I~read the Reveries, and Prue and I ; and so I go on and on, .feasting with the worthies, and banqueting with the celestials, as inclination or whim pleases Ine'-^ a precious book, as I said, for every mood and every condition. Books! books! It was estimated, some Books i years ago, that ten million volumes, first and last, had been published since the art of printing was discovered — with an av- erage edition of three hundred — aggregat- ing three thousand million volumes ! Yet tradition in Cambridge has recorded that Bentley said he desired and thought him- self likely to live to fourscore, an age long enough, he thought, to read everything which was worth reading. But single books, and little ones — what influence they have exerted ! Elizabeth Wallbridge, The Dairyman's Daughter, is known to rheDairy- every tract distributor in the world. The Daughter. tract containing the story of her life has been translated into nineteen languages, and has had a circulation of four million copies. The circulation of Uncle Tom's 1^2 A Club of One Cabin has been even more remarkable. And Thomas a Kempis's Imitation — think of the influence of that. Leigh Hunt, in his Autobiography, speaks of a riot at Lyons about an equestrian statue of Louis XIV., meant to overawe the city with Bourbon memories. We met, he says, the statue on the road. I had bought in that city a volume of the songs Beranger. of Bdrangcr, and I thought to myself, as I met the statue, " I have a little book in my pocket which will not suffer you to last long." And surely enough, down it went : for down went King Charles. Books, thought Mrs. Barbauld, are a kind of perj petual censors on men and manners j the; 4udg£_adiEQ3".I'artiality^_^Sid reprove jsaJt,' ojitfear or affection. There are time, when tTie tlameTrf virtue and liberty seems almost to be extinguished amongst the ex- AHimaied isting generation ; but their animated pages are always at hand to rekindle it. The despot trembles on his throne, and the bold, bad man turns pale in his closet at the sentence pronounced against him ages? before he was born. Happily, the bes' books are the commonest, and are alway; in use. Erskine used to say that in a( dressing juries he had found there weri fages. A Club of One i^) three books, and only three, which he could always quote with effect, Shakespeare, Mil- ton, and the Bible. Milton's favorite vol- Poeh' favor- umes were Homer, Ovid, and Euripides ; ' "' Dante's was Virgil ; Schiller's was Shake- speare ; Gray's was Spenser ; Goethe's was Spinoza's Ethics ; Bunyan's was the old legend of Sir Bevis of Southampton. The two books which most impressed John Wesley, when young, were the Imitation wesiefs of Christ, and Taylor's Holy Living and '""'^'""' Dying. De Quincey's favorite few were Donne, Chillingworth, Jeremy Taylor, Mil- ton, South, Barrow, and Sir Thomas Browne. Napoleon never wearied of read- ing Ossian and the Sorrows of Werther. Miss Austen's novels were favorites with Macaulay ; he enjoyed them especially for their serenity. Thackeray was particularly fond of Humphry Clinker ; he believed it Humi,hry ^ ■' ' Clinker. to be " the most laughable story that has ever been written since the goodly art of novel-writing began." Douglas Jerrold had an almost reverential fondness for books — books themselves — and said he could not bear to treat them, or to see them treated, with disrespect. It always gave him pain to see them turned on their faces, stretched open, or dog's eared, or carelessly flung [^4 ^ ^^^^ '^ ^^ down, or in any way misused. Bayle, it is known, gave up every sort of recreation, Delicious in- cxcept that delicious inebriation of his fac- '^'^ ulties which he drew from his books. If the riches of both Indies, said F^nelon ; if the crowns of all the kingdoms of Europe were laid at my feet, in exchange for my love for reading, I would spurn them all. Pofeto At this day, said Pope to Spence, as much , company as I have kept, and as much as I love it, I love reading better. I would rather be employed in reading than in the most agreeable conversation. There is a story that Dante, having gone one day to the house of a bookseller, from one of whose windows he was to be a spectator of a pub- lic show exhibited in the square below, by chance took up a book, in which he soon Dante ah- got SO absorbcd that on returning home, after the spectacle was over, he solemnly declared that he had neither seen nor heard anything whatever of all that had taken place before his eyes. Scott, in Waverley, describes the Baron of Bradwardine as a scholar, according to the scholarship of Scotchmen ; that is, his learning was more diffuse than accurate, and he was rather a Zeal far Fcader than a grammarian. Of his zeal for M!^r". "" the classic authors he is said to have given A Club of One 755 an unconscious instance. On the road be- Anmicon- tween Preston and London he made his statue. escape from his guards ; but being after- wards found loitering near the place where they had lodged the former night, he was recognized and again arrested. His com- panions, and even his escort, were sur- prised at his infatuation, and could not help inquiring why, being once at liberty, he had not made the best of his way to a place of safety ; to which he replied, that he had intended to do so, but, in good faith, he had returned to seek his Titus Livius, which he had forgot in the hurry of his escape. Plato's cave, in which he puaa'scave. supposes a man to be shut up all his life with his back to the light, and to see noth- ing of the figures of men or other objects that pass by but their shadows on the op- posite wall of his cell, so that when he is let out and sees the real figures he is only dazzled and confounded by them, seemed to Hazlitt an ingenious satire on the life satire on of a bookworm, ^ ^confess to the ^French-l bookJcrm. man's hatred of .,g^ .dirty J^Sfik. It is in] truth an error to suppose that the dirt on the cover and pages of a book is a sign of its studious employment. Those who use / ' books to most purpose handle them with j 1^6 A Club of One B^ok-ior- loving care. And as to persistent book- riwmg. borrowing, book-owners can hardly trust themselves to speak of it. Its common- ness does not excuse the offense. It is said that Lord Eldon, when chancellor, greatly augmented his library by borrow- ing books quoted at the bar ; and forget- ting to return them, he would say of such borrowers, " Though backward in account- ing, they were well-practiced in book-keep- Book-thia- ing." But deliberate book-thieviug — what '"^' crime is there to compare with it in the estimation of the student and librarian } In Chambers' Journal there is 'an account of a memorable literary virtuoso who piqued himself upon his collection of scarce edi- tions and original manuscripts, most of which he had purloined from the libraries of others. He was always borrowing books of acquaintances with a resolution never to return them ; sending in a great hurry for a particular edition which he wanted to Svtterfuges. cousult for a momcnt, but when its return was solicited he was not at home ; or he had lent the book to somebody else ; or he could not lay his hand upon it just then ; or he had lost it ; or he had himself al- ready delivered it to the owner. Some- times he contented himself with stealing A Club of One i^y one volume of a set, knowing where to pro- cure the rest for a trifle. After his death his library was sold at auction, and many of his defrauded friends had the pleasure of buying their own property back again BuyingUmr at an exorbitant price. Reading lately of °SjJS." book-titles, I was amused with a statement of how misleading many of them have been. The Diversions of Purley, at the Dmmions time of its publication, was ordered by a " "''^^' village book-club, under the impression that it was a book of amusing games. The Essay on Irish Bulls was another work which was thought by some folks to deal with live stock. The Ancient Mar- iner was sold largely to sea-faring men, who concluded from the name that it had some relation to nautical matters. The Tk^Exmr- Excursion — expensive copies of it — were sold to tourists and to keepers of country inns and boarding-houses, as likely to be of especial interest to excursionists. James Smith used to dwell with much pleasure on the criticism of a Leicestershire clergy- man : "I do not see why they (the Ad- RejectedAd. dresses) should have been rejected : I think some of them very good." This, he would add, is almost as good as the avowal of the Irish bishop, that there were some good sion. 138 A Club of One Tocqve- Tjillc^s pref-t erence. Sterne's tribute. How to read? things in Gulliver's Travels which he could not believe. Tocqueville preferred 7 living with books to living with authors. One is not always happy with the latter ; while books are intelligent companions, without vanity, ill-humor, or caprice ; they do not want to talk of themselves, do not dislike to hear others praised ; clever peo- ple whom one can summon and dismiss just as one pleases. 1 1 often derive a pe- culiar satisfaction, says Sterne, in convers- ing with the ancient and modern dead, who yet live and speak excellently in their works. My neighbors think me often alone, and yet at such times I am in com- pany with more than five hundred mutes — each of whom, at my pleasure, commu- nicates his ideas to me by dumb signs, quite as intelligibly as any person living can do by the uttering of words. They al- ways keep the distance from me which I direct, and with a motion of my hand I can bring them as near to me as I please. I lay hands on fifty of them sometimes in an evening, and handle them as I like ; they never complain of ill-usage ; and when dis- missed from my presence, though ever so abruptly, take no offense. How to read ? is a grave question to readers. Goethe A Club of One i^g said he had been employed for eighteen years trying to learn the art, and had not attained it. Richter, speaking of miscella- neous reading, inquires, quaintly, " Does more depend on the order in which the meats follow each other or on the diges- tion of them ? " In 1 73 1, Atterbury wrote Atterburyu, his last letter to Pope, and asks, " How ^''^^' many books have come out of late in your parts which you think I should be glad to peruse ? Name them. The catalogue, I believe, will not cost you much trouble. They must be good ones indeed to chal- lenge any part of my time, now I have so little of it left. I, who squandered whole days heretofore, now husband hours when the glass begins to run low, and care not to spend them on trifles. At the end of the lottery of life our last minutes, like tickets left in the wheel, rise in their valu- ation." "Marvelous power of mind!" tx.- /inexcia- claims Souvestre, reflecting on the value of 'smveltfe. books in old age. " From a corner of my chamber — from the arm-chair which I oc- cupy — I can traverse the immense abysses of the past. I am present at the founda- tion of cities, the birth and growth of em- pires ; I accompany various races as they wander over the earth, establish them- i6o A Club of One Takes note o/human- ity. Distatices selves, and found nations ; I take note of that perpetual movement of humanity, as it seeks its level on the globe which has been given to it for an inheritance. Or, fatigued with these generalities, I repose in the tent of the patriarch Abraham, or beneath the oak of St. Louis. From the tribune of Cicero I pass to the pulpit of Bossuet ; distances are nothing to me ; I traverse them by an instantaneous bound, whether those of space or time. From the east I hasten to the west, from the early days of the world I pass on to the hour which has just struck ; wherever an at- tractive spectacle summons me, I am there in spirit ; or a noble action or an elevated conversation invites me, I am present to Magnificent applaud Or take part. Magnificent empire memory ! of mcmory ! vast power and inexhaustible activity of thought ! I cease to be troubled now at my solitude and forced inaction." A strange dream^ or vision. I had a strange dream last night — or vision rather. I record it as a curious freak or exercise of the faculties. The doctor must have put a little too much opium in his last powders. Methought my pretty round table in the library was en- larged to many times its real size. I was A Club of One i6i contemplating its polished surface, and wondering if any wood could be richer and more beautiful than our American black walnut, when a pill-box made its appear- a pm-iox ance on the table, — rolling about in an 'p^Jci^e'!^' erratic way — describing all sorts of circles and semicircles, in the easiest and most ec- centric manner possible. It was a diminu- tive thing — the tiniest of the kind I had rhs tmkst ever seen — not greater in diameter than " " the smallest thimble. It was so small in- deed that a close eye was necessary to ob- serve its movements. Soon, another pill- box, a size larger, presented itself, and the two immediately began chasing each other in a very amusing manner — sometimes in straight lines and sometimes in graceful curves. Then another pill-box, a size big- ger than the last, made its appearance, and joined with the others in freakish gambols. A fourth next showed itself — still a little smi larger. larger than the third — in a still more rol- licking humor than any of the rest, and it became very difficult indeed to watch them, so "rapid and peculiar were their move- ments. Then another and another, each one a little bigger, till the table was pretty well filled with animated pill-boxes. There must have been as many as forty or fifty 1 62 A Club of One 0/ every of them, — of cvcry size and variety, from "aruty. the miiiute smallest to that of greatest proportions. No apothecary ever saw a greater array and intermixture. And each was marked with a cabalistic label, such as I had seen many a time in the handwriting of the numerous forgotten doctors my mul- tiplied diseases have baffled. The myste- rious characters inscribed on each would A stndyfar havc bceu an interesting study to the ar- the archxol- _. _.,^,t , og'^i- chaeologist. 1 wish I had a memorandum of them. The gravest of all my doctors would have laughed at their queerness, their variety, and their multiplicity. Away they all ran — the whole forty or fifty — in infinite variation — describing, it seemed Every fig- to mc, cvcry known figure in geometry, — "^7j/!" *^^'""' distinct and in combination. Sometimes I thought their movements described the orbits of the solar system better than any planetarium I had seen. Then in a long curved line they ranged themselves, — the first in the procession being the tiniest, and the last the most gigantic — as big as Gibbon's Gibbon's snuff-box that he tapped so grace- fully, and a pinch from which he always let fall at just the right moment to empha- size his story. In that long serpentine line how they did crawl about ; then wrig- A Club of One 163 gled and twisted into all sorts of contor- tions and convolutions ; then stretched themselves into something like order again. Their speed was interesting — their revo- rheirrevo. lutions, I mean. The big ones had stately '"'"""' movements, like the great wheels of great engines. There was an expression of power in their slowness, and of apparent contempt for the little bustling fellows that had to be constantly hurrying to keep up. Then they were all mixed up — the little ones and the big ones together. Big and m- They were so involved that I could not '^*''^'*'''^- tell one from another ; and the wonder was that there was no collision. Then they went leaping and leaping, till it ap- peared there must be a universal smash. I trembled for the consequences. Then the tops or coverings came off, and mingled miscellaneously with the other parts, show- ing fresh vigor in the chase, as so many fresh foxes. The boxes that had contained so many incompatibles fused together in incompati- , ... rr-, . , bles together close companionship. Ihe opium was not at all disgusted with the lobelia. The jalap and the pleasantest of all soothing rem- edies affiliated, as if they had been friends since Galen. Then they ranged them- selves again into long serpentine lines — 164 A Club of One Playing at lea/>-/rog. Dance of the Pill- Boxes, the boxes and the lids separate. After al- ternate slow and rapid movements, they began playing at leap-frog — the smallest being vaulted by the next in size, until the whole lines were changed — the most dimin- utive bringing up the rear, and the largest leading the column. And so they went on with their varied and indescribable gyra- tions and convolutions ; when, suddenly leaping into one another, they nested them- selves snugly together ; then as quickly and mysteriously disappeared, and the re- markable scene was ended. No Roman emperor in the Flavian amphitheatre was ever better entertained. I call it The Dance of the Pill-Boxes. Talks of books exclu- sively. By appointment, the doctor spent a couple of hours with me last night in my library. I had anticipated his visit in every way that I could, and was glad to see him. The place was cheerfully illumi- nated, and the wine was the best that my cellar afforded. I was pleased to see that he was disposed to be attentive and recep- tive, as my purpose was to talk to him of books exclusively, with a view to enlight- ening him as to some of the best, and to show him what a comparatively small sum A Club of One i6^ of money would put him in possession of them. For, time and again, he has lamented to me his lack of intelligence on the subject, as well as of the requisite cash to buy, even though he knew what books he should purchase. To convince him that a To convince good proportion of the famous books that have been produced could be put into a small space, and that not a very large amount of money would be necessary to purchase them, I caused two hundred or more volumes to be placed together in one contents o/ case with seven shelves, each of four feet """ ""^' in length, that he might be convinced by seeing, as well as by my didactic instruc- tion. To have the whole before us as a sort of object-lesson, our easy chairs were so placed that we could view the collection to the best advantage. The first shelf Tkefirst (the lowest) was just filled with the Bible, in four volumes (Samuel Bagster & Sons, London) ; Webster's Unabridged Diction- ary ; Anthon's Classical Dictionary ; and Appleton's Cyclopaedia, i6 volumes ; (22 volumes in all). The second shelf was The second filled with octavos (some of them of two and more volumes) of Shakespeare, Bacon, Milton, Homer, Dante, Virgil, Faust, Chambers' Encyclopaedia of English Liter- 1 66 A Club of One ature (London and Edinburgh) ; and Bry- ant's Library of Poetry and Song. These Goodedi- are all good editions, well printed, and ap- propriately (as I said) in octavo. The other five shelves contained the following, — named in the order in which the books happened to be placed, and not according to preference. They are in crown octavo, i2mo, and i6mo — a very few of the lat- ter — only such as could not be conven- iently purchased of a larger size. Plato's Republic and Phaedo, 2 volumes (from Bohn's Standard Library). Emerson's A beautiful Prose Works, 2 volumes. Montaigne's Montaigne. Essays, 4 volumcs (the beautiful Riverside edition — exquisite letter-press — the proof- sheets of the perfect pages having been read by Mr. H. O. Houghton himself, long before he attained the head of the pub- lishing house of Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin & Company). Swift's Works, 6 volumes. Goldsmith's works, 4 volumes. Seneca's Morals (London, 1702). Carlyle's Essays, Sartor Resartus, and French Revolution, Haw- 6 volumes. Hawthorne's Scarlet Letter JZrpiece. (his masterpiecc). Holmes's Autocrat, and Elsie Venner, 2 volumes (the cream of his genius.) Curtis's Prue and I (a little vol- ume of exquisite sketches). Uncle Tom's A Club of One i6y Cabin. Souvestre's Attic Philosopher, and Leaves from a Family Journal, 2 volumes (suited to serene moods). De Quincey's Opium Eater. Sydney Smith (a volume of selections, including the Peter Plymley Letters). Wilson's Noctes Ambrosianse om volume (a volume made up from the five original fromfive. volumes, containing most that is best and of general interest). Miss Austen's Pride and Prejudice. Arabian Nights. J^afflili*-" F.ssa ys, and Tal fourd's . JJfe-,and-Xet.t_ers, 3 volumes. Pascal's Thoughts. Epictetus (a beautiful edition, Little, Brown & Com- pany). La Rochefoucauld's Maxims (Wil- liam Gowans, Nassau Street, — that in- a« i^rest- terestmg bibliopolist, known to so many pouu. book-lovers : I could gossip about him for an hour). Irving' s Sketch- Book, Knick- erbocker's History of New York, and Life of Goldsmith, 3 volumes (his complete works would fill a whole shelf). Foster's Essays. Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre. Mill on Liberty. Gil Bias. .B urns ( with marginal glossary, John S. RIarr__o?'^Sons, Glasgow, — the most con\'enient edition a convm- "Cf^urns for English readers that I know). '^/Bur,^"' Godwin's Caleb Williams. Tunius's Let- c tpr^ Cf Vbh Robinson's Diary. Tragedies of ^schylus. Butler's Hudibras. Bun- 1 68 A Club of One yan's Pilgrim's Progress. Cicero's Offices, etc. (a single volume from Bohn's). Hol- bein's Dance of Death. Macau lay's Es- j says, 6 vol umes . Dana's Two Years"Before ~the Mast. Darwin's Voyage. Selections Landorre- from SavagB Landor, by Hillard. (A rich little book.) Boswell's Johnson, 4 vol- umes. Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, 1 3 volumes. (It would not do to be without Burton.) Reveries of a Bachelor. (This is another of those little books that have flavor, and must live.) Disraeli's Curjosi- Books that have Jlavor. Friend, Christian Morals, and Urn Burial, in one attractive^ volume, imprint, Ticknor & Fields). F^nelon (a selection from his writings, Munroe & Company, Boston and Cambridge). Robinson Cmsne. Wilhelm — Meistey.- Dickens's Pickwick Papers, Da- vid Copperfield, and Tale of Two Cities, 3 volumes. (His humor, his pathos, and his Dickenis power arc best displayed in these three masterpieces.) Letters of Madame de S6- vignd. J^etters of_Lacly Mar y Wort- ley Mon^gu^^^^asselas. Walton'sSriglef.'" White s History of Selborne. Thoreau's Walden. Charles O'Malley. Of the Imi- tation of Christ. Fielding's Tom Jones wnster- pieces. A Club of One i6g , and Humphry Clinker, 2 volumes. Pic- ciola. T eremy Taylor's, Holy Living jin^ H oly ■ Dyjng)_j y olumeg. Book of Scottish a good booh Songs (a volume of the Illustrated London "soiigl " Library, — an admirable collection, and a beautiful book). Thomas Fuller's Holy and Profane States, and Good Thoughts in Bad Times, 2 volumes (selections from the works of the old worthy). Confuci us, and -S*»d*e&-©Hv,.fij;;eaL_SubjecJs{the volume con- Fronde's ar- 1 • 1 -t ~ T-i 1 c X 1 \ tide on the taming the article on the Book of Job). Book 0/ job. Vanity Fair and The Newcomes. Cooper's Spy. Balzac's Petty Annoyances of Mar- ried Life (one of the most amusing and acute books in literature, wKat'evef"ml^'be thought o± its tone and spirit). Rabelais. Ecce Homo. (Why has the Professor never published the promised companion volume .') Spence's Anecdotes. Vathek. Lewis's Monk (a queer, crazy old copy, printed on different fonts of type, and con- taining pictures of the veritable devils). Sel- den's Table Talk. lohnson 's Livesofthe ■ J^nglish Poets, 2 volumes ( to get the Life nf .Savacrp • wViAf don't some publisher print a suggestion \t spp^ratelv ?1 Aristotle's Ethics. Lu- ther's Table TalK. Hazlitt's Round Table volume (containing Conversations of North- lyo A Club of One cote). Life of John Brown of Ossawat- tomie. Montesquieu, 4 volumes. Don Quixote. Tasso's Jerusalem Delivered. Kinglake's Eothen. Jerrold's Mrs. Cau- dle's Curtain Lectures, and Chronicles of Clovernook, 2 volumes. Evelyn's Diary. A beautiful Pcpys' Diary. The Spectator, 8 volumes 'spec7it£-'. (a beautiful edition, Little, Brown & Com- pany). Southey's Wesley, Nelson, and The Doctor, 3 volumes. Machiavelli's Prince. Plutarch's Lives, 4 volumes. P1iil-?^]-ph's- Morals. 4 volumes. Meditations of the Emperor Marcus^ ii rp1i?ii AintnuinTin (Lfrn- don, 1708). LaBru y6re;s Ch_aracters„(^..^ don, 1702). j Srasmus's Prais< ^ of PftlV- and Colloauies. 2 volu^ gs (i.j>«iHr>n 171 1. These authors should be read in old edi- Bimuingthi tions. It is like blowing dust off vellum). imi° "* Coleridge's Table Talk. S ir Thomas More's U topia ^ (How the figments of his imagi- ■naf'ion nave been realized in the later life of the race ! Original thinking seems like commonplace.) Scott's Old Mortality, Ivanhoe, and Guy Mannering. (These three embody the magician's genius, and save space and money.) Bulwer's My Novel. Reynard the Fox. Lover's Le- The story geuds and Stories of Ireland (to get the "o'luirim. story of Barny O'Reirdon). Joubert's A Club of One lyi Thoughts. Parton's Voltaire, 2 volumes. Manzoni's Betrothed Lovers. John Wool- man's Journal. Paul and Virginia ("the ■swan -song of ojdjjviriy Frai;^^^'"). Alger's Oriental Poetry. Sterne's Works, 4 vol- umes. Mandeville's Fable of the Bees, 2 volumes. (A work that is destined, as Swift would say, to " go down the gutter of time," for its boldness and originality, notwithstanding its burning by the Middle- sex grand jury.) And lastly (deserving to TheiaH,in and have them educated in European insti- tutions at great expense ; they go back to their own country with the resolve to prop- agate the Christian religion, but scarcely have they disembarked when the spirit of their race seizes upon them ; they forget their promises, and lose all their Christian beliefs. It might be supposed that they had never left China. The fact itself (says Mill, in his great little book On Liberty), r • . 1 • . r 1 1 * Respoitsihil- ot causing the existence of a human being, uy a/cam- is one of the most responsible actions in 'Sfenceo/a the range of human life. To undertake 0^^"" ' 204 A Club of One this responsibility — to bestow a life which may be either a curse or a blessing — un- less the being on whom it is to be bestowed will have at least the ordinary chances of a desirable existence, is a crime against that being. Especially, another has re- Transmit- marked, no one who transmits defects of '' his or her own, whether physical or moral, can help feeling that he has wronged the child in handing them down to it. The compunction must be particularly painful when the defect is moral. When a father in his son, or a mother in her daughter, Pervernties sccs weakncsscs and perversities outcrop- mdcroppmg. pjjjg ^hlch thcy clearly recognize as old personal property, they must doubt whether they are the persons who should punish the young offenders ; and it is not difficult to fancy that children, by some dim kind of instinct, partially discover the injustice of being scolded for teeth set on edge by the very people who have eaten the sour crievmsin- grapes. It sccmcd grievous indeed to Charlotte Bronte that those who have not sinned should suffer so largely. I have been thinking how very remark- able is the thoroughly enlightened, culti- vated man of this age of the world : he is A Club of One 20^ a marvel. Open and receptive to every ^ ,„arvei. suggestion and influence, every thing has taught him, as every thing is constantly teaching him. Intelligence is in the air, and flies on the wings of the wind. It is not possible for him to avoid breathing and absorbing it. There is a character in a character Dickens, or somewhere in fiction, whose ™ occupation was in the wine-cellar amongst the butts and pipes ; he never drank any- thing, but he was always comfortable by absorption. So it is at this day with an open, healthy nature ; it has but to open its eyes and ears and pores (so to speak) to be enlightened. What we call study is study not as . J. • i n • necessary as not so necessary to intelligence as once. „««. Every thing is an object-lesson, and teaches irresistibly. The results of genius and skill are everywhere, and they have been so intelligently worked out that they tell the processes of development. Machines are so much like the men they compete with and so often eclipse that they com- municate. Printed pages are to be had for the picking up. Science opens its doors gratuitously. Art everywhere adorns and Artadoms instructs. A good brain cooperating with "Jt-mus. a good heart, with all opportunities and facilities at every turn, must develop good 2o6 A Club of One character and sovereign enlightenment. The possible man, of full growth, under such encouraging and stimulating circum- stances, is pleasant to contemplate. On an island in the sea, one bright Sunday morn- Agoodrep- iug, not many years ago, I met a good specimen, representative specimen of high manhood, which sometimes appears to my memory, filling it full, to the exclusion of everything beside. It was after breakfast that I had A favorite sauutered down to my favorite rock, where I delighted to lounge when the weather was favorable. It sloped gently to the west, and was sheltered from the morning sun by the ledge behind. It overlooked a Thedimitm- dimiuutivc bay (the size of this library room), which was always particularly inter- esting to me at low tide. At such times the kelp lay exposed, and specimens of star-fish and sea-urchins were sometimes visible. The puff of the locomotive was seen but not heard ten miles away, on the mainland. In favorable atmospheres I thought I could discern Mt. Washington, defining itself as a cloud in the distance. It was an interesting spot to dream at, as it is an interesting spot to dream of. I Agentknum fouud my rock occupicd, by a gentleman %,igray. -^^ ^^^^ — ^^^ ^^ g^^^ ycars of age; but A Club of One 207 there was room enough for two, he in- sisted, and moved over. I had never seen him before ; but his manner and atmos- phere of gentiUty and good-breeding were assuring, and I sat down. Something was said of the morning, or the tide, or a pass- ing sail. The Uttle bay, that he had just Thsutue discovered, seemed as interesting to him SteThhn. as it was to me. Its situation and accesso- ries were referred to in a compendious sen- tence or two, that denoted his full compre- hension of them. His observations upon the rock formations visible, showed him Roch/orma. familiar with the theories and conclusions of geology. His reference to a sea-urchin had the observation and intelligence of a naturalist in it. He called particular atten- tion to a long serpentine line of kelp, and Keip. in a few sentences gave me an amount of information of the remarkable sea-weed that I have never wholly forgotten. How it grows in lower latitudes on every rock from low water mark to a great depth, both on the outer coast and within the chan- nels ; how every rock near the surface is buoyed by this floating weed, — thus af- fording good service to vessels navigating o/seroke to near the stormy land, and saving many a ^'" '^'' one from being wrecked. Three hundred 2o8 A Club of One and sixty feet is the length it had been known to attain. He compared the great aquatic forests of the southern hemisphere with the terrestrial ones in the intertrop- ical regions, and said that if in any country a forest was destroyed, he believed not nearly so many species of animals would Effects of Us perish as in the former, from the destruc- tion of the kelp. Amidst the leaves of this plant numerous species of fish live, which nowhere else could find food or shel- crecitures tcr ; with their destruction the many cor- that would t> t • • 1 ferish. morants and other fishing-birds, the otters, seals, and porpoises, would soon perish also ; and the Fuegian savage, the misera- ble lord of that miserable land, would re- double his cannibal feast, decrease in num- bers, and perhaps cease to exist. From considering the remarkable plant of the sea, and discoursing upon it, he naturally passed, in contrast, to the ship of the des- ert. Alive or dead, his information was, The camel, that almost cvcry part of the camel is ser- viceable to man : her milk is plentiful and nutritious ; the young and tender flesh has the taste of veal ; a valuable salt is ex- tracted from the urine ; dung supplies the deficiency of fuel ; and the long hair, which falls each year and is renewed, is coarsely A Club of One 209 manufactured into the garments, the furni- ture, and the tents of the Bedouins. It struck him, as it strikes the traveler, as something extremely romantic and myste- rious, the noiseless step of the camel, from HisnoUe the spongy nature of his foot ; whatever be "' ^'^^' the substance of the ground — sand, or rock, or turf, or loose stones — you hear no foot- fall ; you see an immense animal approach- ing you, stilly as a cloud floating on air ; and, unless he wears a bell, your sense of hearing, acute as it may be, will give you no intimation of his presence. The Arabs, he said, could live five days without vict- uals, and subsist for three weeks on noth- ing else but the blood of their camels, who HUbiood. could lose so much of it as would suffice for that time, without being exhausted. Thence the interesting man passed in the same intelligent way to the populations of the East — to the effects of commerce and Western ideas upon China and Japan ; to the opening of Africa, the wonderful dis- coveries there, and their probable influ- ence upon European trade and emigration. Thence to the adaptation of governments Adaptation L 1 ir- TT n of govern- to the new growth of nations. How all ments. the religions were perceptibly changing in a similar manner. Noting, as he passed. 2IO A Club of One some of the effects of the rushing progres- sion upon the habits and dispositions of men — increased restlessness, growing ma- terialism, and apparent diminution of faith being of the few results suggestively re- Actiteand fcrred to. His acute and comprehensive compreiten- . , . /. , sive. View — his easy passage irom one remote part of the world to another — reminded me of a sermon I had lately heard preached by Dr. Hitchcock — certainly one of the most vigorous pulpit thinkers in the world The ■whole — in which the whole round earth was u'i^eye!^ made to appear apart to the hearer's eye ; he turned it about as a teacher turns his revolving globe, and pointed to spots here and there, dimly or conspicuously lighted by Christianity and Christian civilization — all with so much freedom, simplicity, and intelligence, that it hardly occurred to me to guess, much less to conceive the prodigious diligence and exhausting study that had been necessary to the presenta- tion of the subject so comprehensively, so easily, and so naturally. This many-sided,^ A cosmopou- cosmopolitan man, on my rock, talked of "^ finance, but not of the machinery of the banker's office ; of commerce, but not of lines of railway or steamships ; of govern- ment, but not of office-holders or of office- A Club of One 211 holding ; of polity, not politics ; of religion, not churches. I could not have guessed, at the end of his conversation, in what part of the world he lived ; with what political party, if any, he acted ; with what denomi- nation he worshiped ; in what occupation he had made his money. He had asked masked, w no questions, nor anticipated any. In all V^raMi- that he had said, there was no show of " ""''' vanity, bigotry, intolerance, dogmatism, or aggressiveness. He had talked and I had listened. There was that in his manner which said, It happens so ; next time a re- verse ; you will talk and I will listen. The bell at the hotel called us to a late dinner. At the table, a glass of wine was brought a glass oj to me by a servant from another part of ""'"' the dining-hall, with the name and compli- ments of my companion of the morning. I returned my own name, of course, with the usual acknowledgment. After dinner he came to me as if he had known me always, extending his hand, and calling me by name — saying, that he wished to present me to his wife. With the accomplished His wife- lady I walked up and down the piazza for a few minutes, when my acquaintance (it seemed to me for ages in another state of being) made his appearance again, regret- 212 A Club of One ting to take leave, as they were to embark in an hour for New York, to sail thence by Wednesday's steamer for Europe. I have never seen or heard of the remarkable man Tfuimfn-es- siuce ; yet he made such an impression dSii^tiyln upon me, and I remember him so distinctly, memory. ^^^^ j cauuot help Setting him down as a specimen of the thoroughly enlightened and cultivated man referred to in the be- ginning. The business Thc busiuess of reforming — re-forming of reform- . . , . • i a ing. — making over — how interesting ! An occupation for saints, philosophers, and heroes. The instinct to unmake and re- make is very prevalent, and develops early. Only now and then a man is found who is not a born reformer. Himself perfect, the reformer would have everybody like him- self. If a hundred persons were stopped at haphazard in the streets of Paris, says Dumont, and a proposal were made to them to take charge of the Government, NiMiy-nine nincty-nine would accept it. Mirabeau ac- of one hun- ^ , . dred. cepted the post of reporter to the com- mittee on mines without having the slight- est tincture of knowledge on the subject. Men enter upon politics like the gentle- man who, on being asked if he knew how A Club of One 21 ) to play the harpsichord, replied, " I cannot tell, I never tried, but I will see." Socrates used to say, that although no man under- takes a trade he has not learned, even the meanest, yet every one thinks himself suffi- Everyman ciently qualified for the hardest of all trades, ''^""'"'°''' that of government. As I have said, the instinct to govern — re-form — unmake — re-make — re-create — develops very early. A boy only thirteen years old, who had been reading newspapers of one party till he became impressed with the belief that the opposite party was in every way and in every thing essentially and totally corrupt, asked his mother, impatiently and indig- nantly, " Why don't the Government abol- a boy's gues- ish the Democrats ? " His question was radical, and in the spirit of the reformer. A little legislation, in his estimation, was all that was necessary. Bolingbroke, though, understood such matters very differently. " It is a very easy thing to divine good laws ; the difficulty is to make them effec- tive. The great mistake is that of looking The great , , - . , , mistake. upon men as virtuous, or thinking that they can be made so by laws." " Publish few edicts," said Don Quixote to Governor Sancho Panza, " but let them be good ; and, above all, see that they are well observed ; 214 A Club of One King Log's exfierieTice. for edicts that are not kept are the same as not made, and seem only to show that the prince, though he had wisdom and author- ity to make them, had not the courage to insist upon their execution. Laws that threaten, and are not enforced, become like King Log, whose croaking subjects first feared, then despised him." Canon Wilberforce, in a sermon in York Minster, speaking of the impossibility of restraining men's appetites and passions, said, "This is not the platform ; and yet, before this altar, I declare that there is nothing at which the devils laugh more than at an act of parliament." " Man," said Douglas Jer- rold, " will not be made temperate or virtu- ous by the strong hand of the law, but by the teaching and influence of moral power. Acts of par- A man is no more made sober by act of lamen. parliament than a woman is made chaste." There is a speech by the blunt Duke du Sully to an assembly of popish ladies, who were railing very bitterly at Henry the Fourth, at his accession to the French The Duke thronc ; "Ladies," said he, "you have a *' ^""o/hh very good king, if you knew when you are well. However, set your hearts at rest, for he is not a man to be scolded or scratched out of his kingdom." " The some ^ ladies^ A Club of One 21^ idea of reform," says Judge Brackenridge, in Modern Chivalry, " delights the imagi- nation. Hence, reformers are prone to re- Reformers form too much. There is a blue and a bet- /^mtlo' ter blue ; but in making the better blue, a small error in the proportion, of the drug, or alkali, will turn it black." Leigh Hunt, when a very young man, wrote a comedy which was never acted or pub- lished. It was entitled A Hundred a Year, and turned upon a hater of the country, who, upon having an annuity to that amount given him, on condition of his never going out of London, becomes a Thecon- hater of the town. "I cannot, for my ^^"■^'"^'"'*- part," says an acute essayist, "understand how the frame of mind which is eager for proselytes should survive very early youth. I would not conceal my own views, but neither could I feel anxious to thrust them upon others ; and that, for the very simple reason that conversion appears to me to be an absurdity. You cannot change a man's thoughts about things as you can change the books in his library. The mind is not The mind « f -1*1 1 • ' • , 1 ^">i ^ box. a box, which can have opmions inserted and extracted at pleasure. No belief is good for anything which is not part of an organic growth and the natural product of 2i6 A Club of One a man's mental development under the va- rious conditions in which he is placed. To promote his intellectual activity, to encour- age him to think, and to put him in the way of thinking rightly, is a plain duty ; Ready-made but to try to inscrt ready-madc opinions °to'"be1^-"° into his mind by dint of authority is to con- tradict the fundamental principles of free inquiry." "Attempt to shape the world ac- cording to its poetry," said Dr. Riccabocca, "and you fit yourself for a mad-house. The farther off the age is from the realiza- tion of their projects, the more the philos- ophers have indulged them. Thus, it v/as amidst the saddest corruptions of court A/ashimin manners that it became the fashion in Paris Paris. , . , to Sit for one s picture, with a crook in one's hand as Alexis or Daphne. Just as liberty was fast dying out of Greece, and the successors of Alexander were founding their monarchies, and Rome was growing up to crush in its iron grasp all states save its own, Plato withdraws his eyes from the world, to open them in his dreamy Atlantis. Just in the grimmest period of English history, with the axe hanging over Sir Thomas his hcad, Sir Thomas More gives us his More, with tt • >i hisluliT"' Utopia. The error of Jeremy Bentham and of John Locke, it has been remarked, A Club of One 21 y was in supposing that they in their closets could frame de novo a code for the people. The latter prepared a code more than a century ago for one of the North Ameri- can colonies, which proved a signal failure. Burke, upon being conducted by Erskine to his garden, through a tunnel under the road that divided the house from the shrub- bery, all the beauty of Kenwood (Lord Mansfield's place) and the distant prospect suddenly burst upon them. "Oh," said 5Krfev«- Burke, " this is just the place for a reformer ' ""^ '""' — all the beauties are beyond your reach." " Sun ! how I hate thy beams ! " exclaimed the sick philosopher ; but the sick philoso- pher could not tear the sun out of the sky. This old world has been several thousand ages a part of tlie universe, and she cannot be easily jostled out of her place. The race of man has been as long developing ; and to go back to the beginning to begin the work of working it over — re-forming it — re-creating it — would discourage any DUcmrar- but courageous reformers of the aggressive '^'"""^ type, who, in their zeal and sublime confi- "fj, dence, think all things possible of accom- plishment. At the beginning they must begin, to be thorough. The evil — accu- mulating for thousands of ages — must be cou-r- aseous re- ormers. 2l8 A Club of One Pretty and Christian. Movement not always progress. The arck- enejny. radically eliminated, to make room for the good that was lost at the Fall. Hobhouse saw it differently. He once said to Hunt that " the only real thing in life was to be always doing wrong, and always to be for- given for it." Commenting upon the re- mark, the poet asks, " Is not that pretty and Christian ? " Whoever would transform a character, it has been well said, must undo a life history. The fixed and un- changing laws by which events come to pass hold sway in the domain of mind as in every other domain of nature. As things are, it is not always easy to know what is right or best. Movement is not always progress. Parry, in his Polar expedition, while urging northward along the ice his sleighs and Samoyede dogs, found, when the sun, bursting through the fog, revealed his position, that he had been unconsciously traveling several degrees to the southward, since he had been journeying on a mass of floating ice borne by the ocean currents to the south. The devil — the principle of evil — whatever you call him or it — all men agree in regarding the arch-enemy. Resist him until resistance becomes habit, and he will not much trouble you ; permit him liberties, and you are his, body and A Club of One 219 spirit. King Zohak, as Southey relates it, gave the devil leave to kiss his shoulders. Instantly, two serpents sprang out, who, in the fury of hunger, attacked his head, and attempted to get at his brain. Zohak pulled them away, and tore them with his nails. But he found that they were insep- arable parts of himself, and that what he partso/ was lacerating was his own flesh. himself. Alas ! Alas ! I am troubled now with Troubled my eyes. Fortunately, with all my varied '^^es. and multiplied diseases and ailments, my eyesight has remained unimpaired, until within a very few days. My doctor is not quite clear as to the trouble, and suggests that I should consult a specialist. The thought of blindness terrifies me. To sit in darkness the remainder of my days, without the resource of vision to fortify me against innumerable distresses, would be awful. Without my usual supply of honey from my library I should starve. Homy from My faculties must be generously fed, and the food they require is of the richest and daintiest varieties-. " My mind my king- dom is." As I sit in my easy-chair, how- ever rheumatism may rack me, my eye can run along the shelves, and my mind enjoy 220 A Club of One The gods sympathize. Jacob and Daniel the society of a century of worthies of all the ages. With the companionship of the gods, the gout, even, may be endured. The gods sympathize. They all have known suffering, and derision, and isola- tion. " To live alone is the chastisement of whoever will raise himself too high." Tortured, imprisoned, beheaded, many of them were. " Awful is the duel between man and the age in which he lives ! " Starved often, they fed on ambrosia, and are immortal. Jacob, with the heavens for a tent, and the stones for a pillow, saw the angels ascending and descending. Daniel, declining the king's wine and meat, and living on vegetables and water, interpreted the king's vision. Generous memory must supply me for a while. My doctor says I must not read : that a little reading, even, is perilous. And writing — the least — he absolutely prohibits. This record of my idleness, therefore, must be laid aside. Sorry ; for this essaying at composition is more nearly an amusement than anything that I attempt. In a limited way I shall A cherished be driven to adopt a scheme that has long been in my mind. I long have thought that if I were a rich man I should have a dozen competent persons, or more, to read A Club of One 221 for me. They should be selected for their special fitness, and paid generous salaries, that their minds might be entirely at ease, and wholly at my service. The world abounds in scholars, who would be glad of Scholars to such employment. Books would be sup- him. plied to them liberally. Twenty thousand dollars a year I should enjoy expending in that way. I should then feel that I might be fairly acquainted with the moral, intel- lectual, and material progress of the whole earth. Certain of the sciences I should have men employed upon of the highest o/the ugh- order that could be obtained. Certain parts of the world I should have explored and studied to the utmost extent that books would permit. Eleemosynary and mission- ary efforts of every description I should have known and tabulated. The great growth of the Great West — known to The Great geographers only a few years ago as the Great American Desert — I should have noted as intelligently as swift progress would allow. I should have a man for South America and the Pacific Islands, soiuh who should report to me every sign of ^""^"''■ growth and civilization in those isolated regions. I should have another for Africa, who should be specially competent for that 222 A Club of One most interesting field. The rivers and The Dark the lakcs of the Dark Continent he should "" """ ' explore with Livingstone and Stanley, and others, and carefully set down every new settlement, with its resources and pur- poses, as far as could be ascertained. In- dia should be invaded and ransacked by a China. competent reader. And China, with all her peculiarities, philosophies, and supersti- tions, should be carefully and searchingly studied. China ! — that strange country, where "objects terrestrial and celestial, objects visible and invisible, and objects real and imaginary, are made the recipients A strange of homagc ; but among them all there is not one the object of the worship of which is to make the devotee more pure and more sincere, more honest, more virtuous, or more holy. The object whose attain- ment is desired is always selfish, sensual, or' jatan. sccular." And Japan — a more wonderful country still — I should keep a man, or two men, constantly engaged in investigating. If practicable, a thoroughly intelligent per- son who had traveled in that country should be employed. The decaying religion of the Japanese he should be instructed to comprehend if possible ; and especially he should be instructed to observe whatever A Club of One 22 j is taking its place. The awful poverty of Awfiupov- that old country where humanity is such a "^^' drug, and where the graveyards are greater in population than the towns ; yet Dai- koku, the god of wealth, is in every house and worshiped by every inhabitant, with body and spirit ; — where the children are taught the gloomiest fatalism from the ear- Thegiocm- liest moment of comprehension ; — where soap is not used, — only a little sand in a running stream ; — where the children do not cry ; — where the process of milking a cow is unknown ; — where such necessary articles as pins are never seen. A traveler in the interior of the country for hundreds and hundreds of miles never heard a child Nockud cry ! " Such queer crowds," she says ; " so ""' ' silent and gaping, remaining motionless for hours, the wide awake babies, on the moth- ers' backs and in the fathers' arms, never crying." " In Yusowa," she writes, " I took my lunch in a yard, and the people a scene. crowded in hundreds to the gate, and those behind being unable to see me, got ladders and climbed on the adjacent roofs, where they remained till one of the roofs gave way with a loud crash, and precipitated about fifty men, women, and children into the room below, which fortunately was va- 224 A Club of One Scant cos- tumes. A strange sight. cant. Nobody screamed ! " The scant cos- tumes of a large proportion of the popula- tion in the interior are curious. The same traveler reports that the younger children wear nothing at all but a string and an am- ulet. " Could anything," she asks, " be a stranger sight than a decent-looking, mid- dle-aged man, lying on his chest in the veranda, raised on his elbows, and intently reading a book, clothed only in a pair of spectacles ? " Many of the men in the A hat and a ricc-fields wcar only a hat, with a fan at- tached to a girdle; As the lady rode through Yokote, a town of ten thousand, souls, the people rushed out from the baths to see her, men and women alike, without a particle of clothing. Art, too, I should have a competent reader in — an artist if possible. — to report the achievements of the greatest painters and sculptors. The novel fields of literature should be scoured ; in a word, every thing knowable, present and past, should be known, as far as was practicable, and communicated to me,- at stated hours, to suit my convenience — intelligently, enthusiastically, exuberantly. Twenty thousand dollars a year expended in that delightful way, for enlightenment,, entertainmerit, and occupation, I should consider cheap and magnificent pleasure. fan. Art. Literature. $20t000 a year. A Club of One 22^ " The burden and the mystery of all this unintelligible world." "Through mys- Thro«gh tery to mystery." There is nothing beau- ZlLVy!" tiful, sweet, or grand in life, it has been said, but in its mysteries. The sentiments which agitate us most strongly are envel- oped in obscurity : modesty, virtuous love, sincere friendship, have all their secrets, with which the world must not be made acquainted. Hearts which love understand each other by a word ; half of each is at all times open to the other. Innocence itself innocences IS but a holy ignorance, and the most mef- >-«««. fable of mysteries. Infancy is only happy because it as yet knows nothing ; age mis- erable because it has nothing more to learn. Happily for it, when the mysteries of life are ending, those of immortality commence. Heraclitus, it is known, com- HeraciHuss . book. posed a book On Nature, which he depos- ited in the temple of Diana. The style in which it was written was purposely ob- scure, that it might be read only by the learned, he being afraid, if it were to af- ford entertainment to the people generally, that it would soon become so common as to procure him only contempt. This book, says Lucretius, gained extraordinary repu- tation, because nobody understood it. Da- deritoalu. 226 • A Club of One rius, king of Persia, having heard of it, wrote to the author to induce him to come and explain it to him, offering him, at the same time, a handsome reward and a lodg- ing in his own palace ; but Heraclitus re- Swi/t. fused to go. Swift's profound knowledge of human nature led him to envelop his publications in all the mystery possible. After the Tale of a Tub and Battle of the Books had been handed about in manu- script for years, they were published anon- voUatre. ymously. Voltaire's latest French editors give a list of his one hundred and eight pseudonyms. The mystery and obscurity of The Divine Comedy gave it the inter- est and almost the importance of a new religion for a century or more. Steele says the art of managing mankind is only to make them stare a little to keep up their astonishment ; to let nothing be fa- miliar to them, but ever to have some- thing in their sleeve, in which they must Rabeiau. think you are deeper than you are. Rab- elais struck terrible blows, then hid him- self in his humor. His general incompre- hensibleness was his strength with the multitude, which laughed without always knowing what it was laughing about — the object satirized being presented in all sorts A Club of One • 22j of disguises. The wisdom and beauty of Tristram Shandy : how few readers discover or appreciate them, compared with the -greater number who delight in its nonsense and coarseness. The influence and fame of the Letters of Junius were more the junim. result of the mystery of their authorship than of their essential ability. The fact that they have been attributed to so many is evidence that many were thought capa- ble of producing them. While books con- tinue to be printed upon the subject of their origin, and the wisest of men exercise themselves in speculating upon the same, copies of the famous Letters will multiply, Thefamms and be thought necessary to every library, though the events which produced them have long ceased to be of much interest, except to the most curious student. What were romance - writing without mystery .' The story-writer must not only be ingen- ious in inventing his mysteries, but he must be skillful in carrying them, to suc- ceed with the public. Great is the mys- The mystery tery of godliness. In the attempt to know " the unknowable, creeds have been pro- duced and sects organized. If its teach- ers had taught the practice of Christianity continually, and not expended themselves 228 A Club of One in developing systems of theology, all Christen- Christendom would long ago have been have been R United army against Satan. Quiet is thought to be proof of reserved force. The individual who keeps his own counsel is always overestimated by the public. The same is the case with the estate of a man who is careful to be out of debt. The lady who does not cheapen herself by careless association and much display, is invested and clothed by the public with every vir- tue. All the world acknowledges that fe- licitous reserve which La Rochefoucauld The mystery has Called " thc mystcry of the lady." An air of success — how imposing ! The world pays court to it unconsciously. Boswell said Beauclerk told a story with that air of the world that had an inexpressibly im- pressive effect, as if there were something more than was expressed, or than perhaps could be perfectly understood. The influ- A compound cncc of what Grammont calls " a compound counteTiance. ... _ _ . . . countenance, is not merely puzzling, it is powerful. Squeers, when introducing Nich- olas to his school, looked very profound, as if he had a perfect apprehension of what was inside all the books, and could say every word of their contents by heart if he only chose to take the trouble. Lord A Club of One 22g Thurlow carried himself with such a ma- nuriim. jestic air that only the more intelligent ever asked themselves whether any one could really be as wise as Lord Thurlow al- ways seemed. Talleyrand was a mysteri- Taiuyrand. ous character. No one, it appears, could even intelligently guess his motives or pur- poses. Suspicion, caution, wickedness, subtilty, alertness, were natural to him, at the same time they were so mysteriously hidden in the recesses of his character, that their existence as essential parts of him were hardly thought of. At the very time he was most ready for a deadly ivhenready spring, he appeared as quiescent as if all s'^hig. " his faculties were dormant. " What does he mean by it .■' " he asked, when a cele- brated diplomatist fell ill. The report of the death of George III. having just obtained circulation throughout Paris, a banker, by hook or by crook, managed to obtain an audience with Talleyrand, who was then Minister for Foreign Affairs. The banker, Thehcmk- who, like many of his financial brethren, 7i^T"" wished to make a good hit, and thought the present a favorable opportunity, had the indiscretion to reveal to the minister the real object of his visit. Talleyrand listened to him without moving a muscle 2^o A Club of One of his phlegmatic visage, and at length re- plied in a solemn tone, " Some say that" the king of England is dead, others say that he is not dead ; but do you wish to ' know my opinion ? " " Most anxiously, ifoi very princc ! " " Well, then, I believe — neither ! saiu/actory. j jjjention thls in confidence to you ; but I rely on your discretion : the slightest im- prudence on your part would compromise me most seriously." Madame Flamelin one day reproached M. de Moutron with his attachment to Talleyrand. " Good God ! madame," replied M. de Moutron, "who A compii- could help liking him, he is so wicked ! " '^''*- It was a maxim of his, that a man should make his ddbut in the world as though he were about to enter a hostile country ; he must send out scouts, establish sentinels, and even be upon the watch himself. Madame de Stael said of him, " The good Maurice is not unlike the manikins which children play with — dolls with heads of cork and legs of lead ; throw them up which way you please, they are sure to fall on their feet." Motley describes the mys- PhUij,!!. terious, the Jesuitical, the powerful Philip II. at his writing-table, " scrawling his apos- tilles." " The fine, innumerable threads which stretched across the surface of Chris- A Club of One 2^1 tendom, and covered it as with a net, all converged in that silent cheerless cell. France was kept in a state of perpetual Frame in civil war ; the Netherlands had been con- cZu^r. verted into a shambles ; Ireland was main- tained in a state of chronic rebellion ; Scot- land was torn with internal feuds, regularly- organized and paid for by Philip ; and its young monarch — ' that lying king of Scots,' as Leicester called him — was kept in- a leash ready to be slipped upon Eng- land, when- his master should give the word ; and England herself was palpitating England with the daily expectation of seeing a dis- ciplined horde of brigands let loose upon her shores ; and all this misery, past, pres- ent, and future, was wholly due to the existence of that gray-haired letter-writer at his peaceful writing-table." But there was a man in Holland, — more mysterious, more taciturn, more impenetrable, — named William the Silent, — who somehow con- wuiiam the trived, every night, while the wily monarch slumbered, to have his writing-desk care- fully examined, its contents intelligently noted, and scrupulously reported — the most interesting secret in history. George Washington was a mysterious personage, washmg- His nature was impenetrable : it was not 2^2 A Club of One comprehended, and is not, to this day. No A charmed wonder he was believed to have a charmed life. Some years after the battle known as Braddock's Defeat, an old Indian sa- chem visited Washington, and told him that he was one of the warriors in the ser- vice of the French, who lay in ambush on the banks of the Monongahela, and wrought such havoc in Braddock's army. He de- clared that he and his young men had singled him out, as he made himself con- spicuous riding about the field of battle with the general's orders, and had fired at him repeatedly, but without success; whence they had concluded that he was Protected Under the protection of the Great Spirit, by the Great , , . . , , , , '^, . s^iru. had a charmed life, and could not be slam in battle. The mysterious and the incom- prehensible were readily believed to be superhuman. An eminent English woman has remarked it as a singular fact that whenever we find out how anything is done, our first conclusion seems to be that God did not do it. The greater the igno- Thefomer raucc, thc greater the power of mystery o/mystery. . ^ . ._ , ., ^ . , ^^ over it. Ives, a jailer while Leigh Hunt was a prisoner, was a self-willed, ignorant creature. He was not proof, however, against a Greek copy of Pindar, which he ligible book. a mystery. A Club of One 2^3 happened to light upon one day amongst Hunt's books. " Its unintelligible charac- Anunintei- ter," says the poet, " gave him a notion that he had got somebody to deal with who might really know something which he did not. Perhaps the gilt leaves and red mo- rocco binding had their share in the magic. The upshot was, that he always showed himself anxious to appear well with me, as a clever fellow, treating me with great civility on all occasions but one, when I made him very angry by disappointing him in a money amount. The Pindar was a mystery that staggered him. I remember very well, that giving me a long account one day of something connected with his business, he happened to catch with his eye the shelf that contained it, and whether he saw it or not, abruptly finished by observing, 'But, mister, you knows all these things as well as I do.' " Naturalists refer to the mysterious hypocrisies of nature, and how Themyste- they repeat themselves with more or less risies o/na- completeness and consciousness in the mental life of man. What, it is asked, is the vast force exerted by habit in mould- ing men into the likeness of the society to which they belong, except a device for making them safe by preventing them from being conspicuous, just as the small green caterpillar is made safe and unconspicuous by its resemblance to the color of the A suggestive leaves on which it feeds. And is there inquiry. ]-g^i]y ^ny human analogy for the harmless snake and the sphinx caterpillar, which succeed by appearing to possess dangerous qualities which they have not, or more dangerous qualities than any they really Hypocrisy, have ? Hypocirlsy is the most specious, the most artful, the most impenetrable, the most mysterious of all the crimes, or sins, or vices. It was only pardonable, one ivhenoneo/^Qi\i\.A think, " whcH theological controver- tke necessa- . - . . j. riesofufe. sics wcre converted into engmes ot oppres- sion, which filled prisons, ruined families, and exiled virtuous men, — rendering hypoc- risy one of the necessaries of life." When deliberate and voluntary, it has marvelous advantages. " It is an act," says Moli^re, " of which the imposture is always re- spected ; and though it may be discovered, no one dares to do anything against it. All the other vices of man are liable to censure, and every one has the liberty of boldly attacking them ; but hypocrisy is a Aprhiieged privileged vice, which with its hand closes everybody's mouth, and enjoys its repose with sovereign impunity." But how odi- A Club of One 2^5 ous to God are hypocrites, is denoted in the force of that dreadful expression, And his portion shall be with the hypocrites. "You will find in the Holy Scriptures," says Sir Roger L' Estrange, "that God has given the grace of repentance to persecu- tors, idolaters, murderers, adulterers, etc., but I am mistaken if the whole Bible af- ''''!f -?'*'" affords no fords any one instance of a converted distance ^ a J converted hypocrite." hypocrite. Yes ; I am a fogy, and not a reformer. While I cannot help lamenting certain ten- dencies in our civilization, I do not pretend to know a way of correcting or diverting them. Nor am I in any sense a preacher, innosensea My physical disabilities and isolation pre- ^'^ vent me from being anything but a spec- tator. I see, and muse, and rarely utter myself; knowing perfectly well that my views of many things, when I express them, are sure to be considered distempered. It is possible, I admit, that my conclusions HUcmciu- may sometimes be colored by my dis- "°^' tresses ; but what are they in influence, compared with the active man's prejudices, jealousies, and interests .' If the sick man be more or less a coward, and only able to utter feebly his half-truths, the well man Hai/-truths 2J(5 A Club of One 7ke lusty partisan or bigot. is ambitious, aggressive, and very much a bully. With his two big fists, and his round veins filled with hot blood, he crushes his way, — as often in defiance of reason as in compliance with it. I here who sit in solitude, deploring, am as apt to be right, possibly, as the lusty partisan or bigot, with his battle-axe of violence. " Reason," says Goethe, " is the property of an elect few." Soundness, equanimity, and true courage, are its legitimate offspring. Few there be that are healthy, in the full sense, and fewer that are wise, and they only at times, under favorable conditions. As an- Passion the gxx is madness, so is passion the opposite opposite of *'. A • , . reasoji. ot rcason. At one time, the passionate man is Herculean and inflexible ; at another, he is powerless and plastic. Confucius said, " I have not seen a firm and unbend- ing man." Some one replied, " There is Sin Ch'ang." " Ch'ang," said the Master, "is under the influence of the passions; how can he be pronounced firm and un- bending .? " And this leads me to speak of one of the modern tendencies — in my mind when I began this paragraph. It is, to unman men, — to disindividualize them. Morals therefore, as a result, it seems to me, less and less, are based upon personal One of the modern te?l- dencies. A Club of One 2^'j responsibility. Man, in the old-fashioned view, was held a man, — responsible per- sonally for his conduct. His ambition was rheamu- to breast the current, and to avoid being manlLia!" turned about, as the twig, by every little eddy. If he made the voyage successfully, there was heroism in him. Character was so much effort, and resistance, and endur- ance. Manliness was held to be accretive Manliness. and cumulative. Every trial was thought to give another resource, and every con- quest to add new power. Each achieve- ment gave increased confidence. Growth was obvious, and calculable, and applica- ble. To cut the cable, and launch away from conventional helps and restraints, was neconven. the common ambition. The individual felt fettered and shorn, if dependent. Before he consented to surrender himself and be subordinate, he must be tried by trusts, perils, and calamities. He aspired to stand an individual man, — responsible to all men Pirso>mire- for all the manhood that was in him. Now, the tendency is directly the other way, — to underestimate, if not totally to sink, the individual. The theory is rapidly becom- ing ascendant that the business of Govern- ment is to take care of the citizen. Man is transcended by the machine, and he is 238 A Club of One organiza- tions. Individual- ily. Societies 0/ disindividualizcd by societies of every sort. every sort. , ^ . , . . , The state educates him ; his social set gov- erns his conduct ; he admits his inability to take care of his earnings, and trusts the savings bank for extremities ; the insur- ance company provides for his family af- Orders and tcr his death ; — orders and organizations, ready-made, of every description, for every- thing, divine and human, to take charge of his soul, his body, and his estate, here and hereafter. Instead of boiling up individ- uals into the species, I would, with Jane Carlyle, draw a chalk circle round every in- dividuality, and preach to it to keep within that, and preserve and cultivate its identity at the expense of ever so much lost gilt of other people's "isms." It seems to me as it did to Emerson, that the Deity dressed each soul which he sends into nature in certain virtues and powers not communi- cable to other men, and sending it to per- form one more turn through the circle of beings, wrote "Not transferable," and " Good for this trip only," on these gar- ments of the soul. In the war of civiliza- tion upon man, the growth of the individ- ual is systematically discouraged. Soon he finds himself underestimating himself, in contrast with the omnipotence of organi- Not trans- ferable. A Club of One 2^9 zation and machinery ; then he surren- ders, and begins living for the day, to be warmed by the sun, and to be cared for as warmedhy an incompetent. His efforts cease to be continuous and persistent. They are not consciously continued from yesterday, to be extended throughout to-morrow and to- morrow, until his work is accomplished or scheme realized. " The height charms, the steps to it do not ; with the summit in view, we walk along the plain." Thor- Tkcrough- oughness is less and less in vogue. The and less m world is filling up with Dick Tintos, who begin to paint without any notion of draw- ing. Sir Thomas Lawrence's drawings were so perfect that it seemed a sin to add any color to them. The same may be said of Lessing's. Dick was for a time patron- Patronized for a time. ized, as the story goes, by one or two or those judicious persons who make a virtue of being singular, and of pitching their own opinions against those of the world in mat- ters of taste and criticism. But they soon tired of poor Tinto, and laid him down as a load, upon the same principle that a spoilt child throws away its plaything. Misery Misery took took him up, and accompanied him to a premature grave, to which he was carried from an obscure lodging, where he had 240 A Club of One been dunned by his landlady within doors, and watched by bailiffs without, until death came to his relief. Another So another President has been peace- inaug^ fully inaugurated (with less than the usual measure of nonsense), after all the excite- ments and threats of a long period of par- tisan violence. I feel an impulse to expa- tiate about it all a little ; but my eyes are a perpetual warning. I cannot help, how- An acute re- Bvcr, quoting au extremely acute remark "^'^ ' of Harriet Martineau's, in her Society in America, published as long ago as 1837: " Irish emigrants occasionally fight out the battle of the Boyne in the streets of Phila- delphia, but native Americans bestow their apprehensions and their wrath upon things future, and their philosophy upon things past. While they do this, it will not be in the power of any President to harm them much or long." Tiie dimen- Some nlcc calculations as to the dimen- sions of hell are to be found in the old books, and are interesting. Ribera, a cu- rious divine, calculated hell to be " a mate- rial and local fire in the centre of the earth, two hundred Italian miles in diam- A Club of One 241 eter." But Lessius, another divine, " would have this local hell far less, one Dutch mile in diameter, all filled with fire and brim- stone ; because, as he demonstrated, that space, cubically multiplied, would make a sphere able to hold eight hundred thou- Eight kun- sand millions of damned bodies (allowing fandmu- sach body six cubic feet), which would S^ abundantly suffice." ^°'^^'- What a thing is the human brain! Phys- Tkehtiman iologists tell us that a fragment of the gray substance of it, not larger than the head of a small pin, contains parts of many thousands of commingled globes and fibres. Of ganglion globules alone, according to the estimate of Meynert, there cannot be less than six hundred millions in the sixhuttdred , . . . ,^. millions 0/ convolutions of a human brain. 1 hey are giahdes. indeed in such infinite numbers that pos- sibly only a small portion of the globules provided are ever turned to account in even the most energetic brains. "What else than a natural and mighty palimpsest a mighty is the human brain.?" exclaims De Quin- ''""^"' cey. " Everlasting layers of ideas, images, feelings, fall upon it as softly as light. Each succession seems to bury all that went before. And yet, in reality, not one 242 A Club of. One is extinguished." Coleridge tells a story of a servant maid, who, in a fever, spoke Remarkable Greek, Hebrcw, and Latin ; Erasmus men- tsc osures. jj^j^g ^^ Italian who spoke German, though he had forgotten that language for .twenty years ; there is also a case recorded of a butcher's boy who, when insane, recited passages from the Ph^dre which he had heard only once. Every experience a man has, it is asserted, lies dormant within The human him : thc human soul is like a deep and som Like a ^ deep and sombre lake, of which light reveals only sombre lake. ' o j the surface ; beneath there lives a whole world of animals and plants, which a storm or an earthquake may suddenly bring to light before the astonished consciousness. A rush of a little alcoholized blood to The brain a thc braiu, thc fumcs of opium or hasheesh, delicate mw- , , . chine. may produce the most surprismg results in the mental machine. A few drops of bel- ladonna or of henbane give rise to fearful visions. A little pus accumulated in the brain, a lesion so slight that the microscope can scarce detect it, gives rise to mental disorganizations called delirium, insanity, monomania. Some years ago, for a change, I spent a few weeks at a country water- ing place. My condition, at the particular time I am to speak of, was peculiar, — so A Qub of One 24^ strange indeed that I believed myself on the point of a dangerous fever. I had not AttiuMint consulted "a physician, from a lack of con- ous/ever. fidence in the only one to be had nearer than the neighboring city. One night, as I lay in my bed, — the full moon pouring in its light with such splendor and strength as to make the smallest objects in the room visible, — I reflected in terror upon the risk of passing another hour without medical advice. My brain was so excited — the whole mental machinery was run- The mental . , machinery mng at such a tremendous . speed — that it ■nnnmg at a. I- n . • tremendous seemed in the very act of flymg to pieces, speed. The thought of sleep in such a, state was terrifying to me ; to remain awake was more terrible still. I employed every men- tal device I could think of to quiet myself, at the same time I did everything possible to preserve consciousness. In spite of me, while contemplating with such composure as I could the full round moon pouring its flood of light over me, my eyelids closed, and I thought I was present early at a At a great ^ * , meeting m great meeting, assembling in Union Square tfK^«^ to take into consideration the condition of the Republic, and to devise such means as might be thought best to aid her in her distressing extremity. The civil war was Every inter- est in peril. Gathering, gathering. A hundred thousand. Brooding anxiety. A list of vice-presi- dents. 244 A Club of One raging in all its fury. Whole divisions of troops had been cut up, and the tempests had scattered the fleets. All interests seemed to be in peril, and every citizen was soberly anxious. I had gone to the great meeting early, as I have said. The people were gathering rapidly. They came in carriages, in omnibuses, in horse-cars, on foot. Every vehicle appeared to be crowd- ed, and to leave each one of its passen- gers. Soon the people filled the square, and then the broad pavements around the square, and then the broad streets around the broad pavements, and then the broad pavements on the opposite sides of the broad streets, and then the door-steps all round, and windows, and house-tops — a hundred thousand. I looked under each hat rim and into each hat, and saw every face of every man and woman. I recog- nized the faces of many familiar acquaint- ances and the faces of many that I only occasionally saw. The same brooding anx- iety marked the multitude of visages. The vast assemblage was called to order by Mr. Elliot C. Cowdin, a well-known mer- chant. His little speech was neat and ap- propriate : I heard each word of it, and every intonation. A long list of vice-pres- A Club of One 24^ idents was then read — including more than a hundred well-known names — represent- a hundred ing intelligently all interests and all pro- >'cimeT^ fessions of the metropolis. The names most conspicuous for intelligence, and honor, and wealth, were all there, — not one, it seemed to me, was omitted. I lis- Listened at- tened to each one attentively as it was eMhoZ. ° read out. Now a conspicuous and hon- ored name in Wall street was pronounced. Now the name of a flour merchant in South street. Now a name well known in importing circles. Now a familiar name in " the swamp," — the leather region. Jour- nalism was represented in a few famous au interests „, , J J. . J . represented. names. The law, and medicine, and sci- ence, and architecture, and ship-building, and the pulpit, were all honorably repre- sented. Of course there was a generous sprinkling of politicians and office-holders. I thought, with what prodigious care the list had been selected, — showing a minute acquaintance with every interest of the great town and its best representatives. Then followed a dozen or more resolutions, Tkeremark- expressing the sense of the people in the tims. Nation's extremity. They were read with much intelligence by the secretary, in a rich full voice, and appeared to be dis- 246 A Club of One Expressing a thorough kruywledge of Cut and pol- ished^ Surpris- ingly com- penaious. A distin- guished ex- senator. His remark- ■ able power. tinctly heard by each one of the vast con- course. Every word seemed to have been considered and weighed, — expressing from first to last a thorough knowledge and comprehension of the situation, in all its complication and gravity. I thought how long the writer of the resolutions must have carried them in his brain and in his pocket, and how many enlightened persons he must have consulted in the course of their preparation. They were cut and pol- ished with the skill of a lapidary. The veins of thought were as conspicuously ap- parent as the lines in a precious stone. Their scope was broad, and their observa- tion and purpose surprisingly compendious. Patriotism, experience, and statesmanship uttered themselves throughout. The re- markable resolutions would have filled one of the broad columns of The Tribune. Then Daniel S. Dickinson was called on for a speech. Tjje distinguished ex-senator was at his best. I had never before seen his mind in such trim. He seemed able to say what he thought, and to express all shades and phases of meaning. There was logic that went to the marrow of whatever he touched, and sarcasm and wit that en- forced it. His remarkable power as an im- A Club of One 24^ passioned orator never before had struck me as it did then. His speech was a long one, and more than senatorial in breadth and in- Min-e than cisiveness. The old flag filled the heavens '"^'"''^' as Rodman Drake unfurled it there. The vast assemblage was electrified. Then Sal- mon P. Chase, the secretary of the treas- Thesecre- ury, was called out. Six feet in height, %'Zsiryf he appeared that day to be six feet six in his majestic proportions. He was indeed statuesque, as he stood for a time, in the midst of the vast human sea, seemingly un- impassioned, without uttering a word. His Mistreat great two-storied brain seemed teeming h-ain."^"' full of important things to be said. I had heard him speak many times, and had lis- tened to him many an hour in conversa- tion. Always circumspect in speech be- fore an assembly, he appeared on this occasion to be unusually and excessively unumaiiy deliberate. His words, every one, had prodigious weight, as the^ fell, one after ' another, from his lips, in solemn cadence. The knowledge and experience of many years were close behind every sentence. The scholar, the jurist, the statesman, — The scholar, all were embodied in the orator. His """"' thought was as clear as the mountain air, his passion was incandescent. Once or 248 A Club of One twice he unconsciously put back his head and gazed, — as I have seen a lion look off apparently thousands of miles into his Thesagar native jungle, — the sagacious statesman ^lous states- jo >«««• seeming to see, through the smoke of bat- tle and turn of events, the upshot of the mighty struggle. His speech, also, was a long one, — longer by half than any I had ever before heard him deliver. At the con- The great cluslon of it the great audience dissolved, audience dis- -. -^ . -,^^ , solved. and I opened my eyes. I had not changed position in the slightest. The moon was riding the sky through the top of the same pane exactly as when I had seen it last, — filling it full with its overflowing glory. Theremarh. Thc wholc tMug, xo. reality, would have able mental . ^ _ _ , operation, occupicd tour or fivc hours, and, reported, would have filled many columns of the daily journal. It is not possible that I could have been unconscious for more than a minute or two. I got up in terror, shut Sends for a down the wiudows, and sent off for a heroic physician. , , physician. What wonder that I express amazement at the human soul, and lose myself trying to conceive the perpetual growth and expansion of the immortal substance, when relieved and emancipated A hopeful from all earthly entanglements, limita- tfiterroga- . ... tioji. tions and miseries ? y4 Club of One 249 My wife — But I have scrupulously re- frained from gossiping about her in these hours of my idleness. She herself is too a trihde to wise to keep any sort of personal record. """-'*■ As was said of the Duchess de Praslin's murder, "What could a poor fellow do with a wife who kept a journal but murder her.?" INDEX OF PERSONS REFERRED TO About, S3- Adams, Dr., i88. Addison (The Spectator), 170. jEschylus, 148, 167. jEsop, 148. Alexander, 96, 216. Alger, 171. Anthon, 165. Antoninus, Marcus, 148, 170. Arbuthnot, 140. Aristotle, 169. Ashbrook, Lord, 95. Atterbury, 159. Austen, Jane, 150, 153, 167, Bacon, 27, 165. Ballantyne, Serjeant, 91, 101. Balzac, 74, 169. Barbauld, Mrs., 152. Barnes, 75. Barr^re, 119. Barrow, 149, 153. Bayle, 154. Beaconsfield (Disraeli), 30. Beattie, Dr., 97. Beauclerk, 228. Beckford (Vathek), 169. Bentham, 216. Bentley, 151. B^ranger, 152. Blot, Madame de, 97, 98. Boerhaave, 73. Bossuet, 149, 160. Boswell, 97, 168, 228. Bourdaloue, 149. Brackenridge, 215. Bronte, Charlotte, 130, 167, 204. Brougham, Lord, 98. Brown, John, 170. Browne, Sir Thomas, 83, 149, 153, 168. Bryant, 166. Bulwer, 170. Buncle, John (Amory, Thomas), 81. Bunyan, 153, 168. Burke, 217. Burleigh, Lord, 59, Burns, 27, 64, 90, 140} 1411 142, 150, 167. Burton, 149, 168. Butler, 167. Byron, 78, 86, 91, 142. Byron, Lady, 77. Caesar, 91, 119. Calcraft, 91. Campbell, 73. Campbell, Dr., 57, Carlyle, 63, 66, 105, iig, 120, 150, 166, 186. Carlyle, Jane, 238. Carlyle, John, 31. Carnot, 119. Cary, 30. Casaubon, 57. Castlereagh, Lord, 200, Cervantes (Don Quixote), 70. Chalmers, 149. Charles (Charlemagne), 46. Charles II., 83. Chase, Salmon P., 247. Chillingworth, 183. Cibber, Colley, 97. Cicero, 64, 148, 160, 168. Cleopatra, 139. Coleridge, 29, 75, 88, 134, 150, 170, 173, 192, 242. Collins, Wilkie, 179. Columbus, 73. Confucuis, 108, 169, 236. Conti, Prince of, 97, 98. Cooper, 57, 169, 171. Cooper, Sir Astley, 129. Cottenham, Lord, 94. Cowdin, Elliot C. , 244. Cowper, 140. Crabbe, 74. Curtis, 166. Dana, 168. 2^2 Index of Persons referred to Dante, 30, 31, 38, 44, 144, 149, 153, 154, 165, 200. Darius, 225, Darwin, 168, 177, 184. De Foe (Robinson Crusoe), 168. De Quincey, 150, 153, 167, 187, 241. Dew, Prof., 18S. Dickens, 150, 168, 197, 205. Dickinson, Daniel S-, 246. Diderot, 187. Disraeli, Isaac, 149, 168. Dodsley, 75. Donue, 153. Dor^, 30, 32, 36, 73. Drake, Rodman, 247. Dry den, 89. Dumont, 212. Edgeworth, Richard Lovell, 90. Edwards, Jonathan, 193. Eldon, 113, 156. Eliot, George, 201. Elizabeth, Queen, 85. Emerson, 36, 55, 107, 150, 166, 238. Epictetus, 148, 167. Erasmus, 170, 177, 242. Erskine, 87, 88, 152, 217. Esquirol, 24. Euripides, 153. Evelyn, 170. Fabius, 108. Farr, Dr., 81. F^nelon, 154, 168. Fielding, 168. Fields, t68, 198. Flamelin, Madame, 230. Fontenelle, 54. Foote, 89. Foster, 136, 137, 139, 149, 167. Fox, 88. Fox, George, 172. Franklin, 59, 87. Fraser, 93. Frederick the Great, 180. Froude, 60, 119, 169. Fuller, Margaret, 141. Fuller, Thomas, 169. Fuseli^ 44. Galen, 163. Garrow, 87. Gay, 140. Genlis, Madame de, 97, 126, 181. George II., 93. George III., 229. George IV., 54. Gibbon, 162. Gibbon, Lieut., 182. Godwin, 167. Goethe, 26, 103, 153, is8» 168, 197, 236. Goldsmith, 37, 66, 89, 150, 166, 188. Grammont, 228. Gray, 153. Grey, Countess, 75. Greeley, 94, 95. Hahnemann, 15. Hall, Robert, 149, 193. Haller, 118. Hamilton, Sir William, 186. Hannibal, 95, 96. Harvey, 118. Hawthorne, iii, 134, 135, 147, 150, 166, 197, 20I. Hayward, 31. Hazlitt, 150, iss, 169. Heine, 36. Heister, 83. Henriot, 163. Henry IV., 214. Henry, Patrick, 47. Heraclitus, 225, 226. Herbert, George, 188. Herodotus, 136. Hillard, 168. Hitchcock, Dr. , 210. Hippocrates, 22. Hobhouse, 218. Holmes, 10, 41, 91, 150, 16G, 193. Homer, 31, 148, 153, 165. Hood, 122. Holbein, 168. Houghton, H, O., 166. Hume, 187. Hunt, 37, 55, 96, 102, 150, 152, 200, 215, 218, 232, 233. Ibrahim, 192. Ingres, 96. Irvmg, 30, 167, 171. Jeffrey, 93. Jekyll, 70, Jerrold, 65, 153, 170, 214. Johnson, 43, 70, 97, 98, 150, 168, 169. Joubert, 170. Kant, 187. Keats, 37, 75, 150. Kemble, Fanny, 54, Kempis, Thomas ^, 152, 168. Kinglake, 170. La Bruyfere, 170. La Rochefoucauld, 167, 228. Index of Persons referred to 253 Lamb, 27, 70, 75, 88, 123, 134, 167. Lamar tine, 144. Landor, 100, 168. Landseer, 176. Lawrence, 54, 147, 239. Lay, Benjamin, 59. Lee, Jack, 144, 145. Le Sage (Gil Bias), 167. L'Estrange, 235. Lessing, 239. Lessius, 241. Lever (Charles O'Malley), 168. Lewis, 169. Lind, Jenny, 175, Livius, Titus, 155. Locke, 186, 216. Louis XIV., 93. Lover, 170. Lowell, 150. Lucian, 71, 72. Lucretius, 225. Luther, 169. Macaulay, 67, 70, 89, 150, 153, i68, 172, •73- Macdonald, 65. Machiavelli, 170. Mahomet, 34. Malthus, 187. Mandeville, 171. Mansfield, Lord, 217. Manzoni, 171. Markham, Miss, 93. Marlborough, Duchess of, 97. Martineau, Harriet, 240. Massillon, 149. Mathews, 127. Metastasio, m. Meynert, 24 t. Mifflin, George H., 166. Mill, 167, 203. Milton, 148, 153, 165- Mirabeau, 212. Mitchell (Reveries of a Bachelor), 168. Molifere, 234. Montaigne, 54^ 116, 130, 135, 149, 166. Montagu, Basil, 90. Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley, 168. Montesquieu, 58, 86, 130, 170. Montgaillard, 119. Moore, 57, 139. More, Hannah, 199, More^ Sir Thomas, 170, 216. Moms, Gouvemeur, 147. Motley, 230. IVrountjoy, Lord, 147. Moutron, de, 230. Muhlenberg, Dr., 188. Murray, 31, 93. Napoleon, 153. Nasmyth, go. Nelson, 170. Northcote, 169. Northumberland, Duke of, 117. O'Connell, 196. Ossian, 153. Ovid, 153. Parry, 218. Parton, 171. Pascal, 40, 149, 167. Patrick, Bishop, 79. Peterborough, 100. Petrarch, 144. Philip IL, 230. Pindar, 232, 233. Pitt, 88. Plato, 78, 148, 150, 155, 166. Pleasonton, 23. Plutarch, 170. Pope, 31, 69, 8g, 140, 154, 158. Praslin, Duchess de, 249. Pyrrhus, 96. Queensbury, Duchess of, 53. Queensbury, Duke of, 15. Rabelais, 11, 149, 169, 226. Rachel, Mile., 96. Ribera, 240. Ricardo, 187. Richelieu, 144. Richter, Jean Paul, 65, 76, 142, 159, 201, Robespierre, 63, 119. Robinson, 128, 167. Rogers, 44. Roland, Madame, 129, 143. Rbsch, 24. Ryan, Father, 76. Saadi, 127. Saint Pierre (Paul and Virginia), 171. Sandwich, Lord, 183. Savage, 169. Schiller, 149, 153. Scipio, 95, 96. Scott, 91, 154, 170. Seeley (Ecce Homo), 169. Selden, 108, 169. Seneca, 166. S^vign^, Madame de, 168. Shakespeare, 27, 149, 153. Shelley, 150. 254 Index . of Persons referred to SheridaTi, 142. Sheridan, Tom, 100. Smith, Adam, 187, 188. Smith, JameSj 157. Smith, Sydney, 75, go, 93, 167, ig6. Smollett (Humphry Clinker), 169. Snooke, Miss Maria, 137. Sobieski, 192. Socrates, 148, 171. South, 149 153. Southey, 78, 79, 113, 170, 219. Souvestre, 149, 159, 167. Spence, 75, 154, 169, igi. Spenser, 153. Spinoza, 153. Stael, Madame de, 230. Stair, Lord, 92. Steele, 192, 226. Sterne, 71, 158, 171. Stewart, Dugald, 186. Stowe, Mrs. (Uncle Tom's Cabin), 151, 167. Suetonius, 148. Sugden, 94. Sully, 214. Swift, 13, 121, 140^ 149, 166, 171, 179, 192, 226. Taine, 102. Talfourd, 167. Talleyrand, 104, 229. Tasso, 144, 170. Taylor, 130, 153. Thackeray, 64, 67, 76, go, 145, 150, 153, 169. Thomas, General, 107. , Thorns, 89. ' Thoreau, 168. Thurlow, 2zg. Ticknor, 168. Titian, 123. Tocqueville, 158. Trollope, 57. Valerius, 108. Venable, William H., 78. Virgil, 31, 46, [53, 165. Voltaire, 58, 67, g?, 100, 180, 181, 227. Wallace, 105. Waller, 50. Walpole, 53. Walton, 168. Warburton, 191. Washington, 118, 231. Webster, Daniel, 187. Webster, Noah, 165. Wesley, 140, 153, 170. Whately, 187. White, 168. Wilberforce, Canon, 214. William the Silent, 231. Williams, Giliy, 63. Wilson, 167. Woolman, 171, 172. Wordsworth, 128, 150. Wycherley, 48, 4q, 50, Wycherley, Mrs., 49, 50. Xenophon, 171. Zenobia, 139. Zoroaster, 10. Zschokke, 68.