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Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 by Various

V >> Various >> Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862




Persons sometimes speak lightly and hastily of reverses sustained by
others as mere trifles, compared with loss of friends. I hold that these
persons are wrong, and believe that to many, and those not particularly
selfish and narrow-minded people either, loss of fortune may prove a
greater and more lasting sorrow than loss of dear friends; nay, that a
great reverse, such as a plunge from prosperity into utter poverty, (and
many such instances can be cited,) is perhaps the heaviest trial that
can be imposed on man. Let any one call up the instances he has known of
the tenderest ties being severed, and except in those rare cases we
sometimes meet with of persons pining away and following the beloved
object to the grave, do we not see the overwhelming grief gradually
subsiding into a gentler sorrow, and, as was intended by a merciful
providence, other objects closing in, and though not entirely filling up
the void, still furnishing other sources of happiness? This happens with
the best and tenderest beings on earth. The departed one is not
forgotten, nor have the survivors ceased to mourn him; but their
feelings now cling more affectionately than before to the remaining
members of the circle. This is not so in the case of a reverse such as I
have imagined, and many of us have seen. Where, as in the failure of
some great bank or 'Life and Trust Company,' reckoned perfectly
impregnable, the fortune of delicate ladies, always accustomed to
luxury, has been swept away; where there are no relatives able or
willing to render much assistance, and daughters have to seek employment
that will give themselves and an aged mother a bare competence, with all
my disposition to bear things bravely and philosophically, I contend
that human nature can hardly be visited with a heavier trial. For men,
it is comparatively easy; but there are instances, in every large city,
of ladies, once wealthy, now reduced to a sort of genteel beggary, that
a man would shrink from, but that women can not very well avoid. Fancy
the bitterness of such a life; the constant memory of happier days
contrasted with the present condition, which has no prospect of
improvement; the keenness of present sorrow rendered more acute by
education and refinement; the necessity not merely of economy, for most
of us can bear a large portion of this pretty cheerfully; but the
difficulty, with close economy, of supplying the decent comforts of
life, and tell me, as some who have never been visited by any trial of
this kind would tell me, if it is selfish and sordid to compare this
lasting sorrow with that great ordinance of death and separation which
all must share alike? Alas! these are objects not generally reached by
charitable societies; but not less deserving, and subjected to trials no
less hard than those whose lot has always been one of poverty.

Having admitted that, under some circumstances, the loss of property may
occasion grief so deep and lasting as to make it worthy of comparison
even with loss of dear friends, I would say, on the other hand, that
instances often occur where no comparison can be made between the two
evils. We hear sometimes of dreadful calamities at sea, where entire
families are swept away; where, as on the 'Austria,' the only
alternative is the _mode_ of death, whether it shall be on the burning
ship or beneath the cold, dark billow. What experience can be more
awful, in the life of any man, than that which compelled this father to
throw child after child into the sea, not with any hope of rescue, but
merely to prolong for a few moments a life that could no longer be
endured on the burning deck? Different, but scarcely less painful, the
burial of hope in a father's breast, as in the death of the sons of
Hallam. Industry may repair the wrecks of fortune; but the hopes and
affections that have centered here must be laid aside forever.

Are there many of us, after all, who would care for a career of unbroken
prosperity? Men of talent and worth have been crushed and hurried to
their graves by the iron hand of poverty; but for one such, there have
probably been ten who have passed through life with energies and talents
never fully called forth; because easy circumstances have never demanded
any great exertion from them. This leaves out a class larger probably
in our country than in any other, of children of fortune, who have
plunged headlong into ruin, finding an early and dishonored death, who,
had they been compelled to work, would at least have acquitted
themselves decently in life. Some of the most dreadful death-scenes on
record are those of men who have had few earthly trials to bear, men of
wealth, who have wrought their own ruin, and half of whose lives have
been passed in efforts to work the ruin of the young and innocent of the
other sex. If Chatterton and Otway are sad instances of genius subdued
and crushed by adversity, Beckford and many others show where the too
lavish gifts of fortune have perverted talent and rendered its possessor
far worse than a merely useless member of society.

The world-wide Burns Celebration probably caused many humble men to
think of the number of great minds who have been compelled to undergo
this ordeal of poverty. How perfectly, in some instances, does the man's
soul and intellect seem to have been separated from _the man himself_.
It does seem a marvel that seventy years ago _this_ man should have been
in want and harassed by fears for the family he was to leave behind him,
when now so many hundred thousand men seem ready to worship him. How
many envy fame! and how proud men are, for generations afterward, who
can trace back their descent to one who, while on earth, may have
suffered all the annoyances and discomforts of penury! The poet seemed
to know that he would be more highly esteemed after he had left the
world than while he was in it; but did this thought really afford him
much consolation, or would he have been willing, if possible, to
sacrifice a more prosperous present for a great posthumous fame? How
many great men have languished long years in dungeons, as some languish
in them even now. How many have borne years of bodily infirmity. How
many have died just as they seemed about to realize the fruit of years
of preparation and exertion. These reflections tend to make us contented
with a comparatively humble lot, as all great trials tend to lessen our
undue attachment to life.

Finally, it occurs to me that very few men have lost fortunes, without
spending too much time in unavailing regrets that they should have lost
them just in the manner they did. If they had only avoided this or that
particular investment, all would have been well. This is nonsense.
Undoubtedly, a great deal of money is lost very foolishly, but though no
fatalist, I do not believe that all the care and prudence in the world
will materially alter the great Scriptural law, that the riches of this
world will often take wings to themselves and flee away. There is far
too much recklessness, far too much of what is called in business
circles 'expansion;' but the time will never come, in our country, when
generation after generation, in one family, will keep on in the path of
success. Great fortunes will still melt away, and the shrewdest maxims
of those who built them up will fail sometimes. Nothing can be
considered certain in regard to worldly goods, beyond the fact that
industry, good principles, and average capacity will always, in the long
run, secure a competence; but wealth will still be the prize that only a
few need expect to draw.

I have endeavored to call up a few of the reflections that may console a
man under adversity, remembering that drooping fortunes may revive, that
many of the noblest men have suffered the same privations, and
remembering how much lighter this form of affliction generally is than
some others that Providence often sees fit to lay upon us. Trite as it
is, I can not help echoing the remark, how vastly the sum of human
happiness would be increased, if men could only learn to prize more
highly the blessings they have. Those of us who are in moderate
circumstances find it so much easier to envy our rich neighbors than to
think with gratitude of our happy lot, contrasted with the many thousand
of our needier brethren. We enjoy so many blessings, that we become
unmindful of them. We rarely think at all about our health, until a few
days' sickness reminds us of the boon we have been enjoying so
unconsciously. In the darkest days of the great crisis, accounts reached
us every week from India, telling us that refined and delicately-reared
English men and women were being brutally slaughtered or exposed to the
loathsome horrors of a lingering siege. What a paradise the humblest
cottage at home would have seemed to these poor creatures, though some
of them had been accustomed to 'stately homes.'

How beautifully this sentiment of gratitude for the common blessings of
life has been expressed by Emile Souvestre, one of the purest and
noblest writers of our time, and one whose early history presents an
instance of great obstacles and trials nobly met and overcome!

'If a little dry sand be all that is left us, may we not still make it
blossom with the small joys we now trample under foot. Ah! if it be the
will of God, let my labor be still more hard, my home less comfortable,
my table more frugal; let me even assume a workman's blouse, and I can
bear it all willingly and cheerfully, provided I can see the loved faces
around me happy, provided I can feast upon their smiles and strengthen
myself with their joy. O holy contentment with poverty! it is thy
presence I invoke. Grant me the cheerful gayety of my wife, the free,
unrestrained laughter of my children, and take in exchange, if
necessary, all that is yet left me.'

* * * * *

THE MOLLY O'MOLLY PAPERS.




NO. III.


When Dogberry brought Conrade before Leonato, the only offense he seems
to have had a clear idea of, was the one against himself: 'Moreover,
sir, this plaintiff here, the offender, did call me ass. I beseech you,
let it be remembered in his punishment.' Shakspeare has, by this 'one
touch of nature,' made Dogberry kin to the whole world. It would be the
most terrible of punishments to run the gauntlet of a company, every one
of which you had called an ass; whatever may have been the original
offense, this would be the one most remembered in your punishment, I
don't think it would be possible to believe any thing good of one who
had given you this appellation; on the contrary, the reputed long ears
would be worse than the famous 'diabolical trumpet' for collecting and
distorting the merest whispers of evil against him who planted them, or
discovered them peeping through the assumed lion's skin. Apollo's music
probably sounded no sweeter to Midas after he received his 'wonderful
ear.'

But my object in introducing Dogberry was not to give a dissertation on
this greatest of insults, but to illustrate our selfishness. Our
patience will bear great _crimes_ against others, but how it gives way
under the slightest _insult_ to ourselves. Now I am not going to
denounce selfishness; I'd as soon think of denouncing gravitation. There
is, in the best of us, an under-current of selfishness; indeed,
selfishness and unselfishness are convertible terms; this is a higher
kind of that, as the upper-current of the ocean is but the under-current
risen to the surface.

Saint James says: 'The love of money is the root of all evil.' I am not
exactly prepared to agree with him; it is a great branch, almost the
trunk; but I think selfishness is the root. You know Hahnemann thought
all diseases but a modification of one disease--_psora_. However it may
be with his theory, the one moral disease is not an itching palm. This
is but a modification of selfishness, which is not merely cutaneous.

But the form it is supposed to take in the system of Yankees, is the
above-named plebeian form. The supposition may be correct. Don't we most
feel our national troubles, the shock of the great national earthquake,
when it causes an upheaval from the depths of the pocket? If Uncle Sam's
sentiments are, as they are supposed to be, only a concentration of
those of the majority, isn't his lamentation over his run-away South,
who has changed her name without his consent, that of Shylock: 'My
daughter! Oh! my ducats!'? Though not exactly connected with this branch
of selfishness, I may as well, while speaking of our national
difficulties, mention what struck me very forcibly: It is said, that on
the eminence from which the spectators of the Bull Run battle so
precipitately fled, were found sandwiches and bottles of wine; and that
these refreshments actually lined the road to Washington. From this
might be inferred that 'to-day's dinner' not only 'subtends a larger
visual angle than _yesterday's_ revolution,' but that it also subtends a
larger angle than _to-day's_ revolution. If one could ever forget one's
own personal gratifications and comforts, it would be, I should think,
in overlooking a nation's battle-field--_our_ nation's battle-field. But
it is not for a humble lay member, whose business it is to practice
rather than preach, to criticise. Are not the honorable members
representatives of the people; and when they are cheered and refreshed,
are not the 'dear people' through them cheered and refreshed? Besides,
they may have so reluctantly dropped the wine and sandwiches because
they were loth to leave them to 'give aid and comfort to the enemy.'
There are always envious people to rail at those above them; pawns on
the world's chess-board, they pride themselves on their own
straightforward course; but let them push their way to the highest row,
how soon do they exchange this course for the 'crooked policy of the
knight,' or jump over principles with queen, castle, or bishop! Woe to
the poor pawn in their way.

How I have skipped! what connection can there be between members of
Congress and crooked policy, or jumping over principles? yet there must
have been a train of association that led me off the track; doubtless it
was purely arbitrary. Well, we'll let it go; poor pawn as I am, I have
but stepped aside to nab an idea.

But to return to the Yankee. The form which selfishness takes in his
system is not that of the most intensified exclusiveness. You know the
story of Rosicrucius' sepulcher, with its ever-burning lamp, guarded by
an armor-encased, truncheon-armed statue, which statue, on the entrance
of a man who accidentally discovered the sepulcher, arose, and at his
advance, raised its truncheon and shivered the lamp to atoms, leaving
the intruder in darkness. On examination, under the floor springs were
found, connecting with others within the statue. Rosicrucius wished thus
to inform the world that he had reinvented the ever-burning lamp of the
ancients, but meant that the world shouldn't profit by the information.
Had a Yankee reinvented those lamps, he would have got out a patent, and
some brother Yankee would have improved upon it, and invented one
warranted to burn 'forever _and a day_.' They would probably have thus
raked together a great deal of the 'filthy lucre;' _possibly_ this would
have been their main object; but the world would have been benefited by
them. All selfishness, to be sure, but exclusive selfishness benefits
the world.

[Speaking of _filthy_ lucre, I begin to see why those who have lost it
all are said to be '_cleaned_ out.' But this is only _par parenthese_.]

But exclusiveness is not peculiar to the Rosicrucians; there is too much
of it in even the religious sects of this enlightened age; it is too
much, 'Lord, bless me and my sect;' 'Lord, bless us, and no more.'
There are self-constituted mountain-tops that would extract all the
mercy and grace with which the winds come freighted from the great ocean
of Love, so that they would pass over beyond them hot, dry winds of
wrath. But I am glad that this is impossible; that in the moral world
there are no Andes, no rainless regions.

I fear that I have not stuck very closely to the text furnished me by
thick-headed, thick-tongued Dogberry.

Allow me to compress into closing sentences, a few general remarks....
Those lakes that have no outlet, grow salt and bitter; we all know the
ennui and bitterness of those souls that receive many blessings, sending
forth none; better drain your soul out for others, than have it become a
_Dead Sea_.... Black, that absorbs all rays, reflecting none, is an
anomaly in nature; it is true, but one earthly character has reflected
all the rays of goodness, absorbing none, making the common light 'rich,
like a lily in bloom;' yet every man can reflect at least one ray to
gladden the earth.... It is not necessary, even in the cold atmosphere
of this world, to become contractedly selfish; cold expands noble
natures as it does water.... Lastly ...

Yours, MOLLY O'MOLLY.




NO. IV.


The old trout knows enough to keep off the fisherman's hook; the
squirrel never cracks an empty nut; the crow soon learns the
harmlessness of the scarecrow. But man, though he may have twenty times
wriggled off the hook, the patient angler catches him at last. He always
cracks the empty shell, then cries: 'Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.'
This cry he might be spared would he learn a lesson from the squirrel,
who weighs his nuts and throws away the light, hollow shell.... And
there are scarescrows, the harmlessness of which the human biped learns
not in a a lifetime. How long is it since that horned, cloven-footed
monster whom the monks made of Pan _theos_ and called him _Devil_, was
an object of fear? How 'the real, genuine, no mistake' (savin' his
presence) must have laughed at his own effigy! Then there is Grim Death,
too, a creation of the Dark Ages, for in no age of light could this
horror have been ever conceived. Unlike the _other_, against him no
exorcism avails.... As if the soul about to be launched on the dim sea
Eternity, after all lights and forms of the loved shore have become
indistinct, must be cut loose from her moorings by this phantom. The
idea that 'Death comes to set us free,' would hardly make us 'meet him
cheerily, as our true friend,' were this his real shape. But were I
disposed to enumerate our scarecrows, the list would be incomplete; as
there are doubtless many that I have not the shrewdness to recognize as
such.

The only humbugs are not those that work on our fears. There are humbugs
that work on our hopes. These have been likened to bubbles that dance on
the wave, burst, and are no more. They are too often like bomb-shells,
that in exploding scatter ruin on all around. They have also been named
air-castles, _chateaux en Espagne_, 'baseless fabrics of a vision.' The
baseless fabric of a vision is built of 'airy nothingness;' but men
found on a wish, structures that tower to heaven, put real, solid
material into them, and when they fall, as fall they must--I'll not
attempt to give an idea of the utter desolation they leave, of the
_waste place_ they make of the heart, lest you should think I have thus
humbugged myself; for _self-humbug_ it certainly is; and this is the
most intensely _human_. Not a fish, or reptile, bird, or beast; not a
thing crawling, swimming, flying, or walking, but the human creature,
humbugs himself. 'Man was made to mourn,' I would change into, Man was
made to be humbugged. It is better to be greatly gullible, than a
'cunning dog,' for gulled we will be. It is better to be caught at once,
than to have our gills torn by wriggling off the hook the twenty times,
to be caught at last. It is better to walk straight into the net than to
fatigue ourselves by coming to it in a roundabout way. A Nova-Scotian
once rallied a Down-Easter on the famous wooden hams. 'Yaas,' was the
reply, 'and they say that one of you actilly _ate_ one and didn't know
the difference.' Well, it is better to swallow our humbugs, as the
Nova-Scotian did the Connecticut-cured ham, without detecting any thing
peculiar in their flavor, than it is to find our mistake at the first
cut or _saw_. By the way, saltpeter is so needed for other purposes,
that probably the _Virginia cured_ will not now have as fine a flavor as
formerly.

But, _in the way_: You dissent from some of these remarks? You've cut
your eye-teeth, have you? Possibly you forget that trip in the cars,
when you 'cutely passed by the swell in flashy waistcoat and galvanized
jewelry, and took a seat by a 'plain blunt man' in snuff-color; and
after he had left the cars at the first station, and the conductor came
to you and demanded, 'Your ticket, sir!' you probably forgot how in
fumbling for it in your pocket, you found it, but _not_ your
porte-monnaie. You perhaps set down in your mental memorandum, under the
head of Appearances, not to be deceived by plain bluntness and
snuff-color. There you were wrong; your boasted reason is of no avail in
detecting humbugs; there is no such thing as classifying them. Then,
too, we are in greater danger of being humbugged by another class of
appearances.

In material things we are compelled to acknowledge that things the most
reliable are the most unpretending. The star, by which the mariner has
steered for ages, is not a 'bright particular star;' the needle of his
compass is shaped from one of the baser metals, (though in a figurative
sense gold is highly magnetic.) The inner bears such a relation to the
outer, that the inner senses are named from the outer; we are slow to
perceive that also all objects of the outer senses, are but types of
those of the inner. You see how I have been obliged to borrow from the
outer vocabulary. I give this idea, in a nebular state, trusting that
you will consolidate it. Were we, in a figurative sense, to choose a
guiding-star, it would be a comet, we are so taken with flash and show.
A great truth, though angels heralded its birth, and a star were drawn
from its orbit to stand over its cradle, if that cradle were a manger,
we would reject it; if it assumed not the 'pomp and circumstance' of
royalty, though it worked miracles, we would cry, _Away with it_.
Eighteen hundred years have not completely transformed or transmuted the
world; we are yet ready to reject the true, and be humbugged by the
false. More than eighteen hundred and sixty-two years may yet elapse
before the bells that 'ring out the old and ring in the new,' will 'ring
out the false and ring in the true.' Then farewell humbug.

Yes, it is altogether probable that long before humbug is no more, you
and I will--I was about to say be in the narrow house, but prefer an
expression of Carlyle's--we will have 'vanished into infinite space.' I
prefer this for the same reason that one of Hood's characters was
thankful that 'Heaven was boundless.' She it was whom the physician
pronounced 'dying by inches.' 'Only think,' exclaimed the _consternated_
husband, 'how long she will be dying!' I suppose to the poor man Grim
Death appeared to hold in his skeleton fingers, instead of an
hour-glass, a twenty-year glass.

That the sands of his glass may, for you, married or single, neither run
too fast nor too slow, is sincerely the wish of

Your well-wisher,

MOLLY O'MOLLY.

* * * * *

ALL TOGETHER.


Old friends and dear! it were ungentle rhyme,
If I should question of your true hearts, whether
Ye have forgotten that far, pleasant time,
The good old time when we were all together.

Our limbs were lusty and our souls sublime;
We never heeded cold and winter weather,
Nor sun nor travel, in that cheery time,
The brave old time when we were all together.

Pleasant it was to tread the mountain thyme;
Sweet was the pure and piny mountain ether,
And pleasant all; but this was in the time,
The good old time when we were all together.

Since then I've strayed through many a fitful clime,
(Tossed on the wind of fortune like a feather,)
And chanced with rare good fellows in my time;
But ne'er the time that we have known together:

But none like those brave hearts, (for now I climb
Gray hills alone, or thread the lonely heather,)
That walked beside me in the ancient time,
The good old time when we were all together.

Long since, we parted in our careless prime,
Like summer birds no June shall hasten hither;
No more to meet as in that merry time,
The sweet spring-time that shone on all together.

Some to the fevered city's toil and grime,
And some o'er distant seas, and some--ah! whither?
Nay, we shall never meet as in the time,
The dear old time when we were all together.

And some--above their heads, in wind and rime,
Year after year, the grasses wave and wither;
Ay, we shall meet!--'tis but a little time,
And all shall lie with folded hands together.

And if, beyond the sphere of doubt and crime,
Lie purer lands--ah! let our steps be thither;
That, done with earthly change and earthly time,
In God's good time we may be all together.

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