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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. ' 
 
 Shelf ......"XS^'S" 
 
 UNITED STATES OF AJISJ3ICA. 
 
USTZEW" BOOKS. 
 
 Spring of 1882. 
 
 PAUL D RE I FUSS: His Holiday Abroad. By 
 John W. Allen, Jr. Cloth, i2mo. $1.00. 
 
 The entertaining record of the observations and reflections of an old 
 European traveller. 
 
 GEMS OF THE ORIENT. Gathered and ar- 
 ranged by Chas. D. B. Mills. i2mo, cloth, 
 bevelled, full gilt. $1.50. 
 
 A " Golden Treasury " of the wit and wisdom of the East. 
 
 BIRD-BOLTS : Shots on the Wing. By Francis 
 Tiffany. i8mo, cloth. 75 cts. 
 
 A volume of short, crisp essays, bright, entertaining, and suggestive. 
 
 WRESTLING AND WAITING. Sermons. By 
 John F. W. Ware. Cloth, i2mo, with portrait. 
 
 $[.50. 
 
 BELIEFS ABOUT MAN. By M. J. Savage- 
 i2mo, cloth. $1.00. 
 
 A companion volume to Mr. Savage's Belief in God. 
 
 THE GOSPEL OF LAW. A Series of Dis- 
 courses on Fundamental Church Doctrines. By 
 S.J.Stewart. i2mo, cloth. $1.25. 
 
 GEO. H. ELLIS, Publisher, 
 141 Franklin Street, Boston, Mass. 
 
Bird-Bolts: 
 
 SHOTS ON THE WING. 
 
 FRANCIS TIFFANY. 
 
 "To be generous, guiltless, and of a free disposition, is to take 
 those things for bird-bolts that you deem cannon-bullets." 
 
 Twelfth Night, i., 5. 
 
 I ii I 
 
 97 
 
 BOSTON: 
 
 George H. Ellis, 141 Franklin Street. 
 
 1882. 
 

 Copyright, 
 
 1882', 
 
 By GEORGE H. ELLIS 
 
TO 
 
 EDWIN B. HASKELL, 
 
 EDITOR, BOSTON HERALD. 
 
 Fully aware that it is not regarded a judicious compli- 
 hient to name a child after anybody till the little one 
 shall have survived the first critical attacks that menace 
 the precarious life of infancy, I nevertheless venture to fly 
 in the face of custom to the extent of inscribing this dimin- 
 utive bantling of a book to you who first kindly encour- 
 aged me to contribute to the Sunday Herald a number 
 of pieces that make part of its table of contents. 
 
 In sincere friendship, 
 
 FRANCIS TIFFANY. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 I. The Philosophy of the Kitten . . 5 
 
 II. The Chinese Question 10 
 
 III. The Educated Fleas 16 
 
 IT. Routing Inertia 23 
 
 V. How Early Impressions expand . . 28 
 
 VI. Hints on Real Estate 34 
 
 VII. Nil Admirari 38 
 
 VIII. Our Lady of the Shears .... 43 
 
 IX. Topsy-Turvy Notions of Causation 48 
 
 X. Were our Ancestors Fools ? . . . 54 
 
 XI. HOW TO KINDLE FlRES 61 
 
 XII. Drei-Maenner Wein ...... 68 
 
 XIII. Whipping the Gods ....... 74 
 
 XIV. The New Gospel of Color .... 77 
 XT. Owning and Being Owned .... 82 
 
 XVI. "The Maxim of War" 87 
 
 XVII. Perfume and Aroma 93 
 
 XVIII. Long Strides and Short 97 
 
 XIX. Vicious Virtues 102 
 
4 CONTENTS. 
 
 XX. The Alarming Increase of Poo- 
 dles 106 
 
 XXI. The Mind behind the Eye . . . Ill 
 XXII. Fathers after the Flesh and 
 
 Fathers after the Spirit . . 118 
 
 XXIII. Overcharging the Gun .... 123 
 
 XXIV. The True School of Style ... 127 
 XXV. Epistles of Commendation . . . 134 
 
 XXVI. Making Something Beautiful . . 140 
 
 XXVII. Thanksgiving Day 144 
 
 XXVIII. One Guinea and Five Guinea 
 
 Monkeys 151 
 
 XXIX. Sounding Brass and Tinkling 
 
 Cymbals 155 
 
 XXX. Enlarging One's Horizon ... 160 
 
 XXXI. Happy New Year 166 
 
 XXXII. The Relation of Number One to 
 
 Number Two 170 
 
 XXXIII. The Ugliness of the Individual 175 
 
I. 
 
 THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE KITTEN. 
 
 A S the promoter of immediate, even though 
 transitory, happiness in a family, few things 
 can be named that are more effective than the 
 simple introduction into it of a playful kitten. 
 Even where morals and religion fail outright, 
 this always proves triumphantly successful. 
 
 Tea time is over, for example. The husband 
 is sitting, tired with his day's work and silent, 
 the wife equally wearied with hers, and the 
 children begin to feel the situation decidedly 
 oppressive. Presently, after a portentously, 
 long-drawn sigh, six-year-old little Ellen is sud- 
 denly struck with a bright idea, and vanishes 
 out of the room. A moment later and she is 
 heard on the return, dangling something after 
 her. It turns out to be a string, with a spool 
 at the end of it, in whose wake, crouching, 
 springing, all grace, life, and elasticity, is pussy. 
 Irresistibly does the dancing motion in the bob- 
 
6 BIRD-BOLTS. 
 
 bing spool set on dancing motion in the nerves 
 and consciousness of the kitten. Equally irre- 
 sistibly do the quick p ulses of the glee and 
 electric life in her propagate kindred vibrations 
 through the frames of the now suddenly ani- 
 mated family. The father begins to smile, the 
 mother ripples all over, the children fairly dance 
 with delight ; and, ten to one, before many 
 minutes are by, the late tired and perhaps mo- 
 rose lord of the mansion jumps up and insists 
 on taking the string into his own hand and 
 becoming an actor in the merry comedy. 
 
 Behold how great a fire a little kitty kindleth! 
 How profound and effective a philosopher this 
 miniature Ellen ! If preachers and orators, with 
 their larger range, understood the matter a tithe 
 as well, the world in a trice would be peopled 
 with patriots and saints. 
 
 But this is precisely what the majority of 
 the world's teachers never learn. They study 
 the laws of stimulating life in books so dreary 
 that they fairly fall asleep over them them- 
 selves. What one of them that ever had wit 
 enough to insist on little Ellen being inaug- 
 urated professor of homiletics in a divinity 
 school? And yet, right before their eyes has 
 
THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE KITTEN. 7 
 
 she illustrated a principle of simply illimitable 
 bearing, alike on forensic oratory or pulpit 
 eloquence. Here is her philosophical thesis: 
 " Motion sets on motion ; electric life, electric 
 life." First, the jump and dance in the spool, 
 then the jump and dance in kitty, then the jump 
 and dance in father and mother. One follows 
 the other as inevitably as the breeze across 
 the lake, then the responsive wavelets on the 
 surface, then the vibrating grasses along the 
 shore. 
 
 Fishing and hunting constitute one of the 
 few subjects on which grown-up people mani- 
 fest any real grasp of philosophical principles. 
 An incurable dullard must he be who thinks 
 long to enliven himself with a logy chub or 
 soggy catfish. No! with clear, rational intent, 
 man betakes himself to the lively trout or leap- 
 ing salmon, and then all along the electric line 
 and vibrating fly-rod streams the magnetic life. 
 Or, if a hunter, it is the flying fox and not the 
 lumbering turtle he mounts his horse and spurs 
 after. 
 
 Now, the first beginnings even of intelligent 
 conduct are to be recognized and praised. 
 Trout, salmon, and foxes are but cunning sym- 
 
8 BIRD-BOLTS. 
 
 bols in which Nature hides universal lessons. 
 Like .zEsop, she talks animals, but means men. 
 How to triumph over dulness, stupidity, dumps 
 in the family, school, church, — this is what she 
 is really emphasizing. And therefore does she 
 constitute little Ellen her true professor, and 
 say, " Except ye become as this little child, ye 
 cannot enter into the kingdom." 
 
 It cannot be denied that a great deal of the 
 family life of the land is oppressively heavy 
 and stupid. What evenings of silence, monot- 
 ony and moroseness are labored through with, 
 and that, too, by husbands, wives, sons, and 
 daughters witli large capacities of happy life 
 in them, could these capacities once be stirred! 
 Alas ! the kitten is not brought in. But there 
 she is all the while, sleeping in the strings of 
 the silent piano or snuggled away in the book- 
 case, say, as an Uncle Remus story. Bring her 
 out in this latter shape, for instance, and read 
 aloud " The Tar Baby." In a trice has the 
 rollicking negro life imparted itself to the whole 
 group, and the late sluggish pool is a rippling, 
 laughing sheet of water. 
 
 When will man learn to prize and utilize the 
 endless range of like stimulants he has around 
 
THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE KITTEN. 9 
 
 him, as practically as the toper the variously 
 labelled decanters on the shelves of the bar- 
 room? There is no getting along' without a 
 nipper of some sort, now and then, to cheer a 
 body up. The piano will do it, the fiddle will 
 do it, the humorous or eloquent book will do it. 
 But one or the other of these must be brought 
 into play. Surely, the greatest need of the 
 hour is that of inspiring wives with a lively 
 sense of responsibility for having such hum- 
 drum husbands, and husbands such humdrum 
 wives. There is no sort of necessity of it, if 
 they will but master and apply the simple Phi- 
 losophy of the Kitten. 
 
II. 
 
 THE CHINESE QUESTION. 
 
 PHE story is told that, when, for the first 
 time, the clerks of an American mercantile 
 house in Canton, China, took it into their heads 
 to relieve the monotony of ledger and desk by 
 adjourning outside and limbering up their legs 
 and spirits with a game of leap-frog, a profound 
 impression was created on the " Celestial " mind. 
 " Outside-barbarian " stock went up fifty per 
 cent., as crowds of the natives of the "Flowery 
 Kingdom " gathered round and looked on at 
 delectations that seemed a long way ahead of 
 anything it had entered into the mind of even 
 a Confucius to conceive. 
 
 Slow as the Chinese are to adopt the customs 
 of foreign nations, this time they were swept 
 off the feet of conservatism and tradition, and 
 no sooner had they mentally mastered the 
 tactics of the game than they determined to 
 inaugurate the like on the spot. 
 
THE CHINESE QUESTION. 11 
 
 And now, in turn, were the American clerks 
 struck with a most surprising feature in the 
 "Celestial" way of procedure. So profound 
 the Chinese reverence for age, and so thor- 
 oughly is youth trained to keep itself in the 
 background, that it would have been thought 
 outright impiety for any boy of thirty-five to 
 have presumptuously ventured forward. So, 
 only the elders threw off their skirts and " went 
 in " ; the man of sixty being evidently expected, 
 on pain of losing public respect, to leap higher, 
 straddle wider, and keep his pig-tail flying out 
 at a livelier angle than the man of fifty. Mean- 
 while, the youths gathered seriously round with 
 an expression of yearning in their almond eyes 
 that revealed how pathetically they longed for 
 the far-off day when they themselves should be 
 old enough to play leap-frog. 
 
 In utter oblivion of the fact that all profound 
 truth comes from the East, infatuated Ameri- 
 cans have actually reached the point of laugh- 
 ing at such a scene, Not only do the young 
 people of to-day think the Declaration of Inde- 
 pendence settled the point that leap-frog be- 
 longs to them exclusively, and that opodeldoc 
 liniment is all their elders have a title to ; but 
 
12 BIRD-BOLTS. 
 
 they arrogate to themselves the pre-emption of 
 every shape and kind of amusement, warning off 
 every man or woman of thirty as a " jumper " 
 of their private claims. And yet, in the face 
 and eyes of this intolerable tyranny, some 
 Dennis Kearney has the front of brass to tell 
 the nation that " the Chinese must go." No, 
 Mr. Kearney, the one sole hope of the elderly 
 portion of the American public lies in a league, 
 offensive and defensive, with the Chinese people ; 
 either this, or to be helplessly trampled under 
 foot by the youth of the land. 
 
 Amusements were never intended for young 
 people. Let the flag of this rational conviction 
 be nailed to the masthead and saluted with 
 broadsides from every Chinese junk and Ameri- 
 can iron-clad. Young people do not need 
 amusements. They have animal spirits enough 
 of their own. They can laugh at the veriest 
 nothing, cut capers spontaneously, and sing 
 songs for the mere fun of the thing. The main 
 thing is to keep them at serious work, and suffer 
 them to look forward to artificial diversions, 
 such as billiards, skating, and dancing, only as 
 something to come in when their powers begin 
 to fail. 
 
THE CHINESE QUESTION. 13 
 
 Older people, on the contrary, stand in im- 
 perious need of just these appliances. They 
 settle into ruts, their visages stiffen into grim 
 asperity, their blood " creams and mantles like 
 a standing-pool." No longer sufficiently stirred 
 from within, external irritants must be applied. 
 Then first comes the appropriate time of life 
 for music and dancing, the plain quadrille for 
 people of fifty, the more powerful stimulus of 
 the Virginia reel for those of sixty. Violins to 
 thrill the torpid nerves, cornets to start the 
 blood with their ringing notes, and a floor so 
 smooth and springy as to fairly run away wi«h 
 the goutiest feet, — these are the rational stimu- 
 lants prescribed by the Drs. Bowditch and 
 Holmes, of China, to meet the nascent infirmi- 
 ties of advancing age. " Go it, baldhead ! " 
 would never be uttered twice, in this earthly 
 sphere, by a Chinese sprig of thirty-five. 
 
 Now, people will not look at this question 
 seriously. The absence of all philosophical 
 depth in the American mind is making the 
 nation the shallowest, as well as the saddest, 
 on the face of the earth. Instead of raising a 
 Macedonian cry to the inhabitants of China, 
 "Come over and help us!" demagogues are 
 
14 BIRD-BOLTS. 
 
 actually stirring up the masses to set adrift the 
 few that are already on hand for a rallying point 
 against the youth of the land. 
 
 Very grave ethnological authorities have as- 
 serted that the people of the United States are 
 fast reverting to the type of the North Ameri- 
 can Indian. Let it never be forgotten that the 
 youth of the North American Indians used to 
 kill their parents when they grew too stiff and 
 slow to keep up with the line of march. Cer- 
 tainly the present rigid interdiction on the 
 part of the young of all chance for elderly 
 people to keep themselves limbered out looks 
 like an insidious step in the same direction. 
 
 Grave perils demand heroic remedies. Let it 
 be repeated, therefore, that the one only way 
 out of the evil that has come upon the land lies 
 in a league, offensive and defensive, with the 
 sole nation on earth that has made itself prac- 
 tical master of the rational principle that amuse- 
 ments were never intended for young people, 
 and are no more appropriate to their age than 
 spectacles or ear-trumpets. As boys and girls 
 or youths and maidens, the young may be 
 permitted, indeed, from time to time, to look 
 on as their elders enjoy the sport; but the 
 
THE CHINESE QUESTION. 15 
 
 diversions themselves, let it be once for all 
 understood, are to be sacredly guarded as the 
 fountain of perpetual youth to fathers and 
 mothers, grandfathers and grandmothers. Then 
 first may America aspire to produce examples 
 as exhilarating to all after-generations as that of 
 the fine old English lady, whose ultimate demise 
 the poet records in the ringing couplet : — 
 
 "She lived to the age of a hundred and ten. 
 And died of a fall from a cherry-tree then." 
 
III. 
 
 THE EDUCATED FLEAS. 
 
 PHE story is told of a boiling little boy of 
 seven, who had been sent to school and 
 kept there a year, that, at the end of the period, 
 on being saluted by an uncle with the question, 
 " Weil, Johnny, what have you learned in all 
 this time ? " he briskly and proudly replied, " I 
 have learned to set." Very likely the uncle 
 smiled in superior complacency, as elder people 
 are apt to at the answers of children. It prob- 
 ably never struck him what hosts of grown 
 people there are who have never got so far and 
 really learned " to set," either in the school of 
 patient manual labor, or under the provocation 
 of a hot temper. 
 
 That little fellow was a philosopher. He had 
 hit a root-principle the first time. In his earliest 
 efforts at school, he had seen how the lesson 
 had to fight it out for attention, now with the 
 fly buzzing on the pane, now with the marbles 
 
THE EDUCATED FLEAS. 17 
 
 rattling in the pocket, now with the new shoes 
 on his feet, now with the question of how the 
 thaw would affect the ice for skating in the 
 afternoon. The method of subduing this gen- 
 eral fly-away tendency and learning to concen- 
 trate the powers in definite lines began to loom 
 before him as the fundamental problem of all 
 intellectual and moral education. A marvellous 
 child ! A prophetic mind ! 
 
 Boston, Sodom-and-Gomorrah-like as it is in 
 its hardened pride, has not been left without 
 more than one appealing witness of the truth 
 enunciated by this despised and rejected boy. 
 For many months, a large placard on Washing- 
 ton Street announced " The Instructive Exhibi- 
 tion of the Educated Fleas." The shallow and 
 trifling passed it by in scorn. What could they, 
 "the roof and crown of things," learn from 
 these humbler members of the human family? 
 But there were a chosen few, bitten by fiercer 
 zeal for the welfare of the common race, who 
 went in with hushed and attentive minds. 
 
 The inner shrine was presided over by an old 
 man with long gray locks, a philosophic dome 
 of brow, and a velvet coat. At a glance, it was 
 manifest that here stood an iEsop in disguise 
 who talked " fleas " and meant " men." 
 
IS BIRD-BOLTS. 
 
 " Why did you choose this particular member 
 of the great common family, and consecrate the 
 educational labors of a lifetime to him?" was 
 the question put by a humble and reverential 
 inquirer. It was uttered with that childlike 
 docility that attests a mind very near the 
 kingdom. 
 
 "Because of the intensity and inveteracy of 
 his disposition to hop" was the reply. 
 
 The answer seemed enigmatical, but the lowly 
 inquirer was not daunted. " Might it please 
 you to explain more fully?" 
 
 "Willingly," resumed the philosopher. "I 
 wished to illustrate the fundamental question 
 of all education in the peculiar personality of 
 the flea; because, just as patriotism glories in 
 the tremendous odds at Thermopylae, so would 
 I have right education glory in the like odds 
 at which it finds itself with the flea. You 
 know something of his nature. It is almost 
 impossible to concentrate his fly-away attention 
 on any serious subject. Now he is here, now 
 there, now everywhere. Mothers have told me, 
 with tears in their eyes, that it was just the 
 same with their John ; and I determined to try 
 to do something to still this universal Rama 
 
THE EDUCATED FLEAS. 19 
 
 voice of lamentation and weeping. Sustained 
 by such motives, I closed in mightily with the 
 problem of the hop in the flea. I saw that, 
 unless I could get this out of him, it was all 
 over with the hoj)e of his education, and that 
 time and money and yearning would be only 
 wasted on him. 
 
 "One thing was clear: some tremendous in- 
 ducement not to hop must be brought to bear. 
 But how to bring it baffled me for years. At 
 last, in an instantaneous, lightning-flash of in- 
 spiration the whole solution blazed upon me. 
 I was shaving at the time, and so electric were 
 the shocks of transport that I rushed out into 
 the passage, razor in hand, and face all afoam 
 with lather, shouting, ' Eureka, Eureka ! ' 
 
 "Yet the idea was simple, I may add, like all 
 great ideas that inaugurate new epochs. I took 
 an ordinary pill-box, and, removing the top and 
 bottom, substituted for them little circles of 
 clear plate-glass. Inside the box I would then 
 place a flea. Now, here let me observe that 
 the restricted intelligence of the flea does not 
 permit of his discriminating between the trans- 
 parency of pure glass and the transparency of 
 the atmosphere. He thinks the world is all 
 
20 BIRD-BOLTS. 
 
 before him where to choose. So he executes 
 a hop. Down he is knocked with a stunning 
 blow. Pausing to rub his scalp for a moment, and 
 in his confused state, thinking it all a strange 
 mistake, he is up and at work again. Whack 
 over the head, and down once more ! And now 
 his soul is in a blaze of wrath. All day long 
 is it hop and knock-down, hop and knock-down, 
 till, at evening, he retires to bed in an exhausted 
 condition, and with a manifest tendency to 
 reflection. 
 
 " A night's sleep, however, seems to refresh 
 him. Rome was not built in a day. The in- 
 stinct transmitted by generations of nomadic 
 ancestors stirs mightily within him, and he re- 
 sumes his previous operations. The result, I 
 need hardly say, is equally unsatisfactory. Five 
 days pass, and, lo ! the lesson is learned forever. 
 A sense of absolute pyschologic connection be- 
 tween hop ami knock-down is organically built 
 up in his brain. The conception of fixed, im- 
 mutable, universal law has mastered his intelli- 
 gence. From that time to his dying day, he 
 can never be induced to hop again. You may 
 prick him with a needle; he will walk away, 
 but hop he will not. I can then command his 
 
THE EDUCATED FLEAS. 21 
 
 attention and proceed to the higher problems of 
 his education." 
 
 Ah ! why cannot this great philosopher, now 
 that he has got through with fleas, try his hand 
 on human beings ? Are they not also men and 
 brothers? Even of our merchants, politicians, 
 and divines, how many of them have got as 
 far as Johnny and ever learned " to set " ? 
 Indeed, a nervous restlessness that leads to a 
 hop-skip-and-a-jump way of looking at every- 
 thing is at the bottom of the chaotic state of 
 the present time. What is Congress but largely 
 a gathering of uneducated fleas, here, there, 
 and everywhere, on finance, free trade, and civil 
 service ? 
 
 Is -it too wild and optimistic a hope to in- 
 dulge in, that somewhere, in the seclusion of a 
 student's cell, the great flea philosopher is con- 
 secrating his remaining sands of life to devising, 
 say, a political economy pill-box in which to 
 educate a score or so of representatives; and 
 that, through the simple process of making 
 them work off their surplus activity, by butting 
 long enough against transparent laws to begin 
 to surmise that, even though they do not see it, 
 there must be something in those laws? Far 
 
22 BIRD-BOLTS. 
 
 more edifying to the nation would it prove to 
 behold them diligently practising there, instead 
 of skipping round from mass meeting to mass 
 meeting, and exciting the rest of the fleas. 
 
IV. 
 
 ROUTING INERTIA. 
 
 T T OW common an experience, during a sum- 
 mer vacation, is something like the fol- 
 lowing: A still, languid-feeling morning. The 
 breeze which, several miles away on the ocean, 
 is filling the sails, has not yet made itself felt on 
 shore. A sense of physical inertia pervades the 
 system. Will tends no-whither. Imagination 
 is listless, and can summon up no object of de- 
 sire. At last a companion, some faint re-birth 
 of energy reviving in him, breaks in on the slug- 
 gish calm: "We shall lose the whole day if we 
 suffer this mood to hold. Let's be off! By 
 and by we shall wake up, as body and soul get 
 roused with a little exertion, and then shall we 
 see what fools we would have been to waste the 
 golden sands of such a day." 
 
 A faint, reluctant consent is given. There is 
 no heart in the matter. Indolently, and simply 
 because too sluggish to resist, the three or four 
 move down to the boat-house and get out the 
 boat. 
 
24 BIRD-BOLTS. 
 
 At the outset, rowing proves a weariness and 
 a drag. That peculiar secretion that exudes 
 from a spruce oar and exerts such invigorating 
 effects on the associated muscles of man has not 
 yet begun to flow. Ere long, however, symp- 
 toms of a revival are clearly manifest. The 
 breeze that has been playing out at sea is work- 
 ing inwards and begins to fan the cheeks. In 
 sympathetic response, ripples and wavelets are 
 dancing on the waters, and, like the stimulating 
 vibrations of violins on the waltzers' feet, are 
 already setting on a new pulse-beat in the 
 rowers' systems. For who can long resist the 
 contagion of the environing life and beauty? 
 Fleecy cumulus clouds are floating in the sky. 
 Exquisite gradations of tints are flowing into 
 one another on the water. Picturesque islands, 
 lighthouse-crowned, are emerging from the part- 
 ing mists. And now, the more vital stroke of 
 the oar and the frequent exclamations of rap- 
 turous delight attest that the whole party is 
 awake in eye and sense, in love and social joy. 
 
 How dangerously does a little virtue exalt a 
 man ! Overhear the talk of these late so gela- 
 tinous companions. Oh ! the mercilessness of 
 their contempt for the languid dawdlers they 
 
ROUTING INERTIA. 25 
 
 have left behind ! In the new mood of exhilara- 
 tion, how impossible for these young heroes to 
 throw themselves back into that molluscous stage 
 of semi-consciousness from which they have 
 been so suddenly evolved into living souls ! 
 
 An hour and a half of steady rowing, — ac- 
 companied from time to time by that change of 
 rowers which breaks all tendency to selfish in- 
 sistence on having the entire enjoyment to one's 
 self, — and the happy party have entered the 
 mouth of some Saco river that pours its waters 
 into the sea. On the one hand, the ocean with 
 its eternal surf rolling up the masses of beach 
 sand ; on the other, the river steadily forcing its 
 way out to the deep. What an eloquent symbol 
 of the struggle of each human soul! Then, 
 quick succeeding, the peaceful beauty of the 
 stream itself, its salt and sparkling tidal waters 
 set off with the rich verdure of the overhanging 
 trees and velvet grass-slopes. 
 
 And now, how irresistible the invitation to 
 shoot the boat into a shady nook and leap into 
 the delicious flood, — to dive and float and swim 
 and shout in pure delight, — and thence to get 
 such fresh invigoration as to bethink one's self of 
 a dear friend enjoying his summer sojourn in a 
 
26 BIRD-BOLTS. 
 
 spot some miles away, and so to start off over 
 sand-dunes and through fragrant pine woods till 
 the beach is struck, and far along its graceful 
 crescent the house is reached, and fresh social 
 delight is added to the already overflowing day. 
 
 But the hours reel out too much of joy to 
 unfold in a single or a score of papers ; and, after 
 all, the party have yet to row back home, unless 
 it prove that the fond wives of some of them, 
 suspecting their husbands too happy by them- 
 selves, shall come after them by sail, and take 
 the row-boat into domestic tow. 
 
 Enough, however, has been said to make clear 
 the point to emphasize. It is this : How fatally 
 is man perpetually losing through failing to 
 overcome the initial inertia that so often drugs 
 the system, and holds him back from rousing up 
 that blood of body and blood of mind without 
 whose vital circulation no real life breathes ! 
 How infinitely does he often gain by a single 
 hour of braver resolution, and that for the sim- 
 ple reason that he lives and moves and has his 
 being in a universe of such overflowing bounty 
 that he needs but to put himself into vital con- 
 tact with its arteries to feel himself flooded with 
 a wealth of joy and beauty ! 
 
ROUTING INERTIA. 27 
 
 Poets are forever crying that the springs are 
 dry within their souls and they can neither 
 sing nor soar; saints forever bemoaning that, 
 dry as dust and ashes, their eyes melt with no 
 tears of compassion, their lips are eloquent with 
 no thanksgiving. Would they could learn the 
 secret of the simple rowers who rout the inertia 
 of an otherwise lost vacation-day. Man cannot 
 make his own music. It must be made in and 
 through him by the genius of objects and scenes 
 that use him as their resonant instrument. 
 Evermore is nature and human life full of sights 
 and experiences, with all the fulness of adven- 
 ture, inspiration, and pathos in them to make 
 heroes out of cowards, poets of commonplace 
 men, sons of consolation of the callous or indif- 
 ferent, were not man too sluggish and inert to 
 subject himself to their power. 
 
V. 
 
 HOW EARLY IMPRESSIONS EXPAND. 
 
 /^VNE of the most vivid recollections of my 
 ^~ > ^ boyhood days, in the far-away time when 
 railroads were as yet in their infancy, is of the 
 keen delight witli which I would stand by and 
 watch the loading-tip and starting out on their 
 journey of the trains of huge, canvas-covered, 
 hoop-roofed wagons, that used to set out from 
 my native city with loads of merchandise to 
 cross the Alleghanies and distribute their freight 
 through the settlements in Ohio and Kentucky. 
 Once in a while, however, the scene took on 
 an altogether overpowering interest. An im- 
 migrant ship had arrived in port, and around 
 the huge inn-yard were gathered in groups 
 crowds of strange-speaking, clumsily-clad men 
 and women, together with no end of stumpy 
 little boys and tow-headed — so I called them, 
 flaxen-haired would have been more respectful 
 — little girls, not to speak of a liberal sprink- 
 ling of moon-faced babies in arms. 
 
HOW EARLY IMPRESSIONS EXPAND. 29 
 
 To see them — whole families — pile their 
 rude chests and bundled-up feather-beds into 
 the wagons, and then crowd in on top, the 
 eager-eyed boys and girls peering out through 
 rents in the canvas, and the little babies taking 
 to the strange, new life with the serene content- 
 ment of the untroubled age of six months, — all 
 this was better than a play to me. Under the 
 wagons hung buckets and cooking-utensils, while 
 among us on-looking boys enchanting traditions 
 prevailed of how at night these were taken 
 down, blazing camp-fires were kindled, fat bucks 
 stepped hospitably up to present the hungry 
 wanderers with rich quarters of venison, and 
 forthwith the crimson-lit woods became redolent 
 of the fragrance of roasting joints, while stories 
 and laughter rang out on every side. 
 
 Alas ! life at home looked prosaic enough in 
 comparison ; and, amidst, it must be owned, a 
 great deal of conflicting counter-testimony, the 
 best proof to my maturer judgment of the filial 
 piety that must have marked my early years I 
 find in the fact that I did not actually run away 
 and embrace the fortunes of these fascinating 
 adventurers. 
 
 Later on in life, when I began to read a little 
 
30 BIRD-BOLTS. 
 
 history, few things seized upon my imagination 
 so mightily as the story of the migrations of the 
 vast hordes who, starting from their original 
 seats in Central Asia, began, wave on wave, to 
 spread themselves southward over Persia and 
 India, and westward over the whole of Europe. 
 In fancy, I delighted to picture them on their 
 march, rude and barbarous, skin-clad, and armed 
 with clubs and bows, their more delicate women 
 and children piled on clumsy, solid-wheeled 
 carts, pulled by oxen, their stronger women 
 striding along under heavy burdens, or with 
 lusty twins and triplets on their backs, the lands 
 they traversed black with gloomy forests, or 
 quaking with perilous bogs. 
 
 To think of all this as going on for thousands 
 upon thousands of years, wave succeeding wave, 
 one horde pouring down upon the Greek penin- 
 sula, and at last developing the splendid civili- 
 zation of Greece ; another surging on into Italy, 
 and, after long, wrestling ages, building up the 
 stupendous ' fabric of the Roman Empire; still 
 others, an endless sea of racing billows, sweep- 
 ing over what are now France and Spain, over- 
 running the vast domains of Germany, Scan- 
 dinavia, Holland, and, unchecked for long by 
 
HOW EARLY IMPRESSIONS EXPAND. 31 
 
 the British Channel, at last storming across in 
 their open vessels and conquering the islands ; 
 all this ceaselessly going forward, until the here- 
 tofore resistless inundations found themselves 
 face to face with the stormy Atlantic, and a 
 voice sounded in their ears from its eternal 
 wastes, " So far shalt thou go and no farther, 
 and here shall thy proud waves be stayed,*' — 
 why, to learn of a truth that these endless hosts 
 were throughout of one kith and kin, that for 
 Sun and Moon, and Father and Mother, and 
 Brother and Daughter, and all the most common 
 objects and relations, they had and have to-day 
 practically the same words in the Babel of lan- 
 guages they have got split up into, — I say all 
 this in its rich and rare combination intoxicated 
 my mind with that sense of exhilarating delight 
 in unity which never fails to thrill through one. 
 when into any weltering chaos of particulars a 
 ray of light pierces with the revelation of a 
 principle, binding in its operation as that of 
 gravitation over the planetary system. 
 
 A breathlessly long sentence that last, it must 
 be owned! But then, only think how uncon- 
 scionable a procession! 
 
 Still, to me at least, the full climax of delight 
 
32 BIRD-BOLTS. 
 
 in contemplating this stupendous unity in his- 
 tory had not come yet. The broad, tempest- 
 swept Atlantic lay in the path of it. This, with 
 ignorance of the meaning of the history that had 
 followed after. Suddenly, however, — I recall 
 the joy of it now as the idea first struck me, — 
 I saw in a flash in the long, lumbering trains of 
 wagons of my childhood, starting out to cross 
 the Alleghanies, — chests, feather-beds, women 
 perched, on boxes, boys and girls peeping 
 through the canvas, babies all ignorant of the 
 mighty generations of which they were to be- 
 come fathers and mothers, — simply the pro- 
 longation of the old skin-clad, oak-wheeled, 
 club-and-bow-armed migrations that had origi- 
 nally started out from Central Asia. 
 
 A few years more, and this latest shape of 
 the long procession had abandoned the slow- 
 moving wagon and taken to the flying immi- 
 grant-train. Still a few years, and the on-rolling 
 tide was to find itself on the shores of Cali- 
 fornia and Oregon, face to face with an even 
 mightier ocean than the Atlantic, and with 
 what destiny ahead, on the Sandwich Islands 
 and mayhap in Asia itself, no man is prophet 
 enough to foretell. And so, never do I now 
 
HOW EARLY IMPRESSIONS EXPAND. 33 
 
 happen in, in our Boston & Albany Station, 
 upon a fresh-arrived ship-load of fair-haired 
 Danes and Swedes, sitting round on their packs, 
 nursing their babies, staring about them with 
 strange eyes, and speaking strange speech, but, 
 lo ! before my very eyes, the latest wavelet 
 simply of the vast ocean of the allied races 
 which, billow on billow, and till lost to the 
 farthest ranging eye, has been keeping up the 
 one stupendous movement. A fellow-feeling 
 comes over me, a sense of kindred blood in my 
 veins, as I find myself witnessing in very act 
 how my own fathers and mothers, for endless 
 generations back, went out to seek their fort- 
 unes in Greece, in Gaul, in Germany, in Den- 
 mark, in England, and, last and best, in Amer- 
 ica. And so I feel sympathetically moved to pat 
 little Hans on his chubby cheek, ask his fond 
 mother how old he is, dart benevolently across 
 the street to the nearest candy-shop to buy him 
 a lemon-ball or "jaw-breaker," as hospitable 
 greeting from the New World to the Old, and, 
 then and there learn afresh, through the sweet 
 simplicity with which he takes to it, bow "one 
 touch of nature makes the whole world kin." 
 
VI. 
 
 HINTS ON REAL ESTATE. 
 
 T N this materialistic age, the money value of 
 philosophers is in danger of being under- 
 rated. Time is it that the eyes of all interested 
 in real estate were opened to the fact. 
 
 Let a modest, unobtrusive man like Mr. Emer- 
 son settle in a little Concord village, and forth- 
 with the tax-assessor estimates him at a paltry 
 fifty dollars a year ; while the butcher, who has 
 read somewhere an idle account of Pythagoras' 
 addiction to a diet of beans, sets him down at 
 an even smaller figure in the way of chops and 
 steaks. 
 
 Time brings its revenges. The philosopher 
 becomes famous, and the village shares his fame. 
 A vast amount of gratuitous advertising is thus 
 done for it. Moreover, birds of a feather flock 
 together. First, one literary man seeks a habi- 
 tation there, then another, then another. Lots 
 go up in value. Anon follow the crowds of 
 
HINTS ON REAL ESTATE. 35 
 
 lion-hunters, and the hotel gets its profit out of 
 dispensing many a meal and lodging. 
 
 But the end is not yet. At last, the day 
 arrives when the outside public becomes openly 
 vociferous, and demands that a school of philos- 
 ophy shall be set up in the place, that such worn 
 and weary public may refresh itself in the sum- 
 mer heats with protracted weeks of metaphysi- 
 cal delights. As strictly logical result, a spa- 
 cious hall is built to accommodate the flood of 
 hearers; while hospitable citizens find them- 
 selves called upon to entertain no end of board- 
 ers at ten dollars a week. Meanwhile, villages 
 without a philosopher for a nest-egg languish 
 in poverty-stricken obscurity. 
 
 In old historic countries, the working of this 
 sort of thing is far more rationally understood 
 than in this new-fledged land. Larger induce- 
 ments will many a town or hamlet across the 
 water offer for the burial of the dead body of a 
 sage or saint in its cemetery than it would for 
 the meeting of a political convention of eating 
 and drinking " bummers." In truth, there is 
 more money in the saint. The highest financial 
 authority, Mill's or Bagehot's, vouches for the 
 fact that, from the date of the interment of 
 
36 BIRD-BOLTS. 
 
 Mahomet in Medina, the steady rise in value of 
 corner-lots and of the profits of pilgrim board- 
 ing-houses has proved the bones of the prophet 
 the best paying investment the city ever made. 
 Because, forsooth, the individual philosopher or 
 saint may personally eat very little, and drink 
 even less, is that any valid reason for overlook- 
 ing the crowds of less ascetic disciples who will 
 ultimately flock to his home or grave ? Not of 
 this narrow mind the real estate operators of 
 old, of whom it is recorded that 
 
 "Seven Grecian cities fought for Homer dead, 
 Through which the living Homer begged his bread.''' 
 
 High time is it, then, that something decisive 
 were done in the way of impressing on the 
 minds of far-seeing and energetic men the neces- 
 sity of greater exertion to render the now de- 
 pressed villages of Massachusetts so attractive 
 that increasing numbers will be led to settle in 
 them and spend their money there. The appeal 
 for culture has been based on entirely too vis- 
 ionary grounds. All important is it to have it 
 clearly understood that the coming man in real 
 estate will need to be of a very different type 
 from him who sufficed for the narrow and ignorant 
 
HINTS ON REAL ESTATE. 37 
 
 past. The dollar of a philosopher is as good as 
 the dollar of a dandy. That the former chooses 
 to fool it away on metaphysics, while the latter 
 more wisely invests in waist-coats, is a wholly 
 irrelevant matter. In either case, the money 
 stays in the place. 
 
 Now, therefore, that, for the second time in 
 history the little village of Concord, through the 
 establishment of a School of Philosophy, 
 
 " Has fired a shot heard round the world,'* 
 
 would it not pay some of the sharp, driving 
 men, say of Natick, Needham, or Weston, to run 
 over and spend a week there during the summer 
 heats in painful attendance on a course of lect- 
 ures upon Kant by Dr. Harris, or upon Plato 
 by Dr. Jones, if only to get an inkling of what 
 unexpected devices may be hit upon by a shrewd 
 operator, like Mr. Bronson Alcott, for building 
 up a town. 
 
VII. 
 
 NIL ADMIRARI. 
 
 \\ 7" HEN, some thirty years ago, the United 
 States fleet was sent out to Japan with 
 instructions to the exclusive islanders, "Either 
 you must become more sociable, or we will blow 
 your forts and towns to atoms," the American 
 naval officers were highly vexed at the bearing 
 of the high and mighty government officials 
 deputed to greet the commodore on the deck 
 of his flagship. 
 
 Conscious that he commanded the noblest 
 war-vessel in the American navy, the com- 
 modore had expected to produce a startling 
 impression on his visitors. Great, then, his dis- 
 gust at finding the Japanese dignitaries betray- 
 ing no more surprise than had they been invited 
 to inspect a common porgy-boat. In vain were 
 they conducted through the elegant cabins, 
 along the awful monsters of the gun-deck, and 
 into the engine-room with its Titanic machinery. 
 
NIL ADMIRARI. 39 
 
 At last, the exhibition of such superior indif- 
 ference proved more than flesh and blood could 
 stand, and the irate commander gave a secret 
 sign to the engineer to sound the steam-whistle. 
 In an instant a screech rent the air as frightful 
 as though the whole honor of the stars and 
 stripes hung on the issue ; and, joy to tell, the 
 long-robed officials jumped in terror out of 
 their embroidered slippers, and fled wildly in 
 all directions. 
 
 Now these particular Japanese were diplo- 
 mats, who felt they had the reputation of their 
 country to maintain in the presence of outside 
 barbarians ; and very likely, while in exterior 
 bearing as stolidly indifferent as so many Indian 
 chiefs at a White House reception, were in- 
 wardly taking notes of everything. So they do 
 not forfeit all title to respect, however strong 
 the temptation to indulge in a sly laugh at their 
 expense. A very different thing is it, however, 
 with the class who, with no country to stand up 
 for or cause to represent, affect as private indi- 
 viduals to have attained to a Buddhistic Nirvana 
 of Nil Admirari, over which the world has no 
 more power. 
 . The fundamental tenet of the Nil Admirari 
 
40 BIRD-BOLTS. 
 
 sect is that all admiration or enthusiasm is 
 symptomatic of, as they elegantly term it, " ver- 
 dancy." Of the slightest contact of this color 
 with the immaculateness of their persons, they 
 evince as holy a horror as the Colorado beetle 
 at the application of Paris Green. In other 
 words, they insist that admiration is vulgar, and 
 " the mark of the beast." The sons of God that 
 sang together at the first creation, they hold to 
 have been partially excusable on the score of 
 being taken at an unfair advantage by the sud- 
 denness of the divine operations, but charitably 
 hope for them that they have got beyond that 
 sort of thing now. As for themselves, they 
 spare no pains to become fortified against the 
 possibility of such infirmity, and to this end 
 believe most devoutly in the efficacy of foreign 
 travel. To Switzerland they journey, to get 
 drugged with mountain scenery ; to Germany, to 
 get cloyed with music; to Italy, to reach utter 
 satiety in the matter of churches, frescoes, and 
 statuary. Then are they fit to come home and 
 be worshipped. The victory over the worst the 
 world can do is complete. They have exhausted 
 its depths, in their minds synonymous with their 
 own personal shallows. 
 
NIL ADMIRARI. 41 
 
 What a rebuke to the "verdant" vivacity of 
 immature elder people to dine out at times with 
 some of these finished results of nil admirari 
 culture ! To see an impetuous, bald-headed old 
 fellow break out in sudden enthusiasm over 
 some remembered bit of mountain-climbing in 
 Switzerland with the remark that he would be 
 willing to try it again on crutches; and then to 
 observe the look of half-pitying condescension 
 with which some youth of twenty-five turns 
 languidly to study the queer old antiquity that 
 " has not got over that sort of thing, you 
 know ! " surely, here is an instructive sj^ectacle. 
 Half the time the old gentleman blushes, and 
 stammers a sort of half-apology ; says he knows 
 he is an old fool, and lapses into silence. 
 
 In truth, it takes a good deal of a hero to 
 stand his ground against a finished nil admirari 
 man. A terrible power inheres in one who has 
 sucked the vast terrestrial orange, and thrown 
 away the peel. But some day the hero will 
 come who will blandly remark, "Young man, 
 I freely admit that earth has exhausted her 
 surprises for you in the way of Alps, .^Etnas, 
 Michel Angelos, and Beethovens. As well might 
 a pair of parlor-bellows think to lift billows on 
 
42 BIRD-BOLTS. 
 
 the bosom of the Atlantic as these puny powers 
 of nature and genius on the ocean of your mind. 
 But one unexplored abyss of wonder yet re- 
 mains. Deep calleth unto deep within its 
 bounds. Contemplate it with breathless awe, 
 and it will heave even your imperturbable calm 
 into motions of amazement. It is the height 
 and the depth of how literally infinite and un- 
 speakable an ass you are. There, go to now, 
 take thine own furry head into thy adoring 
 arms, hang over it, Titania-like, and lovingly 
 croon to it, — 
 
 "Come, sit thee down upon this flowery hed, 
 While I thy amiable cheeks do coy, 
 And stick musk-roses in thy sleek, smooth head, 
 And kiss thy fair, large ears, my gentle joy." 
 
VIII. 
 
 OUR LADY OF THE SHEARS. 
 
 A SHARP pang it costs the fruit-grower to 
 go out with his scissors in the spring and 
 snip off three-fourths of the young pears, plums, 
 and peaches on his trees. Some tender natures 
 can never nerve themselves up to the feat, and 
 are duly rewarded in the autumn with bushels 
 of shrivelled abortions instead of a few blush- 
 ing and fragrant specimens that are the poetry 
 of the senses. 
 
 Alas ! man is forever lifting on high his 
 lamentation over the hard fate he is subjected 
 to in the matter of painful sacrifice. But what 
 are his woes in comparison with those, say, of 
 a matronly codfish that has gone through the 
 necessary preliminaries for a family of three 
 million young fry, or an oyster that has done 
 the like for another of ninety-five million ? In 
 the nature of things, not over one in a thousand 
 of the youthful aspirants can ever hope to reach 
 
44 BIRD-BOLTS. 
 
 the period when he shall be served up boiled 
 and with egg-sauce, or eaten raw on the shell 
 with a squeeze of lemon-juice. 
 
 The pathetic story, told now these many 
 generations, of the woman, whose husband bru- 
 tally drowned her because she would persist in 
 ejaculating, day and night, the word "scissors," 
 and who, even after her head was under water 
 and the agonies of suffocation had set in, still 
 kept her fingers above the surface vibrating in 
 quivering imitation of the opening and shutting 
 blades of that indispensable instrument, has 
 unquestionably been mistakenly interpreted. 
 In the light of a more thoughtful age, it looks 
 highly probable that she was, in reality, an 
 untimely martyr to the faith that the one way 
 to perfection lies in going through life snipping 
 away untiringly at nine out of ten of all the 
 objects and ideas that venture to show a head, 
 ay, and that, when breath failed her, she still 
 resolutely struggled to symbolize her creed to 
 a dying world. 
 
 High time is it that a new saint were canon- 
 ized, and most reverentially should so long-tra- 
 duced a witness be commended to the prayerful 
 consideration of His Holiness Leo XIII. Too 
 
OUR LADY OF THE SHEARS. 45 
 
 many, already, the martyrs who are suffering 
 under the imputation of dying out of pure 
 temper and ugliness, instead of out of love. 
 
 The faith of this blessed woman once estab- 
 lished in the heart . of a wiser generation, what 
 work would at once be set on foot in every 
 department of human activity! "Better one 
 fragrant rosy peach than a bushel of withered 
 deformities" would be everywhere the motto. 
 How soon, for example, would an unintermitting 
 hail of superfluous adjectives be heard to rattle 
 down from the rhetorical tree to be left to lie 
 on the ground and rot, while a single one 
 should silently gather sweetness and sprightli- 
 ness enough into itself to leave an exhilarating 
 taste in the mouth ! Well enough is it for nat- 
 uralists to expatiate on the incredible fecundity 
 of the cod. But what is this trifle to the brain 
 fecundity of press and pulpit writers in the pro- 
 creation of adjectives? Sharks are happily pro- 
 vided to thin out the superfluous codlings, but 
 what shall do the like for the adjectives ? No 
 power short of the religion of Our Holy Lady of 
 the Shears. 
 
 Alike in the education of children and the 
 proper training of husbands by their wives, it 
 
46 BIRD-BOLTS. 
 
 has long been acknowledged that the important 
 object aimed at is too often missed through the 
 excessive volubility with which instruction and 
 reproof are administered. The best of husbands 
 is after all limited in mental grasp. Though 
 his spirit be willing, his flesh is weak, and he 
 cannot entertain in a single brain all the loose, 
 incoherent, and often contradictory statements 
 that are made to him about his conduct. An 
 exquisite stinger at the end of the whip-lash, a 
 stinger twisted hard into a terminal knot, and 
 then applied, with fine discrimination, just 
 where the nerves are nearest the skin, would 
 prove infinitely more effective. The woman 
 who should quietly devote a thoughtful forenoon 
 to the elaboration of one of these, and then, 
 when the time came to make the application, 
 have the self-control to feel that, blood once 
 drawn, it would be far better not to weaken the 
 effect by loose phraseology, — such a woman 
 would unquestionably witness far better results 
 in her husband. 
 
 Thin out the fruit then everywhere. It is 
 hard, no doubt, to see the dear little baby pear- 
 lings and plumlings drop to. the ground. But 
 
OUR LADY OF THE SHEARS. 47 
 
 the tree has not sap enough to more than half- 
 starve such an inordinate load of them. It is 
 like calling upon one nurse to suckle a whole 
 foundling-hospital of babies. 
 
IX. 
 
 TOPSY-TURVY NOTIONS OF CAUSATION. 
 
 HP HE worst of the matter is that every little 
 sprig of a boy, six years old, assumes to 
 know all about the meaning of this deceptive 
 word, causation. The cause of anything ? Why, 
 it is what makes a thing do what it does. The 
 cause of a barn burning down, of a powder 
 magazine exploding? Why, it is the spark of 
 fire that gets into, the hay, and makes it burst 
 into flame, or into the gunpowder and makes 
 it go off. Excellent, prompt little fellow ! 
 But how if the spark had fallen on a mass of 
 railroad iron, or into a potato-bin ? You know 
 how often you children say, " It takes two to 
 make a bargain ! " 
 
 The fact is, a too vivid and one-sided per- 
 ception is playing tricks with the mind just 
 here. Some salient element out of a complex 
 variety rivets on itself attention, to the neglect 
 of other more latent factors involved in the 
 
TOPSY-TURVY NOTIONS OF CAUSATION. 49 
 
 case, and that especial one we proceed to call 
 the cause. Oh, yes! a spark of fire is a very 
 lively thing. We have felt the burning touch 
 of one on the back of the hand; nay, only last 
 Wednesday, on the railway train, actually got 
 one into our eye, causing us over-hastily to use 
 a word set dowm in the Index Expurgatorius 
 of religious newspapers. Meanwhile, the gun- 
 powder in the magazine reposes a stolid, glum, 
 and reticent compound, keeping its thoughts 
 locked up in its own bosom, and, simply to look 
 at it, the last thing in the world we should ever 
 suspect of an explosive temper. 
 
 Now, all this will do very well for a child's 
 reasoning, but for grown men and women to 
 be contented with, it is another matter. For 
 them, at any rate, the first step in rational 
 education lies in learning that the efficient cause 
 of any and every phenomenon in the world can 
 be found nowhere else but in the combined and 
 reacting energies of all the forces that enter 
 into a given result. When a ruddy fire is glow- 
 ing on the hearth, for an intelligent being to 
 say, " In an ignited match lay the cause of all 
 this continuous light and heat," would surely be 
 a very ignorant conception. No, he declares, 
 
50 BIRD-BOLTS. 
 
 on the contrary, the real efficient cause, would 
 you come in contact with it, seek it through 
 doing your best to make the invisible visible, — 
 seek it in the quick, fierce nature of the fiery 
 oxygen everywhere diffused through the room, 
 and in the equally eager properties of the hy- 
 drogen and carbon stored up in the wood. The 
 living, breathing marriage of these means fire, 
 just as essentially as the contact of youth and 
 maiden means love. 
 
 Go deeper, then, for cause: behold it in its 
 mysterious and mighty depths, as it lies latent 
 in the allied natures of the objects all around, — 
 objects which, however inert they look, are in 
 reality tense with electric or even volcanic ener- 
 gies. A boiler explodes. Steam did it, says the 
 hasty observer. No, steam did not do it. Steam 
 and boiler did it together. " Why did you blow 
 me up?" cries the boiler. "Why did you dam 
 me in?" retorts the steam, and with equal 
 reason. Steam quietly evaporating from an 
 open kettle never yet exploded anything. 
 
 It would be easy enough to get along with 
 topsy-turvy notions of causation, did they con- 
 fine themselves to mere physical matters. But, 
 alas ! people will insist on carrying them equally 
 
TOPSY-TURVY NOTIONS OF CAUSATION. 51 
 
 into the domain of morals, — a thing which works 
 no end of evil. Here, for example, is a man 
 violently angry and indulging in ugly epithets, 
 indeed looking around him in a way to indicate 
 he would like to lay hands on something more 
 like a brick than an epithet. You know him, 
 perhaps, and going up say, " Why, Mr. Jones, 
 what is the cause of all this ? " " The cause of 
 it? It is what that infernal Brown just said 
 to me. The most irritating and utterly exas- 
 perating fellow I ever met ! " Meanwhile, you 
 yourself, with a somewhat wider and more phil- 
 osophical idea of causation, feel that part of the 
 explosion ought to be attributed to the amount 
 of camphene, nitro-glycerine, and other extra- 
 hazardous moral freight stored away in the 
 interior chambers of your friend Mr. Jones 
 himself ; and you mildly venture to suggest 
 that there is, after all, something in the way a 
 man is disposed to look at a thing. Your gentle 
 expostulation, however, has no other effect, it 
 may be, but to bring on a second explosion. " If 
 there is anything in this world I hate," breaks 
 out your swiftly rekindling friend, " it is, when 
 a man is all afire over some outrageous insult, 
 to have a soft-lipped, mincing fellow come along 
 
52 BIRD-BOLTS. 
 
 and say, ' Oh, the man didn't mean to do it, 
 didn't mean to do it!'" And so a fresh illustra- 
 tion, and this time a rousing one, of Mr. Jones's 
 conception of causation. He has got just as 
 far in his philosophy as the little boy who will 
 hear of nothing but the spark of fire, and thinks 
 the loft stuffed with hay and the magazine full 
 of powder-kegs only a minor matter. Moral 
 causes, to Mr. Jones, lie all outside of himself. 
 In Brown, and those like him, are stored up the 
 explosive forces sure to break out in the quiet 
 and innocent people with whom these first come 
 in exasperating contact. 
 
 Once in a while you do a favor to some one, a 
 poor woman perhaps, and years after find that 
 the memory of it is as green as Christmas 
 boughs in her heart. Meanwhile, you your- 
 self have bolted ten thousand greater favors 
 from others, and forgotten all about them. 
 Still, very pleasant is it to feel that for so long 
 a period she has every day cherished grateful 
 affection toward you, and seen you halo-crowned 
 with a bright aureole. One thing, at least, you 
 can learn from her, if you have a gram of hu- 
 mility : namely, that you have no more reason 
 to take credit to yourself for all this continuous 
 
TOPSY-TURVY NOTIONS OF CAUSATION. 53 
 
 radiance of spirit than would a scientifically 
 educated lucifer-match, that, thanks to chemis- 
 try, has been taught to know better, have a right 
 to arrogate the like to itself of the great ruddy 
 fire in the chimney-place. Infinitesimal part, 
 indeed, of the cause of her glowing and con^ 
 tinuous gratitude were you and your act. But 
 the bulk of it lay in the solid back-log and 
 forestick of love in her own heart, and these 
 in perpetual open-air contact with the free 
 draft of eternal, inexhaustible spirit. Had she 
 been but of thin, substanceless, pine-shaving 
 nature, a short flash had been the answer, and 
 then all over. 
 
X. 
 
 WERE OUR ANCESTORS FOOLS? 
 
 SEVERAL years ago there died in Western 
 Massachusetts a venerable lady who for 
 fifty years had been possessed with the singular 
 whim of preserving and making a kind of mu- 
 seum of comparative fashions out of her old 
 bonnets. Beginning with the one she had worn 
 as a blooming bride, she never rested till she had 
 hung up at the end of the line the last that had 
 crowned her snow-white head. Young people 
 fortunate enough to be admitted to the attic, on 
 pegs around which was suspended this chrono- 
 logical attestation of the mutability of human 
 taste, were wont to go into fits of laughter over 
 the spectacle. In startled imagination they saw 
 themselves confronted with an antediluvian 
 epoch, in which such terrific megatheria and 
 pterodactyles of bonnets prevailed that the 
 wonder of wonders was, how the most un- 
 daunted of men could have ever dared a mar- 
 
WERE OUR ANCESTORS FOOLS? 55 
 
 riage-proposal to any face ensconced beneath 
 such nodding horrors. So are the young in the 
 pride of to-day ever tempted to make sport of 
 their grandmothers, — grandmothers, perhaps, 
 who, in the flush of their prime, could have 
 done an execution from out under their sugar- 
 scoops, with their spirited eyes and blooming 
 cheeks, that would have left their presumptuous 
 ridiculers of to-day nowhere in the race. 
 
 A sensation very closely akin to that pro- 
 duced by the old lady's museum of the com- 
 parative anatomy of bonnets awaits every 
 reader of a curious little j>aper, by Edward J. 
 Young, chronicling and annotating the " Sub- 
 jects for Master's Degree in Harvard College, 
 from 1655 to 1791." It is a pamphlet to be 
 kept under lock and key, and sacredly guarded 
 from falling into the hands of young people 
 under thirty; for it is calculated to destroy the 
 last shreds of reverence for their ancestors left 
 in them, and to render them so intolerable in 
 their conceit that they will need to be drowned 
 outright like so many blind puppies and kittens. 
 Indeed, it requires a mind deeply rooted in 
 veneration to read the bare titles of the subjects 
 on which so man)' of the great lawyers, physi- 
 
56 BIRD-BOLTS. 
 
 cians, and divines of those primitive days exer- 
 cised their nascent powers, and that, too, in 
 Latin, Greek, and Hebrew dissertations, without 
 a certain dangerous feeling of contempt for 
 them, doughty champions as they proved them- 
 selves iu laying the foundations of a great 
 nation. 
 
 " When Balaam's Ass spoke, was there any 
 Change in its Organs?" Such was the grave 
 thesis with which the Josiah Quincy of 1731 
 came before his breathless and expectant audi- 
 tory on Commencement Day. Think of one 
 of his descendants attempting to entertain his 
 hearers with a like discussion in 1882! Still, as 
 every one at that day regarded it as indisputa- 
 ble fact of revelation that Balaam's ass could, 
 and in point of fact did, articulate in good and 
 grammatical Hebrew, intensely interesting at 
 once the question, How did he manage to do 
 it? An ass has, by nature, no vocal organs that 
 fit him for anything but wheezing like an old 
 pump. Were, then, these abortive organs so 
 miraculously operated on that they, none the 
 less, could do as effective and as melodious work 
 as the human larynx? If so, what a stupendous 
 thing is a miracle ! Did they, on the other 
 
WERE OUR AXCESTORS FOOLS? 57 
 
 hand, require such preliminary alterations in 
 structure as would approximate them to those 
 of human beings, then, in turn, what an attesta- 
 tion to the respect entertained by Deity for his 
 own laws and methods! Is it difficult to con- 
 ceive, then, that, as the heights and abysses of 
 his subject opened on the imagination of the 
 youthful Quincy, he should have electrified his 
 audience with one of those characteristic out- 
 bursts of fiery eloquence that have for genera- 
 tions since distinguished his family ? 
 
 Legion is the number of prematurely thought- 
 ful children who have been kept awake in in- 
 tellectual wrestle all night, after hearing the 
 startling question propounded, " Which was 
 first, the hen or the egg? 11 Who can doubt, 
 then, that an equal night of restless tossing to 
 and fro on a sleepless bed was the metaphysical 
 result in the mind of many an auditor of this 
 exhaustive discussion of the momentous theme, 
 "When Balaam's Ass spoke, was there any 
 Change in its Organs?" 
 
 Turn now to the questions relating to physi- 
 ology and medicine. "Did Adam have an 
 Umbilical Cord?" was the thesis stoutly de- 
 fended in the negative by the celebrated Jeremy 
 
58 BIRD-BOLTS. 
 
 Beluap, later pastor of the Federal Street 
 Church and founder of the Massachusetts His- 
 torical Society. This was in 1765. 
 
 Graceless freshmen of to-day would break out 
 in boisterous laughter at the bare announcement 
 of such a question. But does it not, in reality, go 
 down to the very root of things? If Adam was 
 actually created with an umbilical cord, why 
 did he have it, whence did he get it, what was 
 it originally attached to? Was it an organ 
 merely prophetic of something to come in his 
 descendants? Was it thrown in gratuitously 
 to constitute him absolutely one with the race 
 he was so soon to ruin, and thus secure the 
 solidarity of the species? Perfectly well did 
 young Jeremy Belnap know what he was about. 
 He had encountered the same knotty question 
 that fifty to a hundred years later was to set 
 Cuvier and St. Hilaire, Agassiz and Darwin at 
 loggerheads; and again must a sleepless night 
 have been prepared for the more intellectual of 
 his auditory. 
 
 Under the guise, thus, of the most unim- 
 peachable orthodoxy, it is evident that all kinds 
 of scientific heresies were getting agitated in 
 those colonial days. Why did not some pro- 
 
WERE OUR ANCESTORS FOOLS? 59 
 
 phetic Teiresias or Cassandra start up with a 
 warning cry? 
 
 This laughing, then, at one's ancestors, be- 
 cause they put fundamental questions in an old- 
 fashioned way, is likely to turn out quite as 
 idle a thing as laughing at one's grandmother 
 because she became a sweet, true-hearted bride 
 in what is irreverently termed an " old guy of 
 a bonnet." It is a shape of conceit that needs 
 to be abated, for it infests all ranks and pro- 
 fessions of men. 
 
 Lawyers, for example, of to-day plume them- 
 selves very highly on the intricate and puzzling 
 legal dilemmas they raise for discussion in their 
 clubs and moot-courts, but can the most in- 
 genious of them propose anything more fitted 
 to tax subtlety in argumentation than the fol- 
 lowing, which was defended three times in the 
 negative in 1738, 1754, and 1759: "If Lazarus, 
 by a will made before his death, had given away 
 his property, could he have legally claimed it 
 after his resurrection ? " Far easier is it to 
 poke fun at this than to answer it in a way the 
 Supreme Bench would sustain. 
 
 Tough, hard-headed old fellows, then, were 
 these ancestors of ours ; and the man of reflec- 
 
BIRD-BOLTS. 
 
 tion who turns the pages of this pamphlet of 
 Mr. Young, heartily as he at first may feel dis- 
 posed to laugh, finds in the end that his pro- 
 genitors were by no means such fools as he, in 
 his nineteenth-century conceit, was inclined to 
 take them for. If they had been, on what pos- 
 sible datum of evolution could it be accounted 
 for that they should have given birth to such 
 superior descendants ? 
 
XL 
 
 HOW TO KINDLE FIRES. 
 
 /^VH! the commentary on nine-tenths of the 
 ^- > ^ failures in human life that is offered in the 
 besotted way in which an Irish servant girl so 
 often sets to work to kindle a hard-coal fire! 
 What clouds of smoke, what bloodshot and 
 streaming eyes, how smutched and comical a 
 visage through stanching the blinding tears 
 with the knuckles of a sooty hand ! Only look 
 at the unhappy creature, crouching on her 
 knees and blowing till her lungs crack, or 
 mournfully pausing, with a despairing howl, to 
 contemplate the black and sullen miscarriage! 
 Then see her go at the task once more, scoop- 
 ing out with her fingers and heaping up on the 
 hearth the hot and dirty contents of the grate, 
 only that the whole process may be re-started 
 with the same elaborate and foredoomed prep- 
 arations for another failure. 
 
 And yet, all the while, every rational being 
 
62 BIRD-BOLTS. 
 
 cheered by a faith in evolution, rejoices in his 
 heart that the bungler's face is blackened and 
 her eyes stream ; ay, and that the fire will " go 
 out on her " ! Will " go out on her " ? — of course 
 it will. It would be dishonoring its Maker, if 
 it disobeyed his beautiful laws to subject itself 
 to the brainless obstinacy of such a mistress. 
 Why, the very matches in the safe become fric- 
 tionally excited and cry out, Shame ! " Look at 
 us, Bridget," they seem to say; "just reflect on 
 our secret, and become a rational being like one 
 of us. A scratch on the wall sets our phos- 
 phorus burning; phosphorus burning sets our 
 sulphur on fire ; sulphur on fire sets our splints 
 aflame. Rise, now, in ascending series from 
 shavings to chips, from chips to dry pine, from 
 dry pine to split oak, from split oak to anthra- 
 cite, and soon will your fire leap and roar in 
 exultation. Not a tiny spark but will clap its 
 little hands and merrily sna]) out, ' Now you've 
 hit it, Bridget.'" 
 
 Kindling fires, of one kind or another, is a 
 work with which all human beings have a great 
 deal to do. Such expressions as getting up 
 steam for one's work, setting others ablaze, 
 kindling a genial glow of domestic love, are no 
 
HOW TO KINDLE FIRES. 63 
 
 mere metaphors. A veritable process of chemi- 
 cal combustion lies as inevitably at the basis of 
 a forcible speech or a warm embrace as at that 
 of a hickory or anthracite fire. And, as every 
 mass ignites the easiest at its most inflammable 
 point, one would suppose that common-sense 
 would dictate to all just where to begin. But 
 it does not. 
 
 Go into half the school-rooms of the land, 
 and, lo ! Bridget at work once more abortively 
 trying to kindle in the grate, anthracite at the 
 bottom and shavings a-top, an intellectual fire. 
 The most inflammable point in the mind of 
 a child being his faculties of observation, and 
 the good Lord having made it comparatively 
 easy to set him all-in-a-flame over the beauty 
 and vitality of the living objects in nature, 
 the first thing here aimed at is to reverse the 
 established order and insist on setting him 
 aglow over the charms of barren abstractions. 
 " The arithmetic lesson now, Johnny, my boy ! 
 Remember, we do not wish you to have any- 
 thing to do with three apples, three marbles, 
 three birds. No matter at all about apples, 
 marbles, and birds. The three alone, the three 
 pure and naked, the three in absolute abstrac- 
 
64 BIRD-BOLTS. 
 
 tion, this is the beautiful theme we yearn to- 
 warm you up with ! Upon this rest the foun- 
 dations of our fascinating science." Or it is a 
 lesson in grammar. "Now Johnny, my boy, 
 all your powers to the front ! The interesting, 
 immaterial relations between nouns and verbs 
 are to engage our thoughts. No matter about 
 trout jumping at flies, or terrier snuffing at 
 holes for rats. These were only the aboriginal 
 barbaric methods adopted by savages for get- 
 ting at the significance of nouns and verbs. 
 You would we teach to breathe the rarer and 
 more tonic air of pure abstractions." 
 
 Of course, Johnny's abortively kindled fire 
 soon begins to smoke. The little throat con- 
 stricts with spasmodic grief and closes the dam- 
 per, and out into the school-room pours the 
 empyreumatic reek. There is an unhappy time 
 all around, and remorseful or truculent Johnny 
 is condemned as a stove that will not draw. 
 
 Will not draw ! Look at the little urchin an 
 hour later. He is watching his ingenious uncle 
 taking a pump to pieces or mending the water- 
 ram. He is visiting a ship with the aforesaid 
 uncle. What a volley of questions now is the 
 boy fusillading with all his musketry ! How 
 
HOW TO KINDLE FIRES. 65 
 
 all-of-a-tremble to know a sloop from a schooner, 
 an hermaphrodite from a common brig, a barque 
 from a ship ! 
 
 But enough of the children. Are we adults 
 handled any more rationally ? 
 
 Flaming posters, for example, are conspicu- 
 ously stuck up on every tree or board fence in 
 the town in which we live, announcing the ad- 
 vent of a peripatetic hygienic lecturer, with a 
 mission to mankind. His subject, announced in 
 huge block letters, is " Saleratus Bread, the Ruin 
 it is working far and wide in the Republic !! !" 
 Resolved to do our patriotic best, we invest a 
 hard-earned quarter in a ticket, and take our 
 seat on a bench of torture in the village hall. 
 The subject to us is a new r one, but all we ask, 
 to fire us to mount the red-cross in the new cru- 
 sade, is, to put it in curt Saxon, to be logically 
 and cumulatively enkindled in our intellectual 
 and emotional departments. Meanwhile, the 
 lecturer himself has had abundance of time to 
 get the fires roaring in his own furnace and the 
 water jumping in his boilers. To his Miltonic 
 imagination, the country is a stranded ship fast 
 racking to pieces, and the human race already 
 nine-tenths annihilated through the worse than 
 Asiatic plague of Saleratus Bread. 
 
BIRD-BOLTS. 
 
 But, and here I enter my dogged and per- 
 sonal protest, he has no more business to start 
 me off at such a terrific rate, as he so often 
 begins with, than has an engineer on a railway 
 to fling me over the back of a seat, by letting 
 loose his train at a speed of forty miles an hour. 
 I claim a reserved right to have my inertia 
 respected and to be allowed time to get gradu- 
 ally into motion myself so as to keep up with 
 the locomotive. Quite another matter would it 
 be were I trying to hang back, a mere dead, con- 
 servative, " unprogressive " weight. Just the 
 contrary. I am anxious to be abreast with the 
 very band in the funeral procession of the 
 Republic. 
 
 But, and here once again I enter my protest. 
 I demand of the speaker that he shall kindle 
 and inflame my imagination by due and succes- 
 sive degrees. " Summon up, sir," I say to him 
 courteously yet resolutely, " Summon up, sir, 
 progressive pictures before my eyes of the 
 women of Maine and New Hampshire, lank 
 as herrings, and yellow as saffron, through the 
 monotonous nature of their saleratus diet. Make 
 me see the virulent chemicals actively eating 
 holes in their teeth, and fast reducing their 
 
HOW TO KINDLE FIRES. 67 
 
 hapless proprietors to the scriptural condition 
 in which ' the grinders shall cease because they 
 are few.' Enable me, in sympathetic heart- 
 burn, to feel how the indigestible iniquity is 
 keeping alive its inflammatory action in their 
 very vitals. Lead me along, solemn and slow, 
 with the mournful train to the burial-ground, 
 and then and there let me behold the maidens 
 and mothers of these ill-starred States lowered 
 into premature graves amid the sobs of their 
 alkali-bereaved lovers and husbands and chil- 
 dren. I am not a stone. I can weep as well 
 as the next man. Prove to me, slowly, delib- 
 erately, cumulatively, for I am a man whose 
 passions wait on his judgment, that the most 
 perfidious and diabolic of all the disguises of 
 the arch-enemy in the nineteenth century is 
 saleratus, and I'll do, — I don't know what I 
 will not do!" 
 
XII. 
 DREI-MAENNER-WEIK 
 
 PHE customs of different countries are, after 
 all, very much alike, endless variations, 
 in fact, on a few as familiar tunes as " Hail 
 Columbia" or "Home, Sweet Home." In the 
 flrst flush of novelty, the traveller in foreign 
 lands is forever imagining he has hit upon 
 something absolutely new, but which a little sub- 
 sequent reflection shows him to be nothing more 
 startling than his old grandmother in a new cap. 
 
 On the wing, it may be, through Germany, he 
 lights upon a certain execrable kind of wine 
 called " Drei-Maenner-Wein," or, "Three-Man- 
 Wine," and, on investigating the origin of so 
 extraordinary a title, he traces it back to the 
 popular belief that it takes three men to drink 
 the article, the first to serve as victim, the 
 second to hold the victim fast, and the third 
 to force the liquor down his throat. Of course 
 the mind of no intelligent traveller is going to 
 
DREI-MAENNER-WEIN. 69 
 
 stop at this point. How did the wine ever 
 come to be such execrable stuff? This, he 
 learns, was the logical result of subjecting the 
 grapes, after the last drop of legitimate juice 
 had been forced out of them, to a dousing with 
 water and an extra squeeze of the press so 
 stringent as to start out of the very skins and 
 stones their last principle of pucker y acridity. 
 
 " Extraordinary people, these Germans ! " the 
 traveller exclaims ; " first, that they should man- 
 ufacture such an article at all and call it wine; 
 second, that there should be any sort of demand 
 for it." 
 
 Sitting down on a stone at the base of a 
 ruined castle to ruminate the marvel, tender 
 memories of home come stealing over him un- 
 awares, till, through the silent working of that 
 miraculous principle of identity, which, in its 
 highest reaches, enables a Newton to see, m the 
 thud of an apple to the earth, the fall ot a 
 planet toward the sun, he suddenly starts to Iris 
 feet and breaks out: "Why, what is this, after 
 all, but the dear, old home phenomenon of 
 ' Deacon's cider,' that familiar, up-country arti- 
 cle begotten of soaking with water the apple 
 pomace out of which every drop of legitimate 
 
70 BIRD-BOLTS. 
 
 juice has been extracted, and then starting the 
 blind old horse to wind up such a Titanic squeeze 
 of the press that skin and seed have to yield up 
 their last reserved rights of pucker and tang." 
 Forthwith the traveller is no more an alien in 
 a foreign land, but feels his heart-strings thrilled 
 with that " one touch of nature that makes the 
 whole world kin." 
 
 Instead of journeying abroad to find wonders, 
 and crying " Eureka ! " over them, as Dr. John- 
 son says Goldsmith would have done, had he 
 been set down in Constantinople and there have 
 encountered a man trundling a wheelbarrow, 
 would it not be better first to look about one a 
 little at home ? Probably there is no portion of 
 the world where, in one form or another, the 
 demand for an article tantamount to " Deacon's 
 cider," or " Drei-Maenner-Wein," is so steady as 
 in New England. Only here, not merely grapes 
 and apples, but singers, preachers, editors, au- 
 thors, yes, and husbands, wives, and children, are 
 turned into the press, while the blind old horse 
 of the public goes round and round, winding up 
 a pressure of the screw that grimly means that 
 the last possible extract of headache, dyspepsia, 
 and nerve-waste shall be run into the vat of 
 newspaper, pulpit, and magazine. 
 
DREI-MAENNER-WEIN. 71 
 
 The story is told that when, some ten years 
 ago, the famous French Dominican preacher, 
 Father Hyacinthe, was in America, he felt a 
 strong desire to have a talk with Rev. Henry 
 Ward Beecher on the mysteries of their mutual 
 calling. Owing to a little difficulty, however 
 that had occurred some considerable time befor 
 in the construction of the Tower of Babel, nei- 
 ther one of the eminent divines could under- 
 stand a word the other said. So a woman of 
 great accomplishment, born and bred in France 
 but long resident in America, volunteered to 
 mediate between them as interpreter. 
 
 Among other things, the lady was afterward 
 accustomed to report of the conversation, was 
 her vivid sense of the horror expressed by 
 Father Hyacinthe when he came to learn the 
 quantity of preaching, exhorting, lecturing, etc., 
 done by Mr. Beecher. " I prepare a course of 
 twelve sermons a year," the famous Dominican 
 went on to say. "These I deliver in two or 
 three churches, after which I retire again to the 
 monastery to study, meditate, and pray till the 
 fountains are once more filled. It is wicked in 
 the public to make such a demand on you, Mr. 
 Beecher. It affects me with as much horror as 
 
72 BIRD-BOLTS. 
 
 though God had given to some woman a won- 
 derful voice, and a mob kept shouting W her 
 after every inspired flight, ' Sing it over agaw,' 
 till the beautiful organ became cracked and thin 
 beyond repair." Of course, the polished French- 
 man was too courteous to make any allusion to 
 " Deacon's cider," or " Drei-Maenner-Wein," and 
 confined his remarks wholly to his antipathy at 
 seeing the grapes of the divine spirit in man 
 subjected to an after-pressure that could force 
 out nothing but the products of material waste 
 from the physical tabernacle in which they are 
 enshrined. 
 
 It is a saying worthy of the generous heart of 
 Mr. Emerson, that 
 
 " The fiend that man harries 
 Is love of the best." 
 
 Unquestionably this is true. Man wants the 
 best, as the popular slang goes, " every time." 
 But there is just where the evil lies, and through 
 this insatiate desire he becomes an unwitting 
 fiend himself. " Sing it over again," is his prac- 
 tical cry to every nerve in his own body, and to 
 every nerve in the body of his favorite preacher, 
 soprano, or author. And the one reply of such 
 
DREI-MAENNER-WEIN. 73 
 
 tormented nerve is : "I will not and I cannot. 
 The inspiration is gone out. All that is left 
 is phosphates and carbonic acid. If you will 
 still work the lever of the press, this is the sum 
 total of what you will get." 
 
XIII. 
 
 WHIPPING THE GODS. 
 
 PO be able to thank God that one is "not 
 as other men are " is unquestionably to 
 many a great enhancement of the sweetness of 
 prayer. How cold had been the devotions of 
 the Pharisee in the impressive parable, but for 
 the eye he was able to cast now and then on the 
 disreputable publican, very properly too much 
 ashamed of himself to hold up his head like a 
 man before God ! And yet, spite of the best of 
 efforts, how cruelly is the comfort of this kind 
 of indulgence ever getting interfered with ! 
 
 At the first start, few things would seem to 
 cater more richly to the sense of spiritual supe- 
 riority than reading about the religious customs 
 of other ages and races. Look, for example, at 
 those extraordinary Chinese, and the way they 
 have of dealing with their gods in seasons of 
 drought and flood. For a while, and until mat- 
 ters get very bad, the curious creatures show 
 their deities every mark of respect, making 
 
WHIPPING THE GODS. 75 
 
 daily offerings to them of rice and incense. 
 But when, at last, such devotion plainly does no 
 good, and the drought increases, and the floods 
 rise higher, then does it begin to be felt that 
 resort must be had to more decisive measures. 
 Religion shall either mean something or noth- 
 ing. So, wrathfully are the sacred images 
 dragged out into the public square, and then 
 and there soundly whipped. With every lash, 
 taunts and insults are added. "A pretty god, 
 forsooth, who have had bushels of rice and 
 pounds of frankincense bestowed on you, and 
 here is the grain withering up or the fields a 
 foot deep in water ! " 
 
 Now, of course, as a devout Christian, the 
 reader is duly shocked at all this, and asks in his 
 humility, " Is it possible that the Chinaman and 
 I belong to the same religious species?" The 
 more he muses, the wider the abyss that opens 
 up between himself and the benighted idolater, 
 until, in a sudden flash of revelation, a Nathan 
 stands before him, and a voice rings out, " Thou 
 art the man! " 
 
 "I am the man ? What, I, child of Christian- 
 ity, heir of the science of the nineteenth century, 
 I whip the gods?" Stoutly is he disposed to 
 
76 BIRD-BOLTS. 
 
 dispute with the prophet his stern challenge, till 
 he finds himself borne down upon with a perti- 
 nacity of argument and instance that compels 
 silence. " Whip my gods ? " he cries, " When 
 and where? " "Every day of your life, in public 
 and in private." " But I have no brute images 
 to drag out and wreak myself on," he resolutely 
 answers. " Nay, but you make images, and on 
 them you vent no end of complaint and vexa- 
 tion, at times, of wrath and cursing." " When 
 and where, I demand once more." " Every day, 
 when you couple ugly names with the heat and 
 cold, and are at war with half the physical ordi- 
 nations of life ; every day, when you brood in 
 gloom that you have but one talent instead of 
 ten, when you sullenly demand why you were 
 ever put into such a world as this. Answer like 
 a man, Why do you indulge in all this but to 
 get relief, to wreak yourself on something, to 
 hurt some one, — plainly and bluntly to put it, 
 to make your god feel bad, to wake him, if you 
 can, to a sense of the shame and wrong of serv- 
 ing you after such a fashion. Now, whatever 
 lofty names you bestow on such heroic mood, 
 what does it all in reality amount to but to a 
 puerile and silly whipping of the gods ? " 
 
XIV. 
 
 THE NEW GOSPEL OF COLOR. 
 
 A SHORT run out of the city, and a look at 
 the painting of the villas that are going 
 up on every side, proves at a glance that the 
 most active and, perhaps, fanatic of the evan- 
 gelists of to-day are the apostles of the gospel 
 of color. Thirty years ago, all country houses 
 were white ; fifteen ago, gray or brown ; now all 
 the tints and dyes of the rainbow are let loose 
 on roof, rafter, and wall. Startling sensations 
 seem positively courted, and buildings stare out 
 on every hand that affect the color-sense as vio- 
 lently as hartshorn the nostrils or cayenne the 
 tongue. 
 
 Still, the new departure is one to be wel- 
 comed. In its first revolutionary fury, it will 
 have its fanatics, rampant as so many bulls in 
 the Madrid arena when the matador waves the 
 red flag ; but, like the bulls, such fanatics serve 
 only to emphasize how powerful the energy 
 
78 BIRD-BOLTS. 
 
 latent in color for exciting the emotional nature 
 in man and in brute. Time and experience will 
 teach how to regulate the dose of so active a 
 stimulant. 
 
 For two centuries, New England was color- 
 starved. Its very blood became so blanched as 
 hardly to suffice for a rosy blush or an emotional 
 glow. True, the apples would ripen red and 
 gold, the wild flowers spangle the grass with, 
 purple and crimson, and the sunset exhaust the 
 resources of the genius of God. But few paid 
 attention to such idle spectacles. And color 
 revenged itself on the neglect, refusing rich 
 flush to the faces and warmth and radiance 
 to the manners of those who so persistently 
 resisted the incarnation of its glories in their 
 veins. 
 
 Eminently practical, however, is this same 
 New England mind. Once let it master the 
 essential bearings of the truth that outside color 
 strikes in and tints and dyes the soul itself, that 
 an inexhaustible fuel-supply of illumination, 
 cheer, and glow lies stored away in Turkey 
 curtains, bright wall-papers, Japanese flags and 
 fans, geraniums and sun-flowers, and it will as 
 thoroughly appreciate the worth of the new 
 
THE NEW GOSPEL OF COLOR. 79 
 
 mines, now opening up, as were they of coal 
 and bitumen. Only let not the new discoverers 
 overwork them and bring on a glut in the 
 aesthetic market. 
 
 Here is a climate cold and snow-white for 
 four months of the year, raw, gray, and for- 
 bidding for three, — a climate telling chillingly 
 and depressingly on the affections and emotional 
 nature, while it whets to a razor-edge the per- 
 ceptions and intellect. Nor is this mere idle 
 fancy. Color and warmth are as palpably the 
 atmosphere in which love is generated, as is sun- 
 shine the realm m which roses bloom and distil 
 their perfumes. The woman who yearns to 
 keep glowing the affections of her husband, let 
 her look to it that he shall frequently see her 
 bathed in the rich pulsations of the sunshine 
 streaming through a Turkey-red curtain. 
 
 Curious is it to note, on a tramp through the 
 mountains with a friend, the contrasted effect 
 on their minds of a clear but colorless, and a 
 rich and prismatic day. They are climbing- 
 Mount Adams ; the sky is monotonously trans- 
 parent, the most distant mountains stand out 
 sharp and denned, while every nearer rock, tree, 
 flower, is fairly obtrusive in its individuality. 
 
80 BIRD-BOLTS. 
 
 What an utterly unsentimental couj)le, these 
 bosom friends ! Listen to their talk: it is purely 
 intellectual and observant. The geological 
 structure of the mountains, the name of this 
 peak or that far away, the distance of yonder 
 village, the genus and species of such a wild- 
 flower, — these are the subjects that engross 
 them wholly. 
 
 Watch this same pair of friends on another 
 day,— a day of orchestral, symphonic color. 
 They are lovers, they are poets. The fountains 
 of emotion are broken up. Eyes gleam, cheeks 
 glow, feeling and imagination are flowing. All 
 the glory of God has descended to greet them. 
 Look down into the purple-black abyss of that 
 stupendous gulf ! Follow up the hues and tints, 
 in their infinite gradations through crimson and 
 lake, to the opal, to the sapphire of yonder 
 opposite peak ! Oh, the resplendent burst of 
 flaming gold on that flank of Washington, the 
 entrancing paradise of the meadows and shining 
 river of the Randolph Valley ! 
 
 ' ' In such access of mind, in such high hour 
 Of visitation from the living God, 
 Thought is not, in enjoyment it expires. 
 No thanks they breathe, they proffer no request: 
 
THE NEW GOSPEL OF COLOR. 81 
 
 Rapt into still communion that transcends 
 The imperfect offices of prayer and praise, 
 Their mind is a thanksgiving to the power 
 That made it: it is blessedness and love! " 
 
 Surely, it means something that all through 
 the ages, from the rudest mythology of the 
 savage to the supremest flights of a Dante or 
 Milton, the soul of man has always been com- 
 pelled to feel through color just as it thinks 
 through light : that mountain-tops of opal, sap- 
 phire, ruby, rivers of gold and silver, meadows 
 of emerald green, angels of radiant face or iris- 
 hued robe, have alone matched its yearnings in 
 its visions of heaven; fiery flames, wide-rolling 
 and devastating fires alone, in its visions of hell. 
 
XV. 
 
 OWNING AND BEING OWNED. 
 
 T N this clock-work world, action and reaction 
 are forever equal. Nowhere does this Dra- 
 conian law assert itself more inexorably than 
 in the domain of property of every kind. Let 
 a man own anything, — a cow, for example. 
 How long before he discovers, in the most literal 
 fashion, that the cow owns him equally, — his 
 services at milking-time, his wages for a substi- 
 tute in that matin and vesper libation, a lien on 
 his income for supplies of hay and meal? The 
 rope that has one end round her neck always 
 contrives to noose the other end round his. 
 Into the carpet or china store goes the wife, 
 and feels how delightful to be mistress of those 
 thick Turkey rugs and heavy woollen curtains, 
 those vases, bubble-thin glasses, and like siren- 
 shapes of exquisite fragility. How long, alas! 
 before moths and Hibernian image-breakers 
 begin to assert reactionary ownership over her 
 
OWNING AND BEING OWNED. 60 
 
 time and temper ? Meanwhile, her husband, the 
 merchant, has succumbed to the like fate, as 
 the railroad and factory stocks he thought to 
 own have humorously turned the tables on him, 
 and own him, his leisure, digestion, sleep. 
 
 If there is any class of teachers that needs to 
 be listened to in this materialized age, it is the 
 emancipators who, like Wordsworth and Tho- 
 reau, consecrated themselves to the gospel of 
 Plain Living and High Thinking. Here were 
 the type who began life with going out into 
 the wilderness and being tempted of the devil, 
 whether they would yoke themselves into a 
 cart and draw the mere muck of custom all 
 their days, or live for some freedom and play 
 of mind. Never men who recognized, with 
 clearer head, that no one can own anything but 
 that that same thing must likewise own him. 
 So they made up their minds to do without 
 a thousand possessions they saw demanding 
 endless drudge-work and belittling care. But 
 some things they would own. They would own 
 nature. Very well, then nature must own them, 
 — the glow of their hearts, the reverent study 
 of their minds. These they gave, and the bond- 
 age was perfect liberty. One other thing they 
 
84 BIRD-BOLTS. 
 
 would own, — genuine, heartfelt, human associa- 
 tion, not the mockery substitute of mere rounds 
 of ceremonial calls. Very well, then their 
 friends must own them, joy in their joy, tears 
 for their tears, amplest hospitality of soul, if 
 not turbot and champagne. Thus did the lives 
 of these men become free, invigorating, and 
 religious. 
 
 Oh, the delicate irony of life, the laughing in 
 the sleeve at poor rich-men of every stamp ! 
 Here is an odd mortal who plumes himself on 
 his library of five thousand selected volumes, 
 -which, by the way, he omits to read. Along 
 comes some poor student and borrows them of 
 him, one by one. Out of them he tears the 
 heart, sinews, and marrow. Which of the two 
 really owns the books, — he of the legal title, or 
 he whose mind has become enriched with the 
 organ harmonies of Milton, the massive wisdom 
 of Burke, the marvel-world of Shakspere? 
 
 Surely, it is a serious matter, this getting 
 laughed..- at in so sly and ironical a fashion. If 
 the great Soame Jenyns may be trusted, the 
 angels in heaven are kept in perpetual play 
 of- humor through "their addiction to thus mak- 
 ing merry over the pranks of mortals. Might 
 
OWNING AND BEING OWNED. 8o 
 
 it not therefore prove a dignified counter-stroke 
 against such celestial risibilities, for men, once 
 in a while, to take deliberate account of all they 
 suppose is theirs. Come, now, you say you 
 own, or, if you prefer the word, possess a supe- 
 rior wife. Well, how much of her do you own, 
 — her thorough-going confidence, her pride in 
 your chivalrous devotion, her finest sensibility 
 for nature, literature, religion, or merely her 
 services as upper housekeeper? If the last 
 only, then all the outside world, capable of finer 
 appreciation, owns an hundred-fold deeper in 
 her gifts and graces than you. Is not this, after 
 all, the worst kind of practical divorce? Mar- 
 ried, and yet not married ! So near, and yet so 
 far! 
 
 You think, in yet farther summary of your 
 goods, you can name, say, a family of children. 
 Well, out with it honestly ! how much do you 
 own in them, — their joyousness, their radiant 
 trust in you, the blessed relationship of guide 
 to their opening intelligence and character, or 
 merely the privilege of keeping them in clothes 
 and shoes ? If the latter alone, then every in- 
 spiring teacher they have owns in them a thou- 
 sand-fold more ; nay, every chance passer-by 
 
$6 BIRD-BOLTS. 
 
 who stops to God bless them, as they coast 
 merrily down the hillside, and renew in him a 
 sympathetic thrill with their spring-time of life. 
 Ah ! real ownership goes very deep and high. 
 Even the law allows a man, in his land, every- 
 thing from the surface to the zenith. 
 
XVI. 
 
 -THE MAXIM OF WAR." 
 
 T T was Napoleon's famous maxim that the 
 whole art of war consisted in knowing how 
 to concentrate a heavier mass at a given point 
 than the enemy could bring to bear. No matter 
 though the whole opposing army outnumber 
 yours ten to one, if you can outnumber it two 
 to one, where the actual struggle is made, there 
 you are the victor. The three hundred at Ther- 
 mopylae kept back the whole Persian host, for 
 the simple reason that in the narrow defile the 
 whole Persian host could not get at them all at 
 once, and the Greeks were better men than those 
 that could, fast and frequent as they came on. 
 
 All successful warfare is conducted on this 
 principle. Little children get at the pith of the 
 maxim by a sort of diabolic instinct, and, with 
 it, contrive to rout their parents, horse and foot. 
 Not that the fathers and mothers are not the 
 stronger and wiser of the two, but that the 
 
88 BIRD-BOLTS. 
 
 children know how to concentrate at a given 
 point a hideous intensity of yell, or to set on an 
 epileptic convulsion of sobs and tears, that no 
 slow-moving forces of judgment can be massed 
 in time to resist. Later on, the parents see 
 their military mistake. So do most generals 
 after they have lost the day. But it is then too 
 late to try the thing over again. 
 
 Lightning-rod agents are resplendent illustra- 
 tions of the power of this same principle. Give 
 them ten minutes, and they can mass and pre- 
 cipitate on the imagination such a frightful com- 
 bination of rolling thunders, blinding flashes, 
 shattered houses, and wives and children cal- 
 cined to ashes, that the wariest old householder, 
 who holds latent in the background of his mind, 
 like the Dutchman's anchor, the indubitable 
 fact that there has not been a building struck 
 in the village for ten years, comes suddenly to 
 think that the habitual atmospheric condition is 
 a mixture of rafters, women, children, and wrath 
 to come. To this he succumbs. When the bill 
 is presented, he wishes he had not. But it is 
 then too late. The lightning-rod man is off for 
 " fresh fields and pastures new." 
 
 Every outlook on the world that permits it 
 
"THE MAXIM OF WAR." 89 
 
 to mass the entire army of its perils, diseases, 
 wrongs, and sorrows, and to bring them to bear 
 all at once on the imagination, is sure to entail 
 panic and defeat. Such an outlook is as false 
 as the visions of a nightmare. It is with the 
 will of man in the great battle of life as it is 
 with an Atlantic steamship in her battle with 
 the ocean. Grand an embodiment of power as 
 is the steamship, still what is she to the ele- 
 mental forces of the ocean she defies? No 
 more than the first faint sigh of an infant to 
 a tropical hurricane. No more than the trem- 
 bling of a leaf to the shock of an earthquake. 
 Think of the Atlantic or the Pacific at its 
 year-long work, battering down cliffs of trap 
 and granite, grinding vast rock-masses to finest 
 sand, rolling up enormous bars to dam in an 
 Amazon or a Ganges. Can the little steamer 
 throw down her gauntlet to this Titanic Conti- 
 nent-Leveller ? Can her petty thousand-horse 
 power think to take issue with this pandemo- 
 nium of dragon and demon power ? No ! not 
 for a moment. She will never be called upon to 
 do it. Napoleon-like, she needs only to hold 
 fast the grand maxim of the whole art of war, 
 and to be the stronger of the two at the actual 
 
90 BIRD-BOLTS. 
 
 point of attack. True, the ocean is mighty, but 
 then it is vast and outspread. True, the power 
 of gales is terrific, but then they are howling all 
 abroad over the wide surface of the deep. Not 
 a tithe, not a millionth part of their combined 
 might can be brought to bear on a single point. 
 Look now at the steamship. She is all at hand 
 upon the spot, "a fiery mass of living valor." 
 Let the battering ram of the waves do its worst, 
 she is a battering- ram too, that can strike still 
 heavier blows. The particles of the waves do 
 not cohere, but hers do with iron tenacity. The 
 waves are brutal and awkward in the blows 
 they strike ; she, in her very build, is like the 
 ward of a skilful boxer, parrying the strokes of 
 a giant clown. Then peer into the white-hot 
 heart of her furnaces, and see how she is aglow 
 to the core with passion. Feel sympathetically 
 the Titan heave of the steam as it shoulders 
 round the enormous shafts. Ton for ton, blow 
 for blow, the steamship is the heavier mass, the 
 fiercer momentum at the point of attack, and so 
 she wins the day. 
 
 No man ever crossed the Atlantic without 
 sharing at times a feeling of the sublime sym- 
 bolism of this scene. How poor mortality 
 
" THE MAXIM OF WAR." 91 
 
 trembles in affright as it looks off over the 
 great elemental sea of human life. What help- 
 less atoms men seem! It is no fair contest, 
 they cry, pitting us manikins against such brutal, 
 blind, and overwhelming forces. How shall we 
 hold our bodies' health against these malarias, 
 chills, heats, this fever of work, this rack of 
 care ? How shall we keep our souls' health in 
 this wild sea of temptation and allurement? 
 Let the stanch little steamship impart its simple 
 secret. No man is called on to fight this whole 
 " sea of troubles " all at once. It cannot all, it 
 cannot a thousandth part of it, get at him in 
 a given hour in any other way but through the 
 falsifying imagination that summons it up in a 
 flash. 
 
 "Had I known what was before me in my 
 work of reform," said Luther, " ten horses would 
 never have dragged me into it." But this was 
 retrospect. This was the expression of a mo- 
 ment when all the toils and woes of forty years 
 were focused in imagination upon the feeble 
 will-power of the present hour. He did get 
 through with his work, nevertheless, and heroic- 
 ally. All that is demanded for victory is that a 
 man be a match for what assails him at the 
 
92 BIRD-BOLTS. 
 
 actual point of attack, that, steamship-like, he 
 shoulder the immediate wave out of the way 
 and then press on for the next one. The vast 
 mass of the storm can but howl impotently in 
 the offing. Let him fight one acre of ocean at a 
 time. If king within that space, he is king all 
 the way across the broad Atlantic. 
 
XVII. 
 
 PERFUME AND AROMA. 
 
 T N the chemical analysis of delicate wines, de- 
 licious fruits, fragrant flowers, it is found 
 that the peculiar volatile essences that impart to 
 them the aroma of their perfume and the ex- 
 quisiteness of their flavors, are almost infinitesi- 
 mally minute in quantity. Compared with the 
 mere* bulk of the water, the carbon, the mineral 
 salts that are the main constituents of poet- 
 chanted lily or grape, alike as of homely potato- 
 blossom or beet, these more* refined and subli- 
 mated distillations of nature are scarcely appre- 
 ciable in weight. And yet it is precisely the 
 presence and diffusion of such ethereal essences 
 in and through the grosser mass that lift up 
 the rarest products of nature and art into a 
 class by themselves and make them so coveted 
 by man. Leave these rare distillations out, and 
 it would be as though some malignant fairy had 
 suddenly transformed a luscious melon into a 
 
94 BIRD-BOLTS. 
 
 eommon marrow, a fragrant peach into a coarse 
 turnip. 
 
 It is a dangerous thing, then, underrating 
 minute and delicate spiritualities of essence and 
 judging by gross bulk of quantity. That mirac- 
 ulous natu^k environing man would teach him a 
 far different lesson, were he but devout and 
 responsive enough to give ear to her subtler 
 teachings. Finger on lip, and in hushed, ador-. 
 ing whisper, would she bid him note how the 
 more than Apocalyptic vision he is beholding in 
 the sunset-transfiguration of earth and sky, as 
 they mirror themselves in the tranquil lake, 
 reflecting the crystal dome of the heavens, the 
 burning clouds, the aerial mountains, and near- 
 overhanging trees and grasses, turns — the whole 
 possibility of the revelation — but on the pres- 
 ence or the absence of the faintest breath of air. 
 And yet, perhaps at the very moment, and as 
 he stands lost in the glory and the dream, there 
 breaks in upon him one he so devoutly wishes 
 could but learn the secret of nature. Alas ! the 
 man mirrors nothing, he has no repose of being 
 on whose hushed and tranquil plane the harmo- 
 nious unity of life's reflections can glass them- 
 selves; on his surface is perpetual agitation, 
 
PERFUME AND AROMA. 95 
 
 breaking into jangled bits the noble outlines of 
 the mountains, the color-symphony of the sun- 
 set, the gracious curves of the overhanging 
 trees. Only a little, a very little breeze is it 
 that is perpetually setting on his jigging wave- 
 lets. But it is enough : they spoil everything. 
 
 The most priceless dower Christianity con- 
 ferred on the world lay in the spirit of more 
 delicate appreciation it communicated of what 
 might be called the rarer and more sublimated 
 aromas of life. In the highest sense of the 
 word, — ■ and as the very breathing of the celes- 
 tial genius of its Founder, — it was the religion 
 of that realm in the soul in which poetry and 
 sentiment are the primal conditions of happy 
 being. Cradled in poverty, it yet — and that, 
 too, in a very literal sense — seemed even to feel 
 it could get along without necessaries if only it 
 had luxuries. It revelled in feeling. It cared 
 more for the sympathetic tone of voice in which 
 a kindly act was done than for the material 
 content of the act. It loved the cordial grasp, 
 the sunny smile, more even than the proffered 
 clothing or food. 
 
 Need it be asked what, in the mill-round of 
 this work-day world, it is that most surely stirs 
 
BIRD-BOLTS. 
 
 the heart of man, woman, or child to conscious 
 love and gratitude ? Evermore that which quick- 
 ens to life the frayed and jaded nerves and 
 thrills through the soul the luxury of a smile, a 
 tear, a cry of admiration, a sweet solace of 
 peace ! This is it which in all ages has made 
 the poet, the humorist, the eloquent preacher, 
 the son of consolation, so dear to the hearts of 
 his fellows. To feel themselves living souls and 
 not mere machines, to have rich chords of 
 music struck out of their resonant strings, herein 
 lies the deepest yearning in human beings. And 
 precisely here is touched the living reason why 
 the jDoorest of the poor so often love far more 
 heartily the man or woman who exchanges 
 the simple greetings of the day with them after 
 a cheery, human-hearted fashion, lingers admir- 
 ingly over their one rose-bush in the yard, or 
 tosses and gives a kiss to their crowing baby, 
 than they do the one who, in a reserved and 
 unemotional way, has left them an order for a 
 warm coat or a ton of coah 
 
XVIII. 
 
 LONG STRIDES AND SHORT. 
 
 IV/TANY a pedestrian journey among the 
 White Mountains, promising no end of 
 exhilaration and delight, has been brought to 
 grief through the simple fact of its being under- 
 taken by* a short-legged man in the company of 
 a long-legged one. Vast aspiration of soul may 
 no doubt go with diminutive stride of limb, but, 
 none the less, aspiration means little more than 
 perspiration, unless backed by the requisite phys- 
 ical quality. The pace kills, and instead of sur- 
 plus spirits with which to enjoy the fine scenery 
 and bubble over in all manner of pleasant talk, 
 the poor, broken-winded lagger has no other 
 sense but of aching muscles and panting lungs. 
 A few days of unremitting strain, and the 
 iron has entered into his soul. He begins to 
 hate long-legged men. They take on the guise 
 of oppressors and tyrants who go through the v 
 world ruthlessly trampling down all capacity of 
 
98 BIRD-BOLTS. 
 
 enjoyment in others, and this simply that they 
 themselves may revel in the brutal satisfaction 
 of showing off the merits of their own seven- 
 league boots. 
 
 A great deal of shallow discussion has been 
 indulged in as to why it is that really great and 
 good men are so often hated in their day and 
 generation. To account for the fact, all sorts 
 of calumnies have been vented against human 
 nature. But a large part of these are sheer ab- 
 surdities. Great men get themselves hated on 
 the pedestrian journey of life upon precisely the 
 same principle as long-legged men on the walk 
 through the White Mountains. They swing 
 along at so terrific a pace that well-nigh every 
 one who attempts to follow them in mathematics, 
 logic, reform, religion, finds himself blown and 
 full of misery. To them, with their seven-league 
 boots of intellect, imagination, conscience, and 
 courage, the gait at which they travel seems 
 merely a fine exhilaration. 
 
 Of the very essence of great men, moreover, 
 is it that, through the magnetic quality of their 
 natures, they unconsciously inflame the feebler 
 to a cruel degree of strain. With the best of 
 possible intentions, they load down average 
 
LONG STRIDES AND SHORT. 99 
 
 humanity with a burden under which it reels 
 and faints, and then cry, « Start off with it now 
 across country: leap fences, jump ditches! 
 Glorious, is it not ? " No ; it is not glorious to 
 the cart-horse to try it neck and neck with the 
 racer. Just this experience was it through 
 which sweet, devout, and faithful Philip Me- 
 lanchthon came finally to regard the nation- 
 shaking Luther as such nightmare oppression to 
 his own soul, and would, had he confessed the 
 truth, have been so glad to preach his funeral 
 sermon' All praise and glory to the Luthesi 
 His spirit renovated Europe. But a word of 
 pity and justice for the Melanchthon likewise. 
 It did him no good, it often broke and hurt him 
 to be galvanized night and day by a battery go 
 powerful as to paralyze instead of invigorate 
 his less vigorous faculties. 
 
 Entirely apart, however, from the question of 
 great men and little, all through life is witnessed 
 the spectacle of the oppressive and often piteous 
 tyranny unconsciously exercised by strong over 
 weak natures. What more terrible ip a small 
 way, for example, than to behold one of those 
 men or women of an elastic, buoyant tempera- 
 ment, who sheds all troubles as a duck's back 
 
100 BIRD-BOLTS. 
 
 sheds water, let loose, to comfort him, on some 
 fellow-creature of a despondent make-up, who 
 has met a severe misfortune ? Nature creates 
 types of such exuberant vitality in their way of 
 taking all manner of blights and evils, that one 
 is forced to look in vain through the whole 
 realm of animal or vegetable existence for any- 
 thing to parallel them with, till, in an hour of 
 inspiration, he bethinks himself of an asparagus 
 bed. Lay them low, every green shoot, this 
 morning, and they are all up again and erect 
 as soldiers on the morrow. They positively 
 thrive on cutting down. a Bring on your 
 knives," they exultingly cry; "we like it! 
 Let's see which will come out ahead ! " 
 
 All honor to the lusty asparagus ! Who but 
 admires such vigor and pluck. But when, in- 
 stead of giving thanks for the especial grace 
 that is bestowed on it, it goes forth on a dog- 
 matic mission, and insists that all peas and 
 beans, yea, and corn, tomatoes, and the whole 
 vegetable world, could do just the same, if they 
 only had a mind to, aye, and are wicked, cow- 
 ardly, and corrupt for not doing so, then surely 
 may a modest demurrer be put in. And yet 
 this is precisely the way in which so many a 
 
LONG STRIDES AND SHORT. 101 
 
 widow, who has survived three husbands and 
 come up fresh and smiling for a fourth, thinks 
 to draw nigh and breathe comfort into the 
 heart of a poor broken-hearted sister who feels 
 she has buried her all with her one. So much 
 comfort cannot be taken at once. 
 
 The drift of all this is not of course that the 
 highly endowed sons and daughters of earth, 
 overflowing with health, intellect, courage, and 
 faith, should be abolished for the benefit of the 
 feebler ones. Surely there is a way in which 
 such natures ought to inure to the benefit of all. 
 But the only method through which they can 
 really do this is by some heed being paid to the 
 doctrine 'of degrees,. In literature, the Dantes, 
 Shaksperes, Miltons, and Goethes are for those, 
 and those only, akin, in some small measure at 
 least, to a like range of intellect and flight 
 of imagination. To set out to force prema- 
 turely on ordinary minds these Olympians is 
 simply to breed a miserable sense that all at- 
 tempt at enjoying literature means exhaustion 
 and despair, is only to make these giants the 
 scourge and oppression of minds that might be 
 awakened to a measure of intellectual life under 
 a stimulus better adapted to their feebler powers. 
 
XIX. 
 
 VICIOUS VIRTUES. 
 
 'T > HE world at large entertains too contracted 
 notions on the subject of self-indulgence. 
 Speak of this vice, and away flies the mind 
 forthwith to a few stock cases of the people who 
 are given to over-eating, over-smoking, over- 
 drinking. This will never do. All mankind 
 tend to self-indulgence. It was the sage remark 
 of an observant teacher, who had received into 
 his boarding-school the son of one of the noblest 
 men of the land : " The boy has been nine- 
 tenths ruined by the exalted self-sacrifice of his 
 father. It has made of the fellow nothing but a 
 horse-leech of selfishness." In point of fact, the 
 father had utterly over-indulged in the pleasure 
 his benevolent nature took in doing for others; 
 and no rational progress will ever be made in 
 public opinion till excesses like these are openly 
 exposed in the same pillory with surfeits in food 
 and bouts in drink. 
 
VICIOUS VIRTUES. 103 
 
 The simple truth is that human nature takes 
 a wild delight in exercising its strongest powers. 
 One man's vitality lies in his vigorous senses, 
 another's in his energetic brain, another's in his 
 impulsive heart. Give him something to do in 
 any one of these special ways, and he is on the 
 alert in a moment. Summon him, on the con- 
 trary, to anything that puts bit and bridle on 
 them, and he is as fretted as a race-horse yoked 
 to a plough. 
 
 Perhaps in no one direction does a more mis- 
 chievous mania set in than among the class who 
 are always on a craze to sacrifice themselves for 
 others, and that for the very reason that the 
 thing they are doing seems so generous and 
 self-forgetful. The number is legion, who fairly 
 revel in the extremest self-indulgence in self- 
 sacrifice, too dead in earnest so much as to smile 
 at the odd contradiction. Sometimes, it is a 
 teacher so importunate to put himself to every 
 conceivable trouble to save his pupil the pain of 
 personal effort that he is working the boy as 
 positive harm as though he were to hamstring 
 him. Sometimes, it is a mother, with whom self- 
 sacrifice has grown to be so delirious a passion 
 that she actually glories in being as thin as a 
 
104 BIRD-BOLTS. 
 
 rail and tired as a cab-horse in the consecrated 
 work of sparing her daughters the necessity of 
 doing a thing that will save them from becom- 
 ing the burden and plague of the men who, 
 some day, will have the misfortune to marry 
 them. 
 
 It is a serious question how many victims 
 self-abandoned devotees have a right to immo- 
 late to their own mere pleasure. Has not the 
 innocent school-boy a modest claim not to be 
 hamstrung at so early a stage in life ? Has not 
 the girl, who eventually will be forced to bake 
 bread and sweep a room, some plea for a rem- 
 nant of muscle and knowledge to do it with? 
 Suppose the teacher has had a happy time of 
 it; suppose the mother is as thin as a rail, or 
 thinner even. Cannot too high a price be paid 
 for individual luxuries ? 
 
 The fact is, in nine-tenths of these cases, all 
 that is witnessed by those who are lauding such 
 examples is as thorough a prostration of ra- 
 tional self-control beneath a blind passion as 
 may be fallen in with at the counter of any bar- 
 room, at which the old stand-bys appear from 
 hour to hour to take their drams. The one set 
 have become dependent upon an alcoholic, the 
 
VICIOUS VIRTUES. 105 
 
 other upon a self-sacrificing tipple ; and it is an 
 even question which class of the two is doing 
 most harm to their families by unresisted indul- 
 gence in evil habit. 
 
 Of course, all victims of chronic intemperance 
 are to be pitied. Hard, hard is it to prevail on 
 them to reform. But could not a society be in- 
 augurated, with banners and white satin badges, 
 if need be, whose mission it should be to prevail 
 on, say, some of these mothers, too far gone for 
 self-help, to suffer themselves to be tied up, 
 for an hour at a time daily, to a bed-post, where 
 it would be impossible for them to get at a 
 broom, a duster, or a pair of scissors, and then 
 and there struggle to look on in self-control, 
 while their daughters try whether they cannot 
 do some little thing to help themselves ? True, 
 the position would be one of agony. But recov- 
 ery from enthralling habit is always agony. So 
 it is from opium, so from tobacco, so from 
 whiskey. Why should self-sacrifice be the only 
 exception ? With so much at stake for the wel- 
 fare of others, would not an effort at abstinence 
 from a rootedly selfish indulgence be worth the 
 price demanded ? 
 
XX. 
 
 THE ALARMING INCREASE OF POODLES. 
 
 PHE day has come when no weak shrinking 
 from the infliction of pain ought longer 
 to hold back the press and pulpit from sounding 
 a note of warning against a danger more threat- 
 ening to the highest interests of society than 
 fusion frauds in Maine or "bulldozing" in the 
 South. Grave as are these latter evils, there 
 goes with them, at least, a degree of cunning, 
 resolution, and brazen effrontery that serves to 
 sharpen the wits and develop the muscle of the 
 young republic ; and as long as the State pre- 
 serves its virility, even though such virility work 
 itself off in drinking bouts and desperate fight- 
 ing, there is still hope. 
 
 In the item of poodles, however, and the immi- 
 nent peril with which they menace all that is 
 softest in the heart and weakest in the brain of 
 women, no such mitigating plea can be urged. 
 On every hand is the evil spreading, till already 
 is there witnessed a vii'tual immolation of the 
 
THE ALARMING INCREASE OF POODLES. 107 
 
 affections and intellect of thousands of the sex 
 on the idolatrous shrine of six-ounce, rheumy- 
 eyed, rag bundles of microscopic dogs. 
 
 It is a momentous epoch in every life when 
 the hour comes to it to decide to what object it 
 will consecrate the strongest energies and finest 
 sensibilities* of the being. And, therefore, is it 
 perhaps not to be wondered at that so many a 
 young woman stands in long hesitation on the 
 brink between the Church and a six-ounce dog- 
 ling. Say what one will in behalf of the Church, 
 is not the poodle, like the poor, always with 
 one ? Will not wicked fleas ravage his sensitive 
 skin, unless tender hands offer their ministries 
 to soap him and dry him off, and comb out his 
 silken hair? In his unredeemed nature, will he 
 not take to gnawing bones in a gutter, unless a 
 more delicate instinct be developed in him for 
 coffee and French rolls in the morning and 
 breast of chicken at dinner? Nay, and then, 
 too, his pathetic shapes of illness, teething, 
 mange, fits: what heart could cruelly abandon 
 him untended, uncaressed, to these ? Once more, 
 then, no wonder that, against the combined 
 strength of such a plea, the Church so often fails 
 to carry the day. 
 
108 BIRD-BOLTS. 
 
 The first and foremost ill effect of this idol- 
 atry is witnessed more in the brain of the dev- 
 otee than even in the fits of the dog. At a 
 glance are detected the signs of cerebral soften- 
 ing, as a silly, doting expression usurps the place 
 of the former lines of broader and more rational 
 affection. Not so does a woman look who is 
 beaming love on a child or rapture on a brave 
 young fellow. 
 
 Alas for poor Psyche Skye or Beatrice Black- 
 and-Tan ! she has no intellect. An inarticulate 
 lingo, and that of the most idiotic type, is all 
 that can be indulged in with her in the most 
 soul-subduing hour. The brain must be con- 
 tracted to the nutshell of her diminutive com- 
 pass. True, it may be urged in compensation, 
 she still appeals to the tenderest sensibilities. 
 Do not her weak eyes run, and the wicked fleas 
 bite her? Does she not go off into pathetic 
 convulsions in her fits? Yes, no doubt; but, 
 still, intellect and affection must work together 
 to evolve a perfect woman. To be mated with 
 what summons out no energy nor range of 
 thought is infallibly to degenerate. Alas ! the 
 logic of the consecrated life is stern and iron- 
 linked. The mistress must immolate her own 
 
THE ALARMING INCREASE OF POODLES. 109 
 
 intellect on the shrine of her poodle. Then 
 alone will the last obstacle be removed to the 
 perfect oneness of the union, and the tender 
 sensibilities well up in maudlin gush. 
 
 Touching, indeed, though unconvincing, is it 
 on one's summer travels to witness the devotion 
 to which these' exquisitely developed sensibilities 
 will prompt. Not a stage that arrives at the 
 Glen House or at Crawford's but at least one 
 agonized woman emerges from it in terror as to 
 the effect the bracing mountain air will exert on 
 her poodle or black-and-tan. She must have a 
 room with a south exposure and a fireplace. 
 All day must she sit on the piazza, with her back 
 to the scenery, and keep watch lest some large 
 and brutal dog should suddenly swallow Psyche 
 whole. To breakfast and to dinner must she 
 carry the dainty dear, and feed it with her own 
 fork, and wipe its little muzzle with her napkin, 
 though hard-hearted and callous j^eople are im- 
 precating all around her. "It's a harsh and 
 cruel world we live in, isn't it, Psyche, sweet ? ' 
 she croons in tender comfort to the nervously 
 trembling mite. And thus are witnessed m her 
 the last stages of a growing type of imbecility, 
 which, unless stern measures are taken to repress 
 
110 BIRD-BOLTS. 
 
 it, is inevitably bound to destroy the republic in 
 the persons of the coming wives and mothers 
 of the land. The day for temporizing is gone. 
 Man must fight for dear life for his hold on the 
 heart and head of woman. A rival has stepped 
 into the field, with whom it will no longer do 
 to trifle. 
 
 Is it to be wondered at, then, that so many 
 a thorn-pierced and writhing reformer finds it 
 harder and harder to stand by and hold his 
 peace ? Bear his testimony he must. Else will 
 the very stones cry out. Aye, and often, when 
 his heart is hot within him, does he wish they 
 only would, and that, too, with a troop of brutal 
 school-boys to emphasize the cry, and, in the 
 distance, a vista of wildly scattering poodles and 
 black-and-tans fleeing the wrath to come. 
 
XXI. 
 
 THE MIND BEHIND THE EYE. 
 
 PHE mariner's compass would no doubt be a 
 far more satisfactory guide to sail a ship 
 by, if it were not such a fly-away, tricksy kind 
 of spirit. And yet the well-known attempt of 
 the Dutch navigator to keep it steady by driv- 
 ing a nail through it did not turn out a real 
 improvement. In fact, the extreme sensibility 
 of the compass to impressions, precisely as the 
 like with genius in poet or musician, is the one 
 thing that makes it valuable. All that can be 
 wisely done, therefore, is to study and allow for 
 its habits of eccentricity, to construct tables of 
 its variations, and to note carefully what effect 
 is exerted on it by the proximity of any iron on 
 board the ship itself. Such j)erturbations taken 
 into account, the needle proves an invaluable 
 monitor. 
 
 Those tremulous, sensitive, magnetic needles, 
 — heart, intellect, conscience, imagination, — 
 
112 BIRD-BOLTS. 
 
 with which man undertakes to steer his course in 
 life, do they not lie equally exposed to all manner 
 of deceptive perturbations? How long, for ex- 
 ample, can any thoughtful married couple live 
 together without finding they have compasses 
 on hoard of differing variations, and that thus, 
 while each thinks to be sailing on exactly the 
 same course and steering for precisely the same 
 port, they are in reality often opening up so 
 diverging an angle between their tracks that, 
 at this rate, the one will arrive out in Liverpool, 
 while the other drops anchor way south in 
 Gibraltar ? 
 
 As an absolute preliminary, therefore, toward 
 keeping within hailing distance of one another, 
 they rationally set to work to compare com- 
 passes, and by degrees learn to construct prac- 
 tical working tables as to how many points of 
 variation must be allowed for Mary's constitu- 
 tional susceptibility to extravagance or volu- 
 bility, and how many for John's equal tendency 
 toward an over-despondent or over-captious 
 view of things. And so, by degrees, they come 
 to be of real service to one another, — better 
 than angels, loyal ship-mates on the great 
 voyage of life, — as many a wry-steering hus- 
 
THE MIND BEHIND THE EYE. 113 
 
 band is forced to acknowledge, when too long 
 separated from his wife and left to his own 
 uncorrected compass; and many a wry-steering 
 wife, to hers. * 
 
 No such signal mark ol the difference between 
 a rational and an irrational being can be in- 
 stanced as the degree in which either one of 
 them recognizes and acts upon the truth, that 
 men see not with the eye, but with the mind 
 behind the eye, and that the state of the mind — 
 whether, for example, depressed or sanguine — 
 exercises as palpable an influence over what is 
 seen as the medium of panes of blue or red glass 
 over the landscape, turning in the one instance 
 a glowing July mid-day into a dreary winter of 
 snow, and, in the other, setting forest and sky 
 on fire. And yet it is doubtful whether the 
 most reflective heads begin to estimate the 
 distorting or harmonizing effect wrought over 
 external objects by varying moods and passions 
 or degrees of cultivation. Nay, these imperfect 
 mental lenses do more than simply distort : they 
 actually shut out from the field of vision whole 
 ranges of real objects. 
 
 You know and I know certain men and women 
 at the approach of whom we always hide the 
 
114 BIRD-BOLTS. 
 
 deepest, sweetest, and most eloquent side of our 
 being as instinctively as we would our purse in 
 the presence of a pickpocket. And this for the 
 same reason that geranium leaves shrivel up 
 before the cold. Such persons are icy, cynical, 
 selfish. What is best in you is tempted out by 
 no atmosphere of sympathy, but forthwith im- 
 pelled to shut tight its calyx ; and so, as far as 
 you are personally involved, the man of that 
 class never knows you. He knows your name, 
 the clothes you wear, your views on the weather. 
 And what holds good of your own instinctive 
 action holds equally of that of all like you. 
 " Here comes the frost," they say : " we must 
 cover over our salvias, heliotropes, and mignon- 
 ettes. All that it will do to expose to him is 
 flower-pots bottom upwards ! " And so the man 
 comes habitually to behold nothing but the same 
 monotonous pottery aspect of the varied flower- 
 gardens of the world, as would, were they 
 equally conscious, the June and September visi- 
 tations of frost. No wonder he is confirmed in 
 his icy view, — nay, that he will argue contempt- 
 uously against all this sentimental talk about 
 heliotropes and mignonettes, and declare that 
 he wants no better witness than his own eyes ; 
 
. THE MIND BEHIND THE EYE. 115 
 
 never suspecting that all his eyes are really 
 revealing — and even that not to him, but to 
 somebody else — is that the most delicate and 
 fragrant flowers always fly to covert when frost 
 is around, and yet are meanwhile only waiting 
 till the chill spectre shall depart, to fling abroad 
 for the delight of others the gold and purple of 
 the sunbeam. Alas ! poor man, his cynicism has 
 done more than to distort objects to his eye. It 
 has annihilated them for him. 
 
 It is a common objection, urged from certain 
 quarters against a devout and thankful religious 
 spirit, that it has no foundation to rest on, apart 
 from the personal feeling of the man who shares 
 it. It is but a beautiful rainbow projected 
 from the fanciful mind upon a cloud-bank, but 
 a sunset pomp flung abroad over the barren or 
 snow-crowned mountain-top. Closely inspect 
 the cloud-bank, and it is dark, chilly mist; the 
 mountain-top, and it is barren rock or ice. Re- 
 ligion and the God of religion are thus, in the 
 last analysis, but ideal creations of the mind, 
 objects projected solely out of human love, 
 yearning, and imagination. Thus is the matter 
 argued. 
 
 Is it not about time that every sane mind 
 
116 BIRD-BOLTS. 
 
 should cease allowing itself to be beclouded and 
 distressed by such shallow and miserable stuff: 
 as this? As though the mind behind the eye 
 did not always determine what we shall see and 
 in what light and color ! What single thing in 
 the wide compass of nature that is not made up, 
 for all it ever is to us, out of elements it evokes 
 to life from the depths of our own minds ? Fire 
 has no vital existence to us but through the 
 response awakened in us by its genial glow, its 
 beauty, its dancing lights on wall and picture, 
 and the enkindled faces of wife and child. The 
 man who knows most about fire is simply the 
 one who creates the splendor and glory of its 
 blaze out of the freest inward incandescence 
 of ecstasy of feeling, poetic marvel, Rembrandt- 
 like delight in light and shade and color. 
 
 And yet, in the face and eyes of all this, 
 some red-faced, lager-beer cask of a material- 
 istic nouter will tell you, in supreme assumption, 
 that he knows what an oyster is, but does not 
 know your fancied God. Very likely ; but then 
 he knows his oyster on precisely the same terms 
 as the saint his God, — that is, by the inter- 
 pretation of his own inner experience. Why, 
 the fellow is a stupendous subjective idealist. 
 
THE MIND BEHIND THE EYE. 117 
 
 and never dreams of it. He brings to bear on 
 the mollusk the sensibilities of his tongue and 
 digestive tract, and, in virtue of the conjoint 
 and titillating testimony of these unassailable 
 authorities, pronounces the oyster good. What 
 an act of faith in the validity of the human 
 stomach ! No telling where he will finally come 
 out ! The only trouble with him is that he has 
 not yet got far enough along to see that other 
 things are also good. And learn to recognize 
 this he never will, till higher and deeper ca- 
 pacities within are stirred to life, till he can 
 bring to bear on grander objects a wider and 
 richer range of equally valid testimonials from 
 a living sense of beauty, from delicate and in- 
 spiring responses of heart, conscience, gratitude, 
 veneration, — testimonials that may then appear, 
 to a larger exercise of his faculties, quite as 
 solid and authoritative as those of his tongue 
 and digestive tract. Meanwhile, let him be 
 loyal to his oyster and to the grounds of his 
 faith in him, crying, "Lord, I believe: help 
 thou mine unbelief." The oyster also is God's 
 creature. 
 
XXII. 
 
 FATHERS AFTER THE FLESH AND FA= 
 THERS AFTER THE SPIRIT. 
 
 <</^\LD John Brown" probably never wrote 
 ^ _> ^ an article in an educational journal in 
 his life. And yet he held very decided opinions 
 about the right way of bringing up boys. 
 
 Here was a man who from childhood had 
 known what it was to face the barest poverty. 
 In course of time, he gained a foothold in the 
 world, married, and stood head of a family of 
 eleven children. What did he now long to do 
 for his boys? 
 
 Ambitious he was for them, determined that 
 they should have the best this world offers. 
 Yes, the best, like the fond father he was. And 
 what seemed to him the best? Places in the 
 Custom-house, and all the work over by three 
 o'clock P.M.? No: he aimed his arrows at a 
 higher mark. First and foremost, a chance to 
 serve the down-trodden, a consecration of heroic 
 
AFTER THE FLESH AND AFTER THE SPIRIT. 119 
 
 spirit that, in this service, would make them 
 count it all joy to lie out in malarious marshes 
 or be riddled with bullets or hung on a scaffold. 
 
 What, his own iiesh and blood ? Did he not 
 start up in terror to wave them back from such 
 a fate? Nay, he strode on at their head, to 
 clasp it with hands of smiling welcome. " Only 
 once in a century does the Almighty give a 
 father a chance to provide so grandly for his 
 sons," was his own exultant language. If any- 
 thing in a higher strain than that can be found 
 in Plutarch, quote it now and here, or else for- 
 ever after hold your peace ! 
 
 Standing by the grave of John Brown in 
 North Elba, among the Adirondack Mountains, 
 one feels the grandeur of words like these of his. 
 Everything in the scene is in absolute keeping 
 with the homespun simplicity yet Hebraic sub- 
 limity of the man. The plain, one-story farm- 
 house, seeming to say with Paul, "Having foo I 
 and raiment, let us therewith be content " ; the 
 gold-waving oat-field, cleared by his own sinewy 
 arm out of the surrounding forest ; the massive 
 granite boulder, adamantine type of the man 
 himself, at whose base he sleeps; the rude flag- 
 headstone of his grandfather, a soldier of the 
 
120 BIRD-BOLTS. 
 
 Revolution; the very flowers, not exotic lilies 
 
 and roses, but native golden-rod and fire-weed, 
 
 laid by some reverent pilgrim on the grave ; and 
 
 then, environing all, the grand panorama of 
 
 purple-black, fir-clad mountains, so eloquent of 
 
 him whose whole life had been a responding cry, 
 
 "I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills from 
 
 whence cometh my help!" — all these combine 
 
 in one rich, soul-satisfying impression, never to 
 
 be forgotten till one's dying day. And then 
 
 to read the simple record cut beneath his own 
 
 into the forefather's headstone: "John Brown, 
 
 executed at Charlestown, Va. ; Oliver, killed at 
 
 Harper's Ferry; Watson, wounded at Harper's 
 
 Ferry October 17, died of his wounds October 19; 
 
 Frederick, murdered at Ossawatomie." What 
 
 a holocaust to liberty out of one single family! 
 
 Perhaps it were too much to demand of the 
 
 flesh-and-blood weakness of most parents that 
 
 they should rise to the Pisgah height of old 
 
 John Brown's outlook for his boys. He was 
 
 one of a million. Still there sounds out from 
 
 Scripture a grand and even awful expression 
 
 which, would God, every parent might fathom 
 
 in its depths. It is this: "Fathers after the 
 
 Flesh and Fathers after the Spirit." 
 
AFTER THE FLESH AND AFTER THE SPIRIT. 121 
 
 Perfectly legitimate, it is but fair to ■» admit, 
 the resolute struggle so many a father and 
 mother undergo, working, denying themselves, 
 scrimping even, that they may be able, as the 
 phrase runs, "to leave their children some- 
 thing." But, in the name of the Highest, is a 
 little more or less of money all the most con- 
 secrated parents can bequeath their children, — 
 parents who have lived before them twenty, 
 thirty, forty years, with full opportunity to 
 inspire them with appreciation of what wise, 
 rich, joyous, and noble things can be got out of 
 human life ? No fine aroma of grace and cour- 
 tesy, of sweetness and light, of high T strung, 
 sensitive honor, of devout submission and up- 
 soaring faith, to exhale from the memories their 
 children will have of them, — children who, none 
 the less, will have to bear their burden in the 
 struggle and mystery of the world ! 
 
 Who but must oftentimes feel benumbed with 
 chill, as he goes into many a household of mate- 
 rial prosperity, to find that the very names of 
 the wisest, happiest, most opulent and beatific 
 souls this planet has nourished in its bosom are 
 all unknown, — that not a trace, not a vestige, is 
 visible there of all they have ever sung, aspired, 
 
122 BIRD-BOLTS. 
 
 or dared. And one cries : " Here dwells the 
 poverty of j)overty. God help the orphaned 
 children of such living parents ! " 
 
 Then — but to feel the abyss of contrast — 
 recall to mind the prayer Wordsworth breathed 
 for the sister he yearned to touch with a sense, 
 kindred to his own, of the peace and elevation 
 hidden for all in the divine manifestation of 
 Nature, — the sister in the shrine of whose sacred 
 memories of him he would have his own name 
 fragrantly embalmed : — 
 
 " Nor perchance 
 If I should be where I no more can hear 
 Thy voice, nor catch from thy wild eyes these gleams 
 Of past existence, wilt thou then forget 
 That on the banks of this delightful stream 
 We stood together ; and that I, so long 
 A worshipper of Nature, hither came 
 Unwearied in that service; rather say 
 With warmer love, oh ! with far deeper zeal 
 Of holier love." 
 
XXIII. 
 
 OVERCHARGING THE GUN. 
 
 1VT O doubt it is an excellent habit with gun- 
 makers to test every fowling or field piece 
 they turn out with a charge of powder many 
 times heavier than any fool is likely later on to 
 load it with. Better, they think, burst a barrel 
 now and then, under safe circumstances, than 
 allow an invisible flaw to take secret advantage 
 of an incautious boy in the future. But whether 
 the like rule of overcharging the piece at the 
 outset is an equally sound one to adopt with 
 juvenile ministers at ordinations, not to speak 
 of others undertaking new and grave responsi- 
 bilities, is a more serious question. 
 
 From the accounts with which the ordinary 
 religious newspapers regale their readers, of the 
 ecclesiastical method of loading, shotting, and 
 then discharging on a given parish a callow the- 
 ological-fledgeling, rational wonder is awakened 
 as to what percentage of the human pieces thus 
 
124 BIRD-BOLTS. 
 
 severely tested fail to burst the first time. The 
 heaviest specimen of long-proved, old minis- 
 terial ordnance would be infallibly shattered to 
 fragments, were it called upon to explode within 
 its chamber one-half the amount of celestial and 
 demoniacal gunpowder or to fling one-hali' 
 the weight of solid iron ball and chain-shot 
 logic that is prescribed in the so-called u charge 
 to the pastor" as the ammunition with which 
 he, an utterly inexperienced youth, is expected 
 to load up and fire. 
 
 Ordination programmes are the masterpiece 
 of Satan. If anything more ingeniously con_ 
 trived for taking hope and courage out of a 
 young heart has ever been lilt upon, it would be 
 hard to name it. For three mortal hours is 
 Pelion piled upon Ossa, till too often must a 
 sympathetic spectator feel that, should the over, 
 whelmed victim, in wandering forlornly around 
 after the service, happen upon poor weary old 
 Atlas, bearing on his shoulders the burden of 
 the globe, he would hail the encounter as the 
 happiest conceivable chance for his first minis- 
 terial exchange. 
 
 Now, what good can come of such stupendous 
 overdoing? A man is not a gun-barrel at his 
 
• OVERCHARGING THE GUN. 125 
 
 very strongest, when first out of the welding 
 and polishing shops of a divinity school. Even 
 the attempt at hardening pups by exposure all 
 night to an outdoor temperature of ten degrees 
 below zero has been abandoned. The survival 
 of the fittest was not found sufficient to keep up 
 the breed. 
 
 Teachers' institutes are quite as flagrant sin- 
 ners in this respect as clerical convocations. 
 To stand by and watch some of the old artil- 
 lerymen of the Horace Mann type ram home 
 the regulation charge for an inexperienced 
 young man or woman of twenty is enough to 
 make any prudent on-looker hurry behind a 
 tree or stone-wall for personal safety. The 
 mere amount of wad in the way of school re- 
 ports, pedagogical treatises, etc., is something 
 appalling. 
 
 Fair play! is the cry of every Saxon heart. 
 This putting a ton's weight on the ministerial 
 or teacher side of the j^latform scales, and an 
 ounce's weight on that of people, parents, and 
 pupils, can serve only to keep the wretched 
 incumbent monotonously down to the ground. 
 Better far take a lesson of the children, and 
 study how they manage matters when they 
 
126 BIRD-BOLTS. 
 
 slide a plank across a fence for an exhilarat- 
 ing seesaw. Truly, of such is the kingdom of 
 heaven. Let any one try to seat fifty pounds 
 of boy or girl on one end of the plank, and call 
 upon that amount of animate avoirdupois to 
 strain and struggle with a hundred pounds on 
 the other end. " No fair ! " " No fair ! " is in 
 a minute ringing on every hand. The shrewd 
 philosophers! Well enough they understand 
 how the whole fun of the tilt lies in a mutual, 
 happy sense of, " Now we go up ! up ! up ! and 
 now we go down ! down ! downy ! " No : to 
 put a lone young man or woman on one end of 
 the board, and the whole massed weight of 
 congregation or pirpils, with a sporadic deacon 
 or committee-man thrown in, on the other, and 
 then expect them, either one, to raise the joyful 
 song of Mother Goose, is a proceeding of the 
 ineffable meanness of which no good-hearted 
 children, only grown-up parents or church mem- 
 bers, are capable. 
 
XXIV. 
 
 THE TRUE SCHOOL OF STYLE. 
 
 '"PHERE is a great deal of abstruse and 
 technical talk about style in writing. 
 But, after all, the difference between a good 
 style and a bad amounts to precisely the same 
 thing as that between an expressive human face 
 and one that looks, for all the world, like a 
 boiled dumpling. The monotonous aspect of 
 the dumpling ripples into no smiles, melts with 
 no tenderness, dilates with no scorn. Whether 
 it has ever loved, been married, lost children, 
 hated, cursed, or prayed, no man can gather 
 from anything it "lets on " about itself. Mean- 
 while, the expressive face is telling a perpetual 
 story. Thence, the abounding gratitude men 
 feel toward a writer with a living style. Dear 
 fellow, he is too good to be kept to himself! 
 
 There are men of whom Emerson says that, 
 the moment they take a pen into their hands, 
 it acts like a torpedo-fish and benumbs every 
 
128 BIRD-BOLTS. 
 
 faculty. Was not such a one honest old Dr. 
 Samuel Johnson ? And the reason why he be- 
 came such, does it not date from the preposter- 
 ous advice he gave that every one who aspired 
 to mastership in style should "devote his days 
 and nights to the study of Addison " ? 
 
 Alas, poor doctor! Why not, rather, to the 
 study of some incarnation of life in the world 
 of nature, — say, to sympathetic communion with 
 the ways of a kitten rapturously whirligiging 
 round after her own tail? There is perfection 
 of style for one ! Who can escape the conta- 
 gious glee of her spirits, who doubt the royal 
 fun she is having? Not a misstroke to divert 
 the mind an instant from the rollicking theme 
 she is illustrating. Better could she not reveal 
 herself, had she committed the Vicar of Wake- 
 field to memory and extracted the inmost secret 
 of Goldsmith. Nay, was it not because Gold- 
 smith was so much of a kitten himself, and 
 enjoyed so rapturously playing with every 
 mouse of an idea he caught and let run, and 
 recaught and patted and frolicked over, that 
 one finds him almost as good as pussy herself? 
 
 Get Dr. Johnson at the dinner table, and 
 more glorious company could no man ask. 
 
THE TRUE SCHOOL OF STYLE. 129 
 
 There was style worth devoting days and 
 nights to the study of. What ten-strokes every 
 time with the solid, Saxon, lignum-vitse balls he 
 bowled, with such Bowery-boy momentum, at 
 the pins! It was the doctor himself who an- 
 swered the invitation to dinner, — the burly Eng- 
 lish shoulder-hitter, the deep-chested laugher. 
 But set him to writing an article for the Ram- 
 bler. Presto, change ! Exit aboriginal Saxon, 
 enter Brummagem Latin. Exeunt rugged epi- 
 thets and junks of solid sense, enter a seesaw 
 tilt of antithetical phrases; the ponderous ab- 
 stract idea on one end of the plank exactly 
 counterbalancing the ponderous abstract idea 
 on the other. Alas! there was all the differ- 
 ence that is witnessed in many a divine, — the 
 meatiest of fellows when down the harbor fish- 
 ing with savory clams for cod, the most oppres- 
 sive of mortals when fishing out of a pulpit for 
 sinners, with stale, traditional bait inviting 
 never a bite. 
 
 Of course, all writing cannot take on the 
 diverting^ form of a kitten playing with its tail. 
 But is not nature inexhaustible in examples 
 suitable to every variety of subject ? Admit 
 that there must be a gruff and surly style as 
 
130 BIRD-BOLTS. 
 
 well as a genial and winsome one. Why not, 
 then, consecrate days and nights to the study 
 of the English bull-dog, as ideal illustration of 
 such style? Can the mind ask a more soul-sat- 
 isfying revelation of inner grouty consciousness 
 in speaking, external form? That ominous, 
 bloodshot eye, that nose turned up in morose 
 disgust, those lips retracted from the sharp, 
 ugly fangs, — surely, here again is something 
 infinitely more instructive and stimulating than 
 Addison. 
 
 Admit even farther, for the sake of argu- 
 ment, — for some men will keep on arguing till 
 doomsday, — that all cannot legitimately aspire 
 to the rank of literary bull-dogs, — that, in hu- 
 mility, many a one must confess himself inca- 
 pable either of inspiring terror or of pulling 
 down a bull by the nose, and can, at best, only 
 essay to snap spitefully at a horse's heels, till 
 the noble creature kicks out in exasperation at 
 the petty annoyance. All the same ! How, 
 under the depressing recognition, can he more 
 fruitfully improve his time than by devoting 
 his days and nights to the ways of a yelping 
 cur.? 
 
 In line, let a man be shut up in the field of 
 
THE TRUE SCHOOL OF STYLE. 131 
 
 literature to the most insignificant role, to that 
 of a mosquito only, still the rule holds always. 
 Sager advice can be given him by no man than 
 sympathetically to ponder the style of the mos- 
 quito. No light thing will the tyro find it to 
 learn how "to wind his sultry horn," to select 
 the hottest night, to bite and rebite till the blood 
 is fevered, to hide behind the bedpost when the 
 irritable match is struck, and then, the moment 
 the candle is extinguished, sally out afresh with 
 a blare of triumph, as the despairing victim lies 
 down again to vain repose. Why, the highest 
 critical praise ever lavished on Alexander Pope 
 was that, in his most perfect passages, he be- 
 came fairly the peer of a wasp. 
 
 Now, the reason of the truly fascinating suc- 
 cess, in the item of effective style, attained by 
 kittens, bull-dogs, and mosquitoes, while so many 
 college graduates, after the most assiduous rhe- 
 torical instruction, make so disastrous a bungle 
 in bringing out their inner consciousness to the 
 light of day, is a subject of grave importance 
 for a General University Convention. Perhaps, 
 as a mere tentative " shy " at the solution of so 
 profound a problem, the query may be ventured 
 whether the superiority of the first-named artists 
 
132 BIRD-BOLTS. 
 
 does not come of their perfect self-surrender to 
 the charm and intensity of the immediate idea 
 that solicits them, thus beautifully illustrating 
 what the sublime Pascal calls the inmost secret 
 of style, "the absolute correspondence between 
 expression and impression." 
 
 No thorough-bred bull-dog dissipates his idio- 
 syncrasy of native gift in the futile attempt to 
 smile a witching smile; no mosquito, in croon- 
 ing a soothing lullaby over the infant cradled 
 for his first, sweet sleep. But man is never 
 content with simple abandonment to nature. 
 A capital, expressive style of his own he had 
 when a baby, and obliged to wait till his milk 
 was heated. Equally perfect his style when, a 
 boy in school, he twitched the hair of his mate 
 in front of him, and looked wholly absorbed in 
 study. Not an organ that was not sweetly at- 
 tuned to the indwelling idea. Later on, alas! 
 he ate of the apple of self-consciousness, and fell 
 from paradise. He entered society, and, for 
 anguish over the unsolved problem whether 
 the lower button on his waistcoat ought to be 
 buttoned or not, could concentrate his genius 
 neither on talking nor laughing, neither on 
 taking nor giving delight. Soul streamed no 
 
THE TRUE SCHOOL OF STYLE. 133 
 
 longer through the happy channels that dis- 
 charge on eye or tongue or pen, but only 
 through those abortive nerves of sensibility 
 which terminate in the trowsers' pockets or have 
 their periphery in the shirt-collar. 
 
XXV. 
 
 EPISTLES OF COMMENDATION. 
 
 A COMMON form taken by the self-glorify- 
 ing spirit of the present day is the boast 
 of the immense treasures of the accumulated 
 science, wit, wisdom, eloquence, poetry, piety, of 
 past ages, stored up and at its disposal. Im- 
 pressive, indeed, is it to wander through the 
 interminable alcoves of a great public library. 
 There, ranged tier on tier, are the masters of 
 eloquence, Demosthenes, Cicero, Pitt, Burke, 
 Webster ; there, the kings of poetry, Homer, 
 iEschylus, Dante, Shakspere, Milton ; there, the 
 giants of abstract thought, Descartes, Spinoza, 
 Hume, Berkeley, Kant ; there, the law-givers of 
 science, Copernicus, Newton, Darwin. Over and 
 beyond these, lo ! piled up in tens, in hundreds of 
 thousands of volumes, the fancies, the thoughts, 
 of the great novelists, essayists, inventors, travel- 
 lers, humorists, divines. Who that in imagina- 
 tion can begin to embrace the range of experi- 
 
EPISTLES OF COMMENDATION. 135 
 
 ence, observation, suffering, rapture, of which, 
 these books are the record? And all these are 
 ours ! 
 
 For a moment, the sense of pride and self- 
 glorification seems excusable enough. But an 
 instant later, and there strikes athwart the mind 
 an arresting thought, that startles, and fairly 
 takes away the breath. But just now had we 
 said, " All this knowledge, science, wit, humor, 
 vision, rapture, are in the world." But are they? 
 Can a book laugh, a book thrill, a book weep, 
 a book adore ? What is a book ? A pound or 
 two of pasteboard, paper, and printer's ink, — the 
 printer's ink stamped indeed in a shape that may 
 enable it to point at certain objects and experi- 
 ences in nature and human life, and, with more 
 than Prospero's wand, summon these up before 
 an intelligence capable of fresh creative vision. 
 But can they work this miracle with any vivid- 
 ness in the actual reader's mind, work it in any 
 rational order, in any rich and beautiful com- 
 bination, like to that in which the thinker or 
 poet originally saw and felt the whole? Else 
 had the printed page as well have been blurred 
 by tracks left by the legs of insects falling into 
 the inkstand and crawling; across the sheet. 
 
136 BIRD-BOLTS. 
 
 Truly, a startling thought this, to him who 
 really takes its import in. Every book that is 
 to live again is to live through you and me. 
 Every poem that is to sing, every prayer that is 
 to breathe again, -is to sing and breathe through 
 you and me. There is no more knowledge, no 
 more poetry, no more piety in the world in any 
 given hour than you and I revive in our private 
 breasts. Living thought is there none but in 
 the thinker, living admiration but in the ad- 
 mirer. What Newton demonstrated, a few 
 mathematical heads alone in Europe are capable 
 of demonstrating after him; what Jesus felt 
 in its rapture, a few saints; what Shakspere 
 laughed and wept over of the mingled comedy 
 and tragedy of human life, a few men and 
 women of vast and varied powers of observa- 
 tion. For ages, often a great writer dies. No 
 mummied king in an Egyptian tomb is more 
 absolutely dead, more a dried and withered 
 mockery of a living, breathing man than he, till 
 at last some kindred nature finds him out, begins 
 once again to laugh, weep, soar with him, and 
 for a second time he becomes incarnate spirit. 
 
 Pride shall the thought start in us, or fathom- 
 less humility, the moment we come deeply to 
 
EPISTLES OE COMMENDATION. 137 
 
 ponder it,— how absolutely dependent on hum- 
 ble you and me are a Burke and a Webster for 
 the continuous knowledge in the world of their 
 eloquence, a Raphael and Michel Angelo for their 
 acknowledged glory as painters, even a Jesus for 
 his vital recognition as saint and inspirer ? Out- 
 ward letters of introduction will not help them. 
 The best that these can effect is to furnish a 
 certificate, such as the old booKsellers were wont 
 to issue, that copies of the works of these great 
 ones ought to adorn the shelves of every gentle- 
 man's library. No : nothing short of epistles of 
 commendation known and read of all men, writ- 
 ten not with ink, but with the spirit of the living 
 God, not on tables of stone, but in fleshly tables 
 of the heart, will serve the purpose. Nay, even 
 farther yet must we go. Reverently be it said, 
 Deity himself is equally dependent for any living 
 recognition of his goodness, wisdom, and glory 
 on humble you and me. Formal letters of com- 
 mendation to our children and our neighbors 
 may we give him likewise. No end of such do 
 we all indite in a perfunctory way. But they 
 never help him. What he stands in immediate, 
 indispensable need of is living epistles written 
 on the heart. As vitally dependent he on these 
 
138 BIRD-BOLTS. 
 
 as the sunlight on the clouds to reflect its rain- 
 bow tints, on the lake to blaze a mirror of bur- 
 nished gold, on the Alpine snows to flush with 
 carmine and crimson. Insignificant, perhaps, 
 the vapor of the atmosphere, insignificant the 
 water-drop, insignificant the snow-flake. Still, 
 without them, hidden forever, so far as mortal 
 eye is concerned, the prismatic glories of the 
 sunbeam. 
 
 Here we are, then, living in a world in which 
 great and resplendent things are perpetually fall- 
 ing dead, in which poet, humorist, and painter, 
 saint, sage, prophet, are evermore tending to be- 
 come mere names, jDowerless to cheer or thrill or 
 exalt ; and one and all are they crying to us, — 
 ah! with what pathos in their tones, — Revive 
 us, make us live once more as thought and love 
 and will. All else is the thrice-sealed tomb. I, 
 Jesus, am not truly risen but as I rise again in 
 you, — compassion for poverty, peace for the 
 weary and heavy-laden, cry of rapture over the 
 flower of the field. Images, temples, I do not 
 ask. I want to walk the familiar streets once 
 more, — smile of greeting, tear of pity, breathing 
 of peace on earth and good-will to men. Else 
 have mine enemies truly slain me, and sealed me 
 in a cave from which there is no arising. 
 
EPISTLES OF COMMENDATION. 139 
 
 It was a sublime strain in which the Old 
 Westminster Catechism began, with its defini- 
 tion of the Chief End of Man,—" To glorify God 
 and enjoy him forever." Revive that, at least, 
 though all the rest stay dead ! Yes, evermore 
 to be glorifying something good and great, and 
 enjoying it in the highest, — this is the chief end 
 of man. Never does he rise to dignity, beauty, 
 command but in and through so doing. The 
 humblest man or woman, the " Old Mortality " 
 toiling in graveyards to scrape off the mosses 
 and time-stains, to recarve the memorial of de- 
 parted worth, is higher, in the witness he bears 
 to a hurrying and thankless world, than the 
 highest incapable of such veneration. 
 
XXVI. 
 
 MAKING SOMETHING BEAUTIFUL. 
 
 T T is a pretty sight to watch a group of eager 
 boys and girls hanging over the slate or bit 
 of paper on which one of their number, unani- 
 mously recognized as an indubitable Raphael 
 or Michel Angelo, is drawing something. What 
 exclamations of delight as the ears, eyes, neck, 
 back, legs, tail of the horse come out ! Adam 
 and Eve in the garden, intently watching how 
 "out of the ground the Lord God formed every 
 beast of the field and every fowl of the air, and 
 brought them unto Adam to see what he would 
 call them," were not more entranced ; nay, nor 
 surer to pronounce a horse a horse or a cow a 
 cow. Such the eternal fascination of the crea- 
 tive process, the delight of beholding something 
 in the actual making ! 
 
 No wonder the rest of the world gets down- 
 right envious over people who can create any- 
 thing new and beautiful. Away on a vacation 
 
MAKING SOMETHING BEAUTIFUL. 141 
 
 by the seaside or among the mountains, one now 
 and then falls in with an artist. Daily, the 
 blessed fellow goes forth with his huge white 
 umbrella, his easel, and his box of paints, and 
 camps down before Mt. Adams or some lovely 
 bit of lake scenery. How cunningly one tries to 
 make friends with him, manoeuvring to get his 
 shy nature so used to a foreign presence that 
 it shall become feasible to lie near him on the 
 grass, seemingly reading, but in reality rapt in 
 watching how the sky grows on the late blank 
 of the canvas, how the granite bastions of the 
 mountains heave themselves up into sight, and 
 the broad forests of maple and spruce throw 
 regal mantles around their flanks. " Happy fel- 
 low ! " the favored overlooker cries : " what a 
 life to be thus ever creating something beautiful ! 
 Alas for me ! 1 write sermons that make every- 
 body wish they were done, or teach children 
 who think me an ogre, or sell goods that at best 
 clothe the body. But as for this blessed fellow, 
 why, he is only-begotten child of the Creative 
 Spirit : he is one with God, his Father worketh 
 hitherto, and in the same vein he works! " 
 
 T?es, he is all this. He has found the true 
 vocation, and is the very man to envy. Only, 
 
142 BIRD-BOLT». 
 
 paint-brushes and boxes must not be presumed 
 to exhaust all the creative resources ot the uni- 
 verse. The making something beautiful m one 
 shape or another, this is the thing to yearn for, 
 not the mere special knack with pencil, pen, or 
 violin bow. 
 
 Why, it was only the other day that an ardent 
 young fellow came rushing in upon a group of 
 friends, with an odd story like the following: 
 " I've seen a new sort of artist I want to tell you 
 about! This afternoon 1 went over to the New 
 England Hospital lor W omen and Children, and 
 the head physician, a woman with a rare blend- 
 ing ot sweetness and light in her face, took me 
 round through the wards. Presently, we entered 
 that of the children, where were, perhaps, half a 
 dozen little tots of from two to five, with their 
 attendants. How the eyes beamed and the 
 hands began to wave when they saw the wel- 
 come lace, — not my ugly mug, ot course ! In 
 the middle of the floor lay a warm blanket, on 
 which was sprawling a chubby-cheeked, flaxen- 
 haired little fellow ot two and a halt or three. 
 'Let me show you how he can help himself on 
 to his feet,' the beaming doctor said. And sure 
 enough, when she had encouragingly reached 
 
MAKING SOMETHING BEAUTIFUL. 143 
 
 him her hands, he worked himself up erect in 
 such creditable fashion that I did not wonder at 
 the banners of triumph hung out from his proud 
 little face. * Two months ago,' she went on to 
 say ' he was brought here diseased and half- 
 starved. No bones, gristle only, through lack 
 of proper food, But I'll make a brave little 
 man out of him yet ! ' On her face glowed a 
 look of such genuine delight over her blessed 
 work that I felt an instinctive thrill. Aha ! an 
 artist in little children here ! The veritable pres- 
 ence of Raphael, bringing out the deep eyes and 
 glorious brow of the Christ-child on his canvas, 
 would not have been more moving. 'Happy 
 woman!' was my instinctive thought: *what a 
 life, to be thus ever striving to create something 
 beautiful, health out of disease, firm-set bones 
 and springing muscles out of listless imbecility, 
 such a clinging embrace of love out of a blank 
 past of neglect and cruelty ! Thy Father work- 
 eth hitherto, and thou dost work.' " 
 
XXVII. 
 
 THANKSGIVING DAY. 
 
 T N a proclamation, to be read in all churches, 
 Governor Long of Massachusetts or Gov- 
 ernor Cornell of New York calls upon the men, 
 women, and children of the Commonwealth to 
 be jubilantly thankful. Who would not like to 
 respond? Heartfelt gratitude is the richest 
 poetry of life. But is it an emotion that can 
 be manufactured to order at the call of even the 
 devoutest of governors? And, of the two, who 
 would not as lief undertake to squeeze out a 
 tear of commiseration, on outright demand, as to 
 break into a psalm of thanksgiving ? 
 
 In point of tact, it is only while men are 
 interested in and happy over some object that 
 they are heartily grateful for it. Enjoyment 
 and gratitude form the only bridal couple thar 
 ever did or ever will live in loving harmony 
 All other couples, however much they may call 
 one another "my dear," or descant on "the 
 
THANKSGIVING DAY. 145 
 
 holy tie that binds us," will lead a mutually tor- 
 menting existence. And it sprang from a deep 
 recognition of this that the New England fes- 
 tival of Thanksgiving day became so rapidly 
 changed from a public and state into a domestic 
 and family celebration. 
 
 Men and women are tolerably genuine when 
 not called upon by an expectant community to 
 enact a part. However they may feel about the 
 country at large or the condition of the cotton 
 crop, the universities or the revival interest 
 they do appreciate a bountiful feast with a 
 group of smiling faces around the board. The 
 laughter is genuine, the love is rich and all 
 aglow. . No call now to work the pump handle 
 ot duty to force up intermittent spurts of grati- 
 tude. Why, only look ! Here, for a single item, 
 is the married daughter that left the house fif- 
 teen months ago, back again in the old home 
 once more, with a baby in her arms. The baby' 
 Who says, "Go to now, it is a religious duty to 
 be grateful when an event of this character 
 transpires!" One crow from her little lungs 
 and she has them all,- grandfather and grand- 
 mother, uncles, aunts, cousins, cook, hired man, 
 everybody. She is the miracle of the world 
 
146 BIRD-BOLTS. 
 
 And, if any devout old soul were only to strike 
 up the hymn, " Lo, God is here, let us adore ! " 
 all would join heartily in chorus. 
 
 A sincere and honest feeling was it, then, that 
 prompted the New England people to make 
 Thanksgiving day so much of a family festivals 
 instead of sitting solitarily apart and reading 
 Bancrofts History, The Constitution of the 
 United States, or any other improving national 
 work. So far as the thing went, it was a gen- 
 uine recognition of the fact that the only possi- 
 ble way to feel gratitude is to be absorbed and 
 happy over something that is in itself grateful, 
 and, if statistics of even four million bales of 
 cotton and ten million tons of hay would not 
 promote the genial flow, then to try turkey, 
 cranberry sauce, blind-man's-buff, the baby. 
 
 In the great providence of God there come to 
 human beings many things that are sweet and 
 cheering, and many that are exceeding bitter. 
 Is it either demanded or is it possible that they 
 should be regarded all alike ? In the very nat- 
 ure of things, is it not evident — and at the last 
 remove from any irreverential spirit is the prin- 
 ciple stated — that even Deity himself must 
 freely submit, in this matter of gratitude, to 
 
THANKSGIVING DAY. 147 
 
 the same conditions he has imposed upon his 
 creatures ? 
 
 Human beings have to earn the gratitude of 
 their fellows by persistent kindness, fidelity, and 
 service, and that, moreover, in directions these 
 fellows can appreciate. Often does it cost years 
 to establish the claim. Now, just here comes 
 the tug of war. As parents, the most devoted 
 work men and women do for their children in 
 educating them and striving to cure them of 
 their faults is, and for the most part must be, a 
 work anything but grateful to the subjects of it 
 at the time. If the impatient mother will insist 
 on immediate gratitude from them, there is a 
 perfectly easy and open way to get it. She has 
 only to let them go without washing their hands 
 and faces, eat with the handle instead of the 
 bowl of the spoon, leave coats and shoes just 
 where they want to throw them, stay away 
 from school and start out after chestnuts. Then 
 will every day be Thanksgiving day on the part 
 of the little ones, and no end of tears and sulks 
 be spared. 
 
 Simple folly is it therefore to look for imme- 
 diate gratitude in the hour in which one, God or 
 man, is cutting across the grain of headstrong 
 
148 BIRD-BOLTS. 
 
 passion. Something may be indeed accom- 
 plished then an 1 there that will earn future, but 
 not present, recognition. Years perhaps ahead 
 lies the day for saying with any genuine sin- 
 cerity, " I wished you at the bottom of the sea 
 once, but now I see you were my truest friend." 
 Now, this latter-day gratitude is the only kind 
 the great leaders and deliverers of the race — 
 the deepest surely of all revealers of God to 
 mankind — are permitted to hope for. People 
 exjjress surprise that the Jewish mob, when the 
 choice was left them between freeing Jesus or 
 Barabbas, should have cried, " Crucify Jesus, 
 and let Barabbas loose ! " Why, there was a 
 day, in even moral and religious Boston, when 
 thousands would have gladly unlocked all the 
 cells in Charlestown prison, and cried to every 
 counterfeiter, burglar, and murderer there, 
 " Run ! run ! " if only in exchange they could 
 have had the satisfaction of hanging Garrison. 
 Thirty years later, many a one of these thou- 
 sands subscribed a round sum to the testimonial 
 in honor of the man ; aye, and did it just as 
 gratefully as they would once have hanged him, 
 and that simply because it had at last become 
 clear to them what a real benefactor the once 
 
THANKSGIVING DAY. 149 
 
 reviled agitator really was. If, then, it took 
 this man thirty years to win the thankful recog- 
 nition of even the northern half of the country, 
 and will take perhaps thirty more before statues 
 of him are set up, as they ultimately will be, in 
 Charleston and New Orleans, what shall be 
 said of the ways toward humanity of that stu- 
 pendous Being, of whom, in awe before the 
 vastness of his providential sweep, the psalmist 
 cried, "A thousand years are in thy sight but 
 as yesterday when it is past, or as a watch in 
 the night " ? 
 
 Welcome, then, to Thanksgiving day, if it 
 bring nothing more than a few hours of grati- 
 tude for good cheer and bright faces. So far, 
 so good. Half the world is dying for lack of 
 thankfulness over something and of the fret and 
 wear of discontent. Seeing, then, the sweetness 
 of gratitude even in the simplest shape, what can 
 be done to secure more freely its blessed visita- 
 tion ? One thing only : the enlarging the num- 
 ber of objects in life that are genuinely grateful 
 to the mind, grateful all round, grateful to sense, 
 intellect, affection, moral energy. " James and 
 I have loved each other more than ever since 
 we have worked together for a great cause," 
 
150 BIRD-BOLTS. 
 
 said that sainted woman, Lucretia Mott. Of 
 course James and she did. And so will every 
 James and Lucretia. Can one thumbed, fiayed 
 string evolve the music of an harmonious or- 
 chestra ? 
 
XXVIIL 
 
 ONE GUINEA AND FIVE GUINEA MONKEYS. 
 
 T N Mr. Darwin's Origin of Species^ a curious 
 -*■ story is told about a man who was in the 
 habit of going to the Zoological Gardens in 
 Regent's Park. London, to buy young monkeys 
 for subsequent training. The price of them was 
 a guinea apiece. One day, however, he said to 
 the keeper, " If you will let me take a number 
 of them home with me to try, I will give you 
 five guineas for the one I decide to keep." 
 " Why, how is that ? " was the answer : " do yon 
 find such a difference in them?" "Oh, im- 
 mense," replied the man. "When I begin to 
 train them, if I come across a monkey whose 
 attention is flying around every which way, his 
 mind off the lesson every time a fly buzzes or a 
 boy whistles, I know I shall never bring him to 
 much. But when I get hold of one that is 
 seriously inclined, you know, concentrating his 
 mind on the subject and not allowing himself to 
 
152 BIRD-BOLTS. 
 
 be diverted by outside trifles, I have no end of 
 expectation as to the future awaiting him." 
 
 Now, here was a man who was a born edu- 
 cator. Without any of the advantages enjoyed 
 by the graduates of Normal Schools, he could 
 none the less, it may shrewdly be suspected, give 
 any one of them a few " points." 
 
 The main reason why the science of the edu- 
 cation of horses, dogs and birds is so much 
 more advanced than that of the education of 
 human beings lies largely in the fact that in the 
 domain of the former obstinate prejudices are 
 not allowed to stand in the way of a rational 
 method of setting to work. No sensible trainer 
 undertakes to get a cart-horse into shape to win 
 the Derby, or a pug to course with greyhounds, 
 or a screech-owl to sing like a canary. By the 
 way, it could be wished that this last refusal 
 might commend itself to the serious considera- 
 tion of principals of Schools of Oratory and 
 Conservatories of Music. But this is a mere 
 aside. So to return to the animals. 
 
 As pupils, these happy creatures have none of 
 them read in the Declaration of Independence 
 that all men were created free and equal J nei- 
 ther have they parents, with sensibilities to 
 
ONE GUINEA AND FIVE GUINEA MONKEYS. 153 
 
 wound at the rude suggestion that there are 
 such persistent facts in nature as that short leo-s 
 are not providentially adapted for long strides, 
 or scant breath for holding out on a stiff pull. 
 And so teacher and scholar enjoy a much more 
 rational time together than is possible in strictly 
 human relations. Winged-heeled Iroquois does 
 not find himself hauling gravel in a city cart, 
 but flying in the van of the column of racers, 
 with the American flag proudly fluttering from 
 his head. Meanwhile, in equal turn, the heavy 
 cart-horse blesses his stars he is not gettino- 
 whipped and spurred, in the monstrous attempt 
 to make him lumber through forty rods while 
 those clipper-built fellows are playfully flinging 
 off a mile. 
 
 Painful is it to look on and see how many the 
 ardent and sensitive teachers of children that 
 are broken on the wheel of the irrational expec- 
 tations to which they are subjected. Frankly, 
 therefore, should such be warned at the outset 
 that all distinction between one guinea and five 
 guinea monkeys is abolished in the creed of 
 numberless parents with whom they will be 
 called upon to deal. Many the fond father who 
 will ask them if they have not noticed the 
 
154 BIRD-BOLTS. 
 
 remarkable similarity in shape between the head 
 of his son and that of John Milton, and many 
 the mother, the like between her daughter's and 
 Mrs. Browning's ; aye, and rapidly will they lose 
 credit for real perception should they unguard- 
 edly admit they had not. 
 
 Now all this is a matter young teachers must 
 learn not to take too seriously. Often should a 
 quiet sense of the humor of the thing ripple 
 over their minds, to relieve the pressure of too 
 heavy a burden of responsibility. Instead of 
 breaking their hearts as over a tragedy, far 
 better will they find it to go now and then and 
 have a hearty laugh with the minister, as he 
 tells them the story of the reproaches to which 
 he is persistently subjected for imperfect success 
 in making St. Johns out of stock-gamblers, St. 
 Theresas out of gossips, and cherubs out of 
 pampered children. 
 
XXIX. 
 
 SOUNDING BRASS AND TINKLING 
 CYMBALS. 
 
 /^VF the manifold half-painful, half-comic ex- 
 periences of life, — food at once for tears 
 and mirth, — there are few that exceed the neces- 
 sity of having oftentimes to listen to the kind 
 of handling to which the sublimest outbursts of 
 spiritual genius are subjected at the hands of lit- 
 eral, unimaginative, utterly commonplace men. 
 
 Who, for example, that has not gone out 
 in alternate mood of anger or jest from some 
 church, in which for a mortal hour a narrow- 
 minded, illiterate preacher has been at work, 
 and supposedly, in the spirit of Paul's superb 
 outburst over the worthlessness of all gifts 
 divorced from charity, to impress on his dazed 
 and hopelessly-at-sea hearers the idea that it 
 is quite possible for them to have the full circle 
 of the virtues that constitute them the best of 
 fathers and mothers, the most upright of busi- 
 
156 BIRD-BOLTS. 
 
 ness men, the most public-spirited citizens, the 
 kindest of friends to the lonely, poor, and sick, 
 and yet be all the while utterly hateful to God, — 
 nay, just so much the more in outright danger 
 of hell because of these carnal excellences ? 
 
 And yet, all the while, the poor, helpless man 
 is not an example of hopeless obscuration and 
 total mental and moral eclipse. A stray gleam 
 of light is actually struggling down in the abyss 
 of his mind, even though just effective enough 
 to make darkness visible. Deeply is he to be 
 pitied ; for in him is witnessed the painful and 
 always abortive effort of prose to interpret poe- 
 try ; the letter, the spirit ; reek and smoke, fire ; 
 the beetle, the eagle. 
 
 V And yet the light that led astray 
 Was light from heaven." 
 
 And now reverse the picture. A prophet of 
 vision and flame, like Paul of Tarsus, essays 
 the identical theme of our helplessly stumbling 
 preacher. Yet once let him sweep the sj)irit 
 aloft on the wings of his own sublime imagi- 
 nation into the realm of the ideal, and with 
 what free and joyous consent does every appre- 
 ciative mind follow him ! Full, almost stagger- 
 
SOUNDING BRASS AND TINKLING CYMBALS. 157 
 
 ing to the calm, enumerating reason, the jmnoply 
 of virtues in which he clothes the would-be 
 exemplar of the richest gifts and graces, only, 
 with majestic sweep into nothingness, to declare 
 him but sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal. 
 The tongues of men and of angels, faith that can 
 remove mountains, all goods bestowed to feed 
 the poor, the body given to be burued, and the 
 result — nonentity ! 
 
 Still, what kindred spirit that has sympatheti- 
 cally yielded itself to the ideal meaning of the 
 lyric prophet is either staggered or aghast ? 
 Yes ! yes ! all how true that, to the soul that has 
 caught sight of the higher vision and felt its 
 entrancing loveliness, the lower has become dim, 
 colorless, without inspiration, of the earth, earthy ! 
 It is as though Dante or Milton, their ears filled 
 with the sublime harmony of the majestic ocean 
 of billowing numbers that has come rolling in 
 upon them, were declaring of the poor spinet- 
 rhymes of contemporary poetasters : " These 
 things are naught ! They are less than naught ! " 
 It is as though Copernicus, caught up and 
 swept along by the stupendous revolutions of 
 the planetary system, beholding no longer in the 
 sun earth's trivial satellite, but the sublime and 
 
158 BIRD-BOLTS. 
 
 omnipotent arbiter of a universe of orderly and 
 obedient motion, were proclaiming of all past 
 astronomical theories, however ingenious, how- 
 ever satisfactory to a lower stage of intelligence : 
 "These things are child's play! These things 
 are child's play!" 
 
 Never can the inner meaning of superb out- 
 bursts like this of Paul be lived into, until in- 
 terpreted in at least the same spirit with which 
 we ourselves so often cry, of a singer famed, it 
 may be, and hailed with salvos of applause from 
 thousands : " Yes, here are volume, . skill, train- 
 ing, masterly execution ; yet how do all these 
 sink into naught, into less than naught, the 
 moment there thrills on the ear a single strain 
 from this other voice ' with a tear in it ' ! " 
 
 Alas for the teacher in any department, — art, 
 music, literature, morals, — who is not capable at 
 times of like vehement and, literally taken, exag- 
 gerated outbursts ; who, with all due praise of 
 mere industry and ]:>atient effort, does not now 
 and then break out : " Yes, John, Mary, you have 
 drawn that correctly, you have played or sung 
 that as it is written down; but there are no 
 freedom and abandonment, no charm and aroma 
 in the way you have done it. You have hit 
 
SOUNDING BRASS AND TINKLING CYMBALS. 159 
 
 everything except precisely that which alone 
 renders the work worth doing at all. You have 
 given us the all of the rose but its perfume, the 
 all of the lily but its grace and purity ; and now 
 I want you to feel, in the holy name of the 
 ideal, that the best of this sort of thing 'profit- 
 eth nothing ' ! " 
 
XXX. 
 
 ENLARGING ONE'S HORIZON. 
 
 HP HIS last summer, at the mountains, I 
 chanced to fall in, on a very lonely road, 
 with a man of fifty-five or sixty, carrying by 
 a chain over his shoulder a small steel-trap. 
 He was poorly clad, — indeed, a most dilapi- 
 dated specimen of humanity alike in clothes, 
 visage, and gait, — and, on closer inspection, 
 I recognized him as the very man I had a fort- 
 night or so before accosted, with the result of 
 a rather surly answer. 
 
 At any other period in my psychological 
 history, one rebuff would have been enough ; 
 but it so happened that I had just been con- 
 scientiously reading an essay of Emerson, in 
 which the importance was urged of making 
 it a point to learn something from all classes 
 and conditions of people. Shakspere was 
 cited as an instructive instance of a man who 
 could never talk live minutes with a carter, 
 
ENLARGING ONE'S HORIZON. 161 
 
 tapster, or huckster without getting his mental 
 norizon enlarged ; and seeing that even so great 
 a one as he had made such creditable acquisi- 
 tions through pocketing his pride and coming 
 down from his high, tragic horse, there seemed 
 no valid reason why I likewise should not at- 
 tempt the same. 
 
 "You look like a poor fellow the world has 
 used hardly," I said to myself, as I drew near 
 my tattered and stiff -jointed experimental man. 
 "Been leading, I suppose, from boyhood an 
 utterly monotonous life on one of these stony 
 bits of land up here, with little of the chance 
 I and so many other lucky fellows have had of 
 seeing the great world ! " 
 
 So determining to begin with words of one 
 syllable, and avoid Dante, Michel Angelo, and 
 other themes more kindred to my own sphere of 
 mind, I baited the steel-trap for a start in con- 
 versation, and to my delight soon found — if the 
 strength of the metaphor will be pardoned — 
 that it had snapped us together in the jaws of 
 the most cordial amity. 
 
 Very enthusiastic did my friend now grow in 
 showing me how the ugly instrument had to be 
 set in- running water and hidden in brook-weeds 
 
162 BIRD-BOLTS. 
 
 to deceive the wary creatures. Forthwith, I 
 blessed Emerson in my heart, as I found my 
 horizon of view rapidly enlarging as to how 
 easily the relation between teacher and school- 
 boy may be reversed, enlarging farther as to 
 what varied acquisitions I personally should 
 have to make before I could hope to rise to the 
 level of so much as the contempt of a self- 
 respecting fox. 
 
 Hunting is a capital subject to start a talk 
 with, for it at once sets on foot a passion to beat 
 up all kinds of game. 
 
 "Got a wife and family?" I after a while 
 interjected, to try whether I could not rouse a 
 domestic quarry. 
 
 " Yes, I married a poor young gal, only nine- 
 teen, a year ago, and have got a fust-rate little 
 boy." 
 
 Horizon again enlarged as to the needlessness 
 of any man, whatever his age or looks, despair- 
 ing. Horizon likewise enlarged into the depths 
 of loneliness and yearning in so many a woman's 
 heart, making her glad of anything, however 
 ragged and dilapidated, in the shape of a male 
 protector. 
 
 " Began rather late in life," I innocently sug- 
 gested. 
 
ENLARGING ONE'S HORIZON. 163 
 
 " Oh, no ! I married a woman thirty-five year 
 ago, and then 'listed for the Mexican war. Got 
 back after three years, and found I had had two 
 children while I was off. So I jest quit her." 
 
 Here, at a stroke, the clash of arms and faith- 
 less Helen of Troy, — all in one short episode of 
 a life I had supposed utterly monotonous and 
 barren of incident. So we exchanged views on 
 Mexico, the Spaniards, the qualities of the 
 American soldier, and the plague of woman. 
 
 " What next after that?" I now began. 
 
 " Oh, I went to the Adirondacks, and stayed 
 there fifteen year. Hunted and went guide to 
 them rich New York fellers that come up there 
 to shoot." 
 
 " Ever at Lake Placid ?" I asked, with a vague 
 hope in my mind, and of which I reaped the 
 harvest even before I had stated what it really 
 was. 
 
 " Oh, yes ! Killed the biggest bear there I ever 
 see. Was huntin' on shares with a man lived 
 up there, — guess you've hearn tell on him, was 
 hung just before the war, — old John Brown 
 they called him." 
 
 " Aha ! " I said to myself, as I pricked up my 
 ears, "hunted whole days with John Brown. 
 
1G4 BIRD-BOLTS. 
 
 What a chance to get at the old hero ! Who 
 would not give up many a year of life to have 
 had it!" 
 
 Then I indifferently replied : " Oh, yes ! I've 
 heard his name. How did you and he get 
 along ? " 
 
 "John Brown was the resolutest and most 
 savagest man I ever see." 
 
 I soon found, however, that my friend used 
 English a little differently from the rest of us. 
 By " most savagest " he only meant most deter- 
 mined to put through a hunt spite of danger, 
 foul weather, or hurricane on the lake ; for he 
 kept continually adding, " John Brown was the 
 kindest and good-naturedest creetur I ever see ! " 
 
 Other tribute than this I could not get out 
 of my roadside friend. No interest had he evi- 
 dently taken in the slavery issue, no share had 
 he had in the brooding scheme that night 'and 
 day was hatching its warrior-clan in the fiery 
 brain of the great Puritan hero. 
 
 Horizon once again enlarged, — enlarged as 
 to the loneliness of such grand characters as 
 Brown, how they are with ordinary mortals and 
 yet not of them, seen of them in their every-day 
 aspects and yet hidden in their inmost essence. 
 
ENLARGING ONE'S HORIZON. 165 
 
 Horizon likewise enlarged as to the value of 
 the men of destiny and high-wrought tragedy 
 and triumph so bearing themselves in daily life 
 that the most commonplace of their companions 
 can at least utter enthusiastic witness of them, — 
 "The kindest and good-naturedest creetur I 
 ever see!" 
 
 Such was my first experience in applying the 
 high idealism of Emerson to practical life. We 
 parted, this roadside waif and I, the best of 
 friends ; for what makes men better friends than 
 sympathetically sharing with one another a few 
 leaves torn out of the book of this strange and 
 eventful existence into which all are plunged? 
 Certainly, for one, I shall henceforth believe in 
 more of life and destiny as hidden inside the 
 most dilapidated of old coats and worn and bat- 
 tered of visages than ever before, as I connect 
 my chance acquaintance with the great human- 
 ity of which he is a typical though ragged 
 member. 
 
XXXI. 
 
 HAPPY NEW YEAR. 
 
 r^ RAVITATION is, no doubt, a most admi- 
 rable principle, as philosophers explain 
 how it keeps mankind stuck fast to their little 
 planet, feet down and head up, and thus safe 
 from congestion of brain. Somehow or other, 
 however, the crowd always raises a mighty 
 shout when it sees a balloon shoot up into the 
 air and apparently escape the tremendous press- 
 ure that pins the rest of the world close down 
 to the ground. Ballooning always was, and al- 
 ways will be, a highly popular amusement, just 
 because it furnishes such a lively illustration of 
 that exultant leap into freedom and space 
 which tired humanity is always craving for 
 itself. Thank God, then, for the New Year 
 festival. It is "Up in a Balloon, Boys!" all 
 around the globe. 
 
 " Up in a Balloon, Boys ? " It is up in a mill- 
 ion. The sky is full of them, with their gay 
 ribbons and flaunting streamers; and, out of 
 
HAPPY NEW YEAR. 167 
 
 each hanging car, men, women, and children are 
 shouting to one another : " Happy New Year ! " 
 "Gravitation is abolished!"' "No more debts, 
 no more exhausting pressure of work, no more 
 headaches, heartaches, sins!" Who but de- 
 lights to share the general exhilaration, and not 
 only wishes his neighbor, but genuinely believes 
 it will come to him, all manner of delights in 
 this world and the next ? 
 
 Man, at best, can do but one thing well at a 
 time. On the Fourth of July, let him work up 
 his patriotism with fire-crackers, and on Fast 
 Day his speed on the Brighton road. ^ Surely, 
 it is no loss, therefore, to devote one day in the 
 three hundred and sixty-five to ballooning after 
 happiness in such glorious company, everybody 
 included, black Charles, Celtic Bridget, Chinese 
 Wah-Sin. A cry of "Lynch him on the spot!" 
 ought to be raised against every cynical despe- 
 rado bent on going round, pin in hand, pricking- 
 holes in those iridescent, aerial bubbles that, for 
 twenty-four hours at least, lift nine-tenths of the 
 world high up into the empyrean. 
 
 The true way to get the benefit out of any 
 festival is first to fling the mind wholesale into 
 it and enjoy it to the top of its bent, and only 
 
168 BIRD-BOLTS. 
 
 afterward to reflect on its real significance. No 
 nnatomical lectures over a juicy leg of mutton! 
 Of all the men to climb a mountain with, the 
 worst of bores are those who are forever analyz- 
 ing which particular flexors and extensors among 
 their muscles are getting the good of the exer- 
 cise, or precisely what is the percentage of ozone 
 that is making one feel like a roe on the hillside. 
 All the rich and blessed things humanity has 
 aimed at have had an element of illusion .in 
 them, and promise more in the spirit than they 
 can keep in the flesh. But who wishes the dawn 
 to give up the habit of flushing mountain and 
 plain witli crimson and gold, because, later on 
 in the day, it may chance to rain? 
 
 The true way, then, to use the New Year 
 season is, first of all, to surrender the heart to 
 its spirit, and get up a head of generous sym- 
 pathetic steam. Later on will be time enough 
 to raise the question just how to gear on its 
 working force to practical ends. Here comes 
 along a poor devil of a friend, who has had a 
 hard time in the year that is past. Why not 
 accost him like a hearty fellow, who believes 
 better of this world than that it is a mere 
 sucked-out orange, and knows that it really has 
 
HAPPY NEW YEAR. 169 
 
 surprises and blessings still in store ? This 
 forever hanging back and saying to one's self, 
 " I do not really know what practical thing I 
 can do to help a given person," is a vast mis- 
 take. The man understands as well as you, or 
 better perhaps, that you can do nothing in es- 
 pecial. But he is none the less glad to learn 
 that you wish in your heart you could. 
 
 What good can you do, for example, if his 
 child lies dead in the house? None, you say. 
 Yes, a world of good ! You can make him feel 
 that, were you God, he should in an instant see 
 the blood flush the marble cheek of the little 
 one, and hear once more the music of her voice. 
 He knows perfectly well you are not God. But 
 he loves you none the less for your human sym- 
 pathy. Who expects the innumerable men, 
 women, and children that run up to him on 
 New Year's day, and make the air vocal with 
 their salutations, to be able to ward off from 
 him all the blows of life ? Is he, therefore, bru- 
 tally to cry to them, "Good wishes butter no 
 parsnips," as the proverb runs? Enough that 
 it is an exhilarating spectacle to see humanity 
 break loose one ■ in a while, and cheer the world 
 up by showing what is really inside the human 
 heart. 
 
XXXII. 
 
 THE RELATION OF NUMBER ONE TO 
 NUMBER TWO. 
 
 COME years ago there died a lady whose life 
 furnished a real contribution to this per- 
 plexing question. Married in her early youth 
 to a man of high intellectual endowment, and 
 with every prospect of a brilliant career before 
 him, a few years of overwork reduced him to a 
 nervous wreck. A bed-ridden future was all he 
 could look forward to. 
 
 With rare good sense and the bravest kind of 
 self-devotion, the young wife faced the position. 
 
 " If I shut myself up day and night in the 
 sick-room as a mere nurse," she argued, "it will 
 be bad for him, bad for me. Will two broken- 
 down, nervous wrecks help the matter? Not 
 only shall I be a better and happier woman if 
 I can maintain, through all the trying years 
 before us, high health, stout courage, wide 
 social interest j but I shall be of a thousand- 
 
NUMBER ONE AND NUMBER TWO. 171 
 
 fold more help to him. No sham, however, 
 will serve for reality. Unless first I heartily 
 enjoy these things myself, every attempt to 
 refresh and animate him by talking them over 
 will be forced and dreary." 
 
 So she resolutely formed her plans. The first 
 person she had to take into her counsel was 
 "Number One " ; and, on rationally studying the 
 nature of this " Number One," she found he was, 
 in herself as in everybody else, an intractable 
 sort of personality, who would neither sleep 
 soundly nor eat heartily, neither enjoy nature 
 and society nor keep abreast of what was inter- 
 esting in books or art, unless himself really 
 treated to a comfortable bed, a hearty meal, a 
 beautiful landscape, and a kind of literature he 
 could laugh or cry over in good faith. On these 
 conditions only would lie maintain himself so 
 strong and stout of heart, so bright m wit and 
 aglow with animation, that, introduce him into a 
 sick-room where a sufferer, down with nervous 
 prostration, was lying, there would be a ring in 
 his voice and a breeziness m his conversation 
 that would prove more tonic than bark and iron 
 to the weary monotony of the bed-ridden life. 
 
 Oftentimes, indeed, did it come over the 
 
172 BIRD-BOLTS. 
 
 young wife how vastly easier and pleasanter it 
 would be to sit down and have a good cry rather 
 than be forced to bestir herself in so many need- 
 ful ways to keep " Number One " in health and 
 spirits ; but, as often as she yielded to this 
 fascination for any length of time, the fellow 
 obstinately took the dumps, grew dyspeptic, and 
 told his old stories over till the jDOor, weary 
 patient he was ministering to secretly wished 
 him in Tophet. So, bracing herself up once 
 more, into company she went, into the woods to 
 hear the birds sing, into the lecture-room to 
 learn something new ; and thus for years kept 
 herself healthy and attractive, and proved the 
 unspeakable solace of her husband. 
 
 And yet who doubts that, through all this 
 period of brave and wise heroism, so sensible a 
 woman must have been a target shot full of 
 bitter and uncharitable arrows at the hands of 
 the large class of morbid and sacrificial Avives, 
 whose ideal of love consists in being utterly 
 woe-begone so long as their husbands are, and 
 who take plaintive satisfaction in noting how 
 their color is fading, their interest in society 
 dying out, their lungs, heart, and digestion get- 
 ting undermined in martyr proof of their spirit 
 
NUMBER ONE AND NUMBER TWO. 173 
 
 of more than Hindu self-immolation. Very nice 
 for them, no doubt ! But how about the hus- 
 bands ? 
 
 What man of sense, were he to be laid by 
 for years with nervous disease, would hesitate 
 '•which of the two to choose" in the way of 
 a wife to tend him? The one-sided and mor- 
 bidly-sacrificial woman,; — honestly out with it! 
 — would she not grow to be unspeakably mo- 
 notonous and tiresome ? Soon would she have 
 told all her old stories and sighed all her old 
 sighs. jSTo cheery atmosphere would she diffuse 
 of vitality, laughter, pleasant gossip, vista of 
 wider social interests. By and by would her 
 own health break down, and then would com- 
 panionship with her be practically as cheering 
 as with one's own wasted and dismal face in the 
 looking-glass. 
 
 True, she has become thus melancholy or 
 fractious solely through the wear and tear of 
 self-sacrificing love. " But what in perdition 
 did she do it for?" her irate husband will break 
 out, in some exasperated hour : " Why could 
 not her devotion have taken a cheerier and 
 more sensible shape ? " " The brute ! " will then 
 chorus, in shrill outcry, all the neighbor wives. 
 
X74 BIRD-BOLTS. 
 
 No, the man is not a brute ! Revenge is a wild 
 kind of justice. He has a right to tear his hair, 
 — that is, within reasonable limits, — when he 
 finds that the highest ideal of love conceivable 
 by the woman he led to the altar has event- 
 uated in the shortest cut she could take to 
 "medicine-bottles for two." 
 
XXXIII. 
 
 THE UGLINESS OF THE INDIVIDUAL. 
 
 /^\F the dreary experiences of ordinary life, 
 few oppress the mind with such a sense 
 of waking nightmare as the necessity, now and 
 then entailed upon every householder, of haunt- 
 ing the vast spaces of a furniture warehouse to 
 select some needful articles. The "monotony 
 of endless variety " with which he finds himself 
 bewildered, the vulgar, staring individualism of 
 each separate chair, table, or lounge, the pol- 
 ished and veneered smile of cynical contempt 
 at the very idea of domestic comfort and sweet 
 family seclusion reflected from every object, — 
 all this kills out, for the time being, the possi- 
 bility of any trace of sentiment over the sacred- 
 ness of wife or child or home. 
 
 And yet the sough t-f or objects once selected 
 and released from their dreary prison-house, the 
 table placed in the centre of the room and 
 crowned with a radiant light, the chairs dis- 
 posed around the ruddy open fire, the sofa 
 
176 BIKD-BOLTS. 
 
 rolled into a snug corner, and inviting to 
 stretch out the weary body and pillow the 
 tired head, and what a change comes over 
 the spirit of the dream ! A unity, sweet as 
 happy marriage, has made one blessed house- 
 hold out of a score of lone and loveless indi- 
 vidualities. 
 
 Of just such experiences, varied in a thousand 
 shapes, is human experience full. Here, for 
 example, in this New England region, how often 
 does a day come when, under the disenchant- 
 ment of a clear, prosaic west wind, all unity, 
 harmony, and poetry are swept with a besom 
 out of the landscape ! Every object — tree, 
 road, church, meadow, village — stares out in 
 the selfish, vulgar obtrusiveness of so many arti- 
 cles in the furniture shop, flouting the bare 
 idea of being part of an harmonious picture, 
 Baptist, Calvinistic, Unitarian, each in its dog- 
 matic self-assertion. As lief would one read for 
 his delectation a dictionary or city-directory, in 
 lieu of a poem, as long look out of the window. 
 
 The reason is plain. There are visible seven 
 hills, no one of which seems ever to have ex- 
 changed a sunrise greeting with the others; 
 three spires, no one of which to have ever 
 pointed to a common heaven ; four villages, no 
 
THE UGLINESS OF THE INDIVIDUAL. 177 
 
 one of them suggesting more sweet and neigh- 
 borly intercourse than Jew had with Samaritan. 
 They were from the beginning, are now, and 
 ever will be separate, unrelated existences. 
 Every one for himself, and the devil for us all, 
 is the creed they look as though they professed, 
 with the only approach to unanimity that can 
 be said to characterize them at all. 
 
 Then suddenly, as though heaven itself were 
 weary of the atheistic sight, lo ! from the east 
 or south a vapor-laden atmosphere, under which, 
 as beneath a bridal veil, all things are ethereal- 
 ized, blent together, made to brood and dream 
 and love. Anon, great clouds roll up from the 
 horizon. Lurid, lead-colored masses in back- 
 ground overhang the eastern sky, while from 
 the west the sinking sun pours out floods of 
 purple and gold. 
 
 And now the divine symphony begins. God 
 in them and they in God, hill flashes flaming 
 greeting to hill, valley whispers peace to neigh- 
 bor valley, burning spire exults in splendid 
 relief against lowering cloud, every window is 
 ablaze, myriad lingering raindrops coruscate the 
 sunbeams in i^isn^tic splendor. On every 
 hand, the individual dies exultingly to find his 
 beatific life in the life of all. And when, at 
 
178 BIRD-BOLTS. 
 
 last, some half-delirious robin, drunk with the 
 spectacle, perches himself on the topmost vibrat- 
 ing spire of a cedar, wrought to irrepressible 
 yearning to fill full the air with song and 
 lyric gladness, as it is with light and glory, 
 what but the blest interpreter he of the soaring 
 and the carol of every heart that shares such 
 high-carnival time of harmonious nature ! 
 
 This yearning of man's higher being after 
 unity and harmony, this pure happiness and 
 sweet home-feeling he experiences in it, surely 
 it can be nothing else nor less than the answer 
 from within to the reality of a divine order 
 environing the soul, wooing, inspiring, fusing it 
 into kindred likeness with itself. The images 
 that fill the mind with perfect rest and satisfac- 
 tion, of the mother lost in the sweetness of her 
 sleeping babe, the patriot one with the perils 
 and the triumphs of his country, the saint rapt 
 in the bliss of the overflowing thanksgiving of 
 his heart, why are these thus beautiful in our 
 eyes but because they are elastic and up-spring- 
 ing deliverance from the sense of burden and 
 oppression begotten in us by the nightmare 
 weight of mere isolated, meaningless, unrelated 
 units? So much of God made manifest are 
 
THE UGLINESS OF THE INDIVIDUAL. 179 
 
 they ; for God is music, meaning, vision, creative 
 breath in and through all things, unsearchable in 
 the depths of his being, apprehended only by the 
 soul sunk in the ravishment of some strain of 
 the eternal harmony that suggests the infinite 
 whole. 
 
 If there be anything, therefore, in the wide 
 universe man has a divine right to abhor and 
 surge against, it is mere units, units in the land- 
 scape, units in the family, units in the State and 
 Church ; unblent, unfused individualities, angu- 
 lar, sharp-cornered, fitting as parts into nothing 
 larger, richer, grander than themselves. In 
 their stifling realm of whirling dust-particles can 
 reason, love, imagination, faith, draw no breath 
 of life. Hateful inevitably is everything in 
 naked isolation. Look at the spectre, death! 
 How ugly and unrelated, mere clash and jar of 
 discord, part in no harmony, prophecy of no 
 fulfilment, so long as it points to nothing 
 beyond itself ! Reconciled with it as finality 
 can no man ever be. No, for not after the 
 manner and genius of the Creator of mother 
 and babe, patriot and fatherland, star and as- 
 tronomer, eye and sunset, heroic youth and 
 flushing maiden, is it. 
 
180 BIRD-BOLTS. 
 
 The lover of beauty hails at a glance a gen- 
 uine Raphael or Titian. Too often has he been 
 floated on the waves of their triumphant genius, 
 to make possible the attempt to palm off on him, 
 as their handiwork, a prosaic, discordant daub. 
 Reverently and loyally let the soul affirm at 
 least as much of God. Humbly yet proudly 
 let it cry: "I know this genius and his man- 
 ner. Dust and ashes are no summing-up of. 
 this miracle of human life. He has taken me 
 into his confidence in his high-carnival hours, 
 and opened my ears to the Symphony of Crea- 
 tion. Deny who will, I cry with Beethoven, 
 'God is nearer to me in my music than to 
 others.' Deny who will, mine the vaulting con- 
 fidence of Emerson, ' Our dissatisfaction with 
 any other solution is the blazing evidence of 
 our immortality.' In the law of harmony do I 
 make my refuge; and lowly-proud as Brown- 
 ing's grand old organist, Abt Vogler, re-echo his 
 strain : — 
 
 ' Sorrow is hard to bear, and doubt is slow to clear, 
 Each sufferer says his say, his scheme of the weal 
 and woe ; 
 But God has a few of us whom he wbispers in the ear. 
 The rest may reason and welcome: 'tis we musiciam 
 know.' "