UBg 3* p. 
 
 LIBRARY NOTES. New Edition. Crown 8vo, $2.00. 
 
 CHARACTERISTICS. Essays on Coleridge, Mrs. Siddons, 
 Dr. Johnson, Macaulay, Lamb, Burns, Woolman, John 
 Randolph, and John Brown, etc. 121110, $2.00. 
 
 ACLUBOFONE. Passages from the Note-Book of a Man 
 who might have been Sociable. i6mo, $1.25. 
 
 IN A CLUB CORNER. i6mo. 
 
 HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & COMPANY, 
 BOSTON AND NEW YORK. 
 
Clu 
 
 . 
 
 
 
 In a Club Corner 
 
 THE MONPJDOGUE OF A MAN WHO MIGHT 
 llAVE BEEN SOCIABLE 
 
 OVERHEARD BY 
 
 A. P. RUSSELL 
 
 AUTHOR OF "A CLUB OF ONE, "LIBRARY NOTES," "CHARACTER 
 ISTICS," ETC. 
 
 BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
 
 HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 
 (fa fiitewi&e prestf, Cambribge 
 1890 
 
\ 
 
 
 
 PKEUN 
 
 Copyright, 1890, 
 BY ADDISON P. RUSSELL, 
 
 All rights reserved* 
 
 SECOND EDITION. 
 
 The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., U.S.A. 
 Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton & Company. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Conversation 7 
 
 Originality 39 
 
 One Quality of the Great 46 
 
 Precept and Practice 5 7 
 
 Long Sermons 5^ 
 
 Old Age 57 
 
 Oblivion Si 
 
 Subsisting by Authorship 84 
 
 Pretension #9 
 
 Shakespeare 92 
 
 Paradoxes 9& 
 
 Solitude 107 
 
 Style no 
 
 Public Speaking 114 
 
 Books and Reading 119 
 
 Vanity 129 
 
 Justice and Mercy / 32 
 
 Sheridan /^7 
 
 Garrick /5 2 
 
 On Giving Advice 164 
 
 Limits 166 
 
 On Working Ourselves Up 168 
 
 Of Incalculable Forces /7/ 
 
 hN 
 
 89430 
 
4 Contents 
 
 Deceiving through the Affections 176 
 
 A Pretty Legend 777 
 
 Selecting Memories / j8 
 
 Manners 792 
 
 Self-Portraiture 797 
 
 The Philosopher s Stone 198 
 
 Reading Aloud 202 
 
 The Oblique Tendency 210 
 
 Whistling 214 
 
 Sentimentalism 2/5 
 
 Cost of Excellence 219 
 
 Youth and Age 226 
 
 Schools of Morals 229 
 
 Chairs of Common Sense 229 
 
 Small Things 2^0 
 
 Sects and Creeds 238 
 
 Good out of Evil 2^9 
 
 The Faitb Cure 241 
 
 Poverty 243 
 
 Digestion 257 
 
 Heroism 25^ 
 
 Character 255 
 
 The Hope 267 
 
 Intuition and Worship 274 
 
 Friendship 27$ 
 
 Ignorance 279 
 
 Faces 279 
 
 Heredity 288 
 
 The Laconic , 296 
 
Contents 5 
 
 Monotony and Familiarity 302 
 
 Sleep of the Mind ^04 
 
 The Friendly Guidance of Necessity 308 
 
 The Palm of Destiny ^o<? 
 
 Content ?/^ 
 
 Democracy ^/6 
 
 Proud Possessors ^/# 
 
 Responsibility j 2 o 
 
 Essays in Titles 2/ 
 
IN A CLUB CORNER 
 
 N Dean Swift s Hints towards CONVERSA- 
 
 . TION. 
 
 an Essay on Conversation, he 
 sets out by saying that he had 
 observed few obvious subjects 
 to have been so seldom, or at 
 least so slightly, handled as this, and that 
 few were so difficult to treat. Conver 
 sation is an art, says Emerson, in which 
 a man has all mankind for his competitors, 
 for it is that which all are practicing every 
 day while they live. Metternich is re- Metterwctt 
 
 ... experience. 
 
 ported to have said, " In my whole life I 
 have only known ten or twelve persons 
 with whom it is pleasant to speak that 
 is, who keep to the subject, do not repeat 
 themselves, and do not talk of themselves ; 
 men who do not listen to their own voices, 
 who are cultivated not to lose themselves 
 in commonplaces ; and lastly, who possess 
 tact and good sense enough not to elevate 
 their own persons above their subjects." 
 Steele said, " It is a secret known but to 
 
8 In a Club Corner 
 
 . 
 
 ^t; of no small use in the conduct of 
 life, that when you fall into a man s con- 
 The first vcrsation, the first thing that you should 
 tid U *~ consider is, whether he has a greater in 
 clination to hear you, or that you should 
 hear him." "To please," observed Cham- 
 fort, "one must make up his mind to be 
 taught many things which he already 
 knows, by people who do not know them." 
 "The reason why few persons are agree 
 able in conversation," thought La Roche 
 foucauld, " is because each thinks more of 
 what he intends to say than of what others 
 are saying, and seldom listens but when 
 he desires to speak." La Bruyere was of 
 opinion that " the art of conversation con 
 sists much less in your own abundance 
 than in enabling others to find talk for 
 themselves. Men do not wish to admire 
 in what the you ; they want to please. The wit of 
 
 ivit of con- . . . . . 
 
 versatwn conversation consists more in rinding it in 
 
 consist*. others than in showing a great deal your 
 
 self ; he who goes from your conversation 
 
 pleased with himself and his own wit is 
 
 perfectly well pleased with you." 
 
 The question was once put to Aristotle, 
 how we ought to behave to our friends, and 
 the answer he gave was, "As we should 
 wish our friends to behave to us." The 
 
In a Club Corner 9 
 
 world has been justly likened to a looking- 
 glass, which gives back to every man the 
 reflection of his own face. Frown at it, 
 and it will in turn look sourly upon you ; 
 laugh at it and with it, and it is a jolly, 
 kind companion. 
 
 One of the best rules in conversation, Aruieof 
 
 f <-. r Swlff S. 
 
 in the opinion of Swift, is never to say a 
 thing which any of the company can rea 
 sonably wish we had left unsaid ; nor can 
 anything be well more contrary to the 
 ends for which people meet together than 
 to part unsatisfied with each other or them 
 selves. Conversation, in the judgment of 
 Sydney Smith, must and ought to grow 
 out of materials on which men can agree, 
 not upon subjects which try the passions. 
 
 Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, who had 
 tried all things, pronounced a chosen con 
 versation, composed of a few that one 
 esteems, the greatest happiness of life. The greatest 
 Of indoor entertainment, it has been re- /$? * 
 marked, the truest and most humane is 
 that of conversation. But this social 
 amusement is not, in all circumstances, to 
 be got, and when it is to be had, we are 
 not always fit for it. The art of conver 
 sation is so little cultivated, the tongue is 
 so little refined, the play of wit and the 
 
io In a Club Corner 
 
 flow of fancy are so little encouraged or 
 esteemed, that our social gatherings are too 
 Talkative often stupid and wearisome. Talkative 
 2d* & * men, it has been observed, seldom read. 
 This is among the few truths which appear 
 the more strange the more we reflect upon 
 them ? For what is reading but silent con 
 versation ? Conversation, said Sterne, is 
 a traffic ; and if you enter into it without 
 some stock of knowledge to balance the 
 account perpetually betwixt you, the trade 
 drops at once. Though, as Dr. Holmes 
 has said, " Nobody talks much that doesn t 
 say unwise things, things he did not 
 mean to say ; as no person plays much 
 without striking a false note sometimes. 
 Talk, to me, is only spading up the ground 
 for crops of thought. I can t answer for 
 what will turn up. If I could, it would n t 
 be talking, but speaking my piece. Bet- 
 Abandon- ter, I think, the hearty abandonment of 
 
 ment of one s 
 
 self. one s self to the suggestions of the moment, 
 at the risk of an occasional slip of the 
 tongue, perceived the instant it escapes, 
 but just one syllable too late, than the 
 royal reputation of never saying a foolish 
 thing." Alcott expressed the belief that 
 "in conversation fine things maybe said, 
 but the best must come of themselves ; 
 
In a Club Corner 1 1 
 
 they cannot be coerced ; they must be born 
 
 of the soul. All true conversation is spon- True co^ 
 
 
 
 taneous, and only comes when the gods 
 are near. When the gods are distant it 
 is because of adverse influences. The in 
 tuitions are the essence of all wisdom, and 
 all the intuitions come from the shrine of 
 nature, which we must hold in reverence. 
 There is no finite. The circles of our 
 being begin and end in eternity." 
 
 A great good of conversation is, that it 
 fills all gaps, supplies all deficiencies, and 
 makes you forgetful of particulars. It is 
 recorded of Madame de Maintenon that, 
 
 Mainlenon. 
 
 during dinner, the servant slipped to her 
 side, " Please, madame, one anecdote more, 
 for there is no roast to-day." Who does 
 not remember occasions when the feast 
 was the least part of the entertainment? 
 when the flavor of the delicate and rich 
 dishes was lost in the higher satisfaction 
 of the intellectual palate ? 
 
 The foundation of all good conversation 
 is what the poet Rowe pronounces the 
 foundation of all the virtues good nature : 
 "which is friendship between man and 
 man ; good breeding in courts ; charity in 
 religion ; and the true spring of all be 
 neficence in general." Censoriousness is 
 
12 
 
 In a Club Corner 
 
 George 
 George 
 
 almost sure to have its origin in ill-nature 
 or self-reproach. In such case those who 
 indulge in it (to quote Lady Blessington) 
 "consider the severity of their censures 
 on the failings of others as an atonement 
 for their own." 
 
 It is well to remember the saying, that 
 nature has created man with two ears and 
 but one tongue. " I did not hear what you 
 said," ejaculated an exuberant talker, by 
 way of contradiction. " I don t know how 
 you should have heard it," was the reply, 
 "for you never hear anything." "I am 
 very fond of society," said Madame du 
 Deffand ; " all the world listens to me, and 
 I listen to nobody." Liszt is reported as 
 saying of George Eliot : "Ugly though she 
 was, Miss Evans had a charm, and knew 
 how to captivate those around her." At 
 times her way of listening reminded him 
 of George Sand. She seemed to absorb 
 like a sponge everything she saw and 
 heard. . Her long, ill-favored face put on 
 an expression of attention so rapt that 
 it became positively interesting. George 
 Sand, he said, caught her butterfly and 
 tamed it in her box by giving it grass and 
 flowers this was the love period. Then 
 she stuck her pin into it when it struggled 
 
In a Club Corner 13 
 
 this was the conge, and it always came 
 from her. Afterward she vivisected it, 
 stuffed it, and added it to her collection 
 of heroes for novels. It was this traffic 
 of souls which had given themselves up 
 unreservedly to her which eventually dis 
 gusted him with her. By the faculty of 
 attentively listening to what others had 
 to say, Madame Roland affirms that she Madame 
 
 J Roland, 
 
 made more friends than by any remarks 
 she ever made of her own. Judicious 
 silence is one of the great social virtues. 
 Quaint old Burton tells of a woman who, 
 hearing one of the gossips by chance com 
 plain of her husband s impatience, told her 
 an excellent remedy for it, and gave her 
 withal a glass of water, which when he 
 brawled she should hold still in her mouth, 
 and that toties quoties, as often as he chid : 
 she did so twice or three times with good 
 success, and at length, seeing her neighbor, 
 gave her great thanks for it, and would 
 needs know the ingredients : she told her in 
 brief what it was ; fair water, and no more ; 
 for it was not the water, but her silence 
 
 which performed the cure. 
 
 Those who have been renowned for their 
 powers of conversation were constantly 
 exercising them. Addison would pass 
 
1 4 In a Club Corner 
 
 seven or eight hours a day in coffee-houses 
 and taverns. Johnson told Boswell that 
 his habit was to go out at four o clock in 
 the afternoon and not to return till two in 
 the morning. A great time for these great 
 men to spend in talk. Lady Mary Wortley 
 Montagu declared Addison was the best 
 company in the world ; and Pope confessed 
 that his great compeer s conversation had 
 something in it more charming than he 
 had found in any other man. " But this," 
 the poet said, " was only when familiar : 
 before strangers, or perhaps a single stran 
 ger, he preserved his dignity by a stiff 
 silence." It is stated that whenever Bos- 
 well came into a company where Horace 
 Walpole was, Walpole would throw back 
 his head, purse up his mouth very signifi 
 cantly, and not speak a word while Boswell 
 remained. 
 
 The wits of Horace Walpole s day, Sir 
 George Selwyn, Sir Hanbury Williams, 
 Bubb Doddington, Charles Townshend, 
 and their associates, it is difficult to judge 
 of at the distance of more than a century 
 from their times. But it would appear 
 their wit was of the social, unpremeditated, 
 conversational character, in which Sydney 
 Smith, Talleyrand, Hook, and Barham par- 
 
In a Club Corner 75 
 
 ticularly excelled. Sydney Smith, it is Sydney 
 known, could not make the smallest re 
 mark without provoking a laugh ; and even 
 when he said grace, the young lady who 
 sat next to him said, " You always are so 
 amusing." His compliment to Lady D. is 
 worth remembering. " She seems," he 
 said, " to be a very sensible and very worthy 
 person. I must do her the justice to say 
 that when my jokes are explained to her, 
 and she has leisure to reflect upon them, 
 she laughs very heartily." 
 
 Everybody has heard of Hook s famous Hook. 
 reply when, after having returned from the 
 colonies, where he was in an official posi 
 tion, under suspicion of peculation, a friend 
 meeting him said, " Why, hello, Hook ! I 
 did not know you were in England. What 
 has brought you back again ? " " Some 
 thing wrong about the chest," replied the 
 imperturbable wit. 
 
 It has been remarked upon as singular 
 that one known to have been habitually as 
 silent as Talleyrand should have left a Talleyrand 
 reputation for brilliancy in the social circle. 
 From his habit of nearly closing his eyes 
 a habit that grew upon him as he advanced 
 in years he could scarcely have appeared 
 even an attentive or interested listener. 
 
1 6 In a Club Corner 
 
 His drooped eyelids, and the smile on his 
 face, would rather seemingly have indicated 
 a mind occupied with some dreamy thoughts 
 of his own. Yet, when, occasionally, half 
 rising from his seat, or changing his posi 
 tion, he opened his eyes on the company, 
 Malicious with a glance full of malice, but not of ill- 
 
 but not ill- i i 
 
 nature*. nature, and uttered some piquant remark 
 or amusing bon mot (which he had, doubt 
 less, been meditating), he gave, in a few 
 words, a concentrated reply, as it were, to 
 the whole conversation. And usually it 
 was so fit, so appropriate, that it fixed itself 
 in the memory of his hearers ; unlike the 
 wordy declamation which, as a noise in the 
 air, floated away from Madame de StaeTs 
 admiring audience, without leaving a trace 
 of its meaning in the mind. 
 
 Brougham^ Lord Brougham, who speaks from a 
 
 eulogy. , i i i i r i i 
 
 personal and aelighttul intimacy, eulogizes 
 Talleyrand s conversation : " Of his truly 
 inimitable conversation, and the mixture 
 of strong masculine sense, and exquisitely 
 witty turns in which it abounds inde 
 pendently of the interest, and the solid 
 value which it derived from a rich fund of 
 anecdote, delivered in the smallest number 
 possible of the most happy and most ap 
 propriate words possible, it would indeed 
 
/// a Club Corner 77 
 
 be difficult to convey an adequate idea. 
 His own powers of picturesque, and won 
 derfully condensed expression, would be condensed 
 
 ..,,,,. c . expression. 
 
 hardly sufficient to present a portrait of its 
 various and striking beauties. Simple and 
 natural, yet abounding in the most sudden 
 and unexpected turns ; full of point, yet 
 evidently the inspiration of the moment, 
 and therefore more absolutely to the pur 
 pose than if they had been the labored 
 effort of a day s reflection a single word 
 often performing the office of sentences, 
 nay, a tone not unfrequently rendering 
 many words superfluous always the 
 phrase most perfectly suitable selected, and 
 its place most happily chosen all this is 
 literally correct, and no picture of fancy, 
 but a mere abridgment and transcript of 
 the marvelous original ; yet it falls very 
 short of conveying its lineaments, and fails 
 still more to render its coloring and its 
 shades. For there was a constant gayety 
 of manner which had the mirthful aspect 
 of good-humor, even on the eve or on the 
 morrow of some flash in which his witty 
 raillery had wrapped a subject or a person 
 in ridicule, or of some torrent in which his 
 satire had descended instantaneous but 
 destructive ; there was an archness of 
 
 wanner. 
 
1 8 In a Club Corner 
 
 malice when more than ordinary execution 
 must be done, that defied the pencil of the 
 describer, as it did the attempts of the 
 imitator ; there were manners the most 
 perfect in ease, in grace, in flexibility ; 
 there was the voice of singular depth and 
 modulation, and the countenance alike 
 fitted to express earnest respect, unosten 
 tatious contempt, and bland complacency ; 
 and all this must have been really wit 
 nessed to be accurately understood." 
 His circnm- " His circumspection," said Napoleon, 
 " was extreme. He treated his friends as 
 if they might, in future, become his ene 
 mies, and he behaved to his enemies as if 
 they might, some time or other, become 
 his friends. Mademoiselle Raucourt, a 
 celebrated actress, described him with 
 great truth. If you ask him a question/ 
 said she, he is an iron chest, whence you 
 cannot extract a syllable ; but if you ask 
 him nothing, you will soon be unable to 
 stop his mouth, he will become a regular 
 gossip. The countenance of Talleyrand 
 is so immovable that nothing can be read 
 in it. Lannes and Murat used jocularly to 
 say of him, that if while he was speaking 
 to you, some one should come behind and 
 give him a kick, his countenance would 
 betray nothing." 
 
In a Club Corner ig 
 
 Macaulay met Talleyrand at Holland 
 House, and had the pleasure of listening " 
 for an hour and a half to his conversation. 
 The great Frenchman was then an old 
 man. " He is certainly," said Macaulay, 
 in a letter to his sister, " the greatest curi 
 osity that I ever fell in with. His head is 
 sunk down between two high shoulders. 
 One of his feet is hideously distorted. His 
 face is as pale as that of a corpse, and 
 wrinkled to a frightful degree. His eyes 
 have an odd glassy stare quite peculiar to 
 them. His hair, thickly powdered and 
 pomatumed, hangs down his shoulders on 
 each side as straight as a pound of tallow 
 candles. His conversation, however, soon 
 makes you forget his ugliness and infirmi 
 ties. There is a poignancy without effort Poignancy 
 in all that he says, which reminded me a 
 little of the character which the wits of 
 Johnson s circle give of Beauclerk. He 
 told several stories about the political men 
 of France : not of any great value in them 
 selves : but his way of telling them was 
 beyond all praise ; concise, pointed, and 
 delicately satirical." 
 
 Coleridge was one of those enthusiasts 
 whose minds are absorbed by the doctrines 
 they have last espoused. Southey de- 
 
2O In a Club Corner 
 
 HIS habit of scribes him as repeating the same thing to 
 
 repeating . ... 
 
 himself. every fresh company ; and if they were at 
 seven parties in the week, his set speech 
 was delivered seven times. His pauses 
 occurred at intervals of about a quarter of 
 an hour, and he did not suffer the second 
 personage in the dialogue to thrust in more 
 than a few hasty words before he launched 
 anew upon his loquacious discourse. 
 
 Two persons, Underwood and McKenzie, 
 who had many opportunities of observing 
 Coleridge, are reported by Dilke (long the 
 editor of the London Athenaeum, and the 
 personal friend of Keats, Lamb, Procter, 
 etc.) to have arrived at the conclusion 
 that there was more humbug in Coleridge 
 than in any man that was ever heard of. 
 Underwood was one day transcribing some 
 thing for Coleridge, when a visitor ap 
 peared. After the commonplaces, Cole 
 ridge took up a little book lying upon the 
 
 Manner table, and said, " By-the-bye, I casually took 
 
 described. , . i . 
 
 up this little book this morning, and was 
 quite enchanted with a little sonnet I found 
 there." He then read off a blank verse 
 translation, and entered into a long critique 
 upon its merits. The same story, the same 
 translation, the same critique, were re 
 peated five times in that day to different 
 
In a Club Corner 21 
 
 visitors, without one word being altered. 
 Mr. Underwood said that every one of his 
 famous winning conversations was got up. 
 
 i t f 
 
 This habit of repetition was not confined 
 to his conversation. In. every one of his 
 writings, says his nephew, there are repe 
 titions, either literal or substantial, of pas 
 sages to be found in some others of those 
 writings ; and there are several particular 
 positions and reasonings which he con 
 sidered of vital importance, reiterated in 
 the Friend, the Literary Life, the Lay Ser 
 mons, the Aids to Reflection, and the 
 Church and State. He was always deepen 
 ing and widening the foundation, and cared 
 not how often he used the same stone. 
 
 In illustration of Coleridge s unfailing 
 talk, Procter gives an account of one of his p 
 days, when he was present. He had come 
 from Highgate to London, for the sole 
 purpose of consulting a friend about, his 
 son Hartley ("our dear Hartley"), for 
 whom he expressed, and no doubt felt, 
 much anxiety. He arrived about one or 
 two o clock, in the midst of a conversation 
 which immediately began to interest him. 
 He struck into the middle of the talk very 
 soon, and "held the ear of the house" 
 until dinner made its appearance about 
 
 racier s 
 account. 
 
22 In a Club Corner 
 
 Talked four o clock. He then talked all through 
 
 without in- 
 
 terruption. the dinner, all the afternoon, all the even 
 ing, with scarcely a single interruption. 
 He expatiated on this subject and on that ; 
 he drew fine distinctions ; he made subtle 
 criticisms. He descended to anecdotes, 
 critical, logical, historical ; he dealt with 
 law, medicine, and divinity, until at last, 
 five minutes before eight o clock, the ser 
 vant came in and announced that the 
 Highgate stage was at the corner of the 
 street, and was waiting to convey Mr. 
 Coleridge home. Coleridge immediately 
 started up, oblivious of all time, and said, 
 
 in a hurried voice, " My dear F , I will 
 
 come to you some other day, and talk to 
 you about our dear Hartley." He had 
 quite forgotten his son and everybody 
 else, in the delight of having such an en 
 raptured audience. 
 
 His preach- His preaching tone is well-known, and 
 has often been described. Lamb and 
 Coleridge were once talking together on 
 the incidents of Coleridge s early life, when 
 he was beginning his career in the Church, 
 and Coleridge was describing some of the 
 facts in his usual tone, when he paused, 
 and said : " Pray, Mr. Lamb, did you ever 
 hear me preach ? " " Damme," said Lamb, 
 "I never heard you do anything else." 
 
cuse. 
 
 In a Club Corner 2 3 
 
 Wordsworth was to breakfast with Proc 
 ter one morning, but being much after 
 the appointed time, he excused himself by words- 
 
 , , i r 1111 -worth s ex- 
 
 stating that he and a friend had been to see 
 Coleridge, who had detained them by one 
 continuous flow of talk. " How was it you 
 called so early ? " inquired Rogers. " Oh ! " 
 said Wordsworth, "we are going to dine 
 with him this evening, and" "And," 
 said Rogers, taking up the sentence, "you 
 wanted to take the sting out of him be 
 forehand." 
 
 Macaulay was met by Crabb Robinson at 
 a dinner-party, about the time the former 
 began to be famous. The barrister de 
 scribes him in his diary as " very eloquent 
 and cheerful. Overflowing with words, 
 and not poor in thought. He seems a 
 correct as well as a full man. He showed 
 a minute knowledge of subjects not in- A 
 troduced by himself." He was a favorite 
 at Holland House. Lady Holland, we are 
 told, listened to him with unwonted defer 
 ence, and scolded him with a circumspec 
 tion that was in itself a compliment. 
 Rogers spoke of him with friendliness, and 
 to him with positive affection. Sharp 
 treated him with great kindness and con 
 sideration. For the space of three seasons 
 
 mcnt. 
 
24 In a Club Corner 
 
 he dined out almost nightly, and spent 
 many of his Sundays in the suburban man 
 sions of his friends. Lord Carlisle, in his 
 journal, mentions having met Macaulay at 
 a dinner. "Never," he says, "were such 
 Torrent* of torrents of good talk as burst and sput- 
 
 good talk, L 
 
 tered over from Macaulay and Hallam." 
 He refers also to a breakfast with Macaulay 
 in his rooms at the top of the Albany 
 their walls covered with seven to ten thou 
 sand books. Macaulay s conversation, he 
 says, "ranged the world." " To remember 
 his talk," says Thackeray, " is to wonder : 
 to think not only of the treasures he had 
 in his memory, but of the trifles he had 
 stored there, and could produce with equal 
 readiness. Every man who has known 
 ^ him has his story regarding that astonish 
 ing memory. It may be that he was not 
 ill-pleased that you should recognize it ; 
 but to those prodigious intellectual feats, 
 which were so easy to him, who would 
 grudge his tribute of homage ? " 
 
 What he said of Churchill was perhaps 
 applicable to himself, "There was too 
 great a tendency to say with willing ve 
 hemence whatever could be eloquently 
 said : " he must needs, it seems, be ever 
 talking or writing somebody or something 
 
In a Club Corner 25 
 
 up or down. Hayward said, "Give Lord Haywar<ps 
 Macaulay a hint, a fancy, an insulated fact 
 or phrase, a scrap of a journal, or the tag 
 end of a song, and on it, by the abused 
 prerogative of genius, he would construct 
 a theory of national or personal character, 
 which should confer undying glory or in 
 flict indelible disgrace." 
 
 From all accounts, there must have been 
 a good deal of the declamatory, the aggres 
 sive, the irrepressible, the overwhelming 
 in the manner and conversation of Madame Madame d* 
 de Stae l. Byron said she ought to have 
 been a man. Heine called her " a hurri 
 cane in a petticoat." No wonder Napoleon 
 hated her and hunted her. She did con 
 sent to be silent, to wait, to suffer the loss 
 of all things dear to her ; but she refused 
 a word of homage to power. The Minis 
 ter of Police (Fouche) demanded only the 
 insertion of a flattery in Corinne. She an 
 swered that she was ready to take out of it 
 anything offensive, but not to add anything 
 to make her court to the government. 
 
 " She was born to be a damper, this A damper. 
 young woman ! " exclaimed Gabriel Varden 
 of Miggs, his old servant (in Barnaby 
 Rudge). In the souvenirs of Madame le 
 Brim she recites that, while traveling in 
 
In a Club Corner 
 
 
 The sheep 
 all dirty. 
 
 a carriage in Italy with a gentleman whom 
 circumstances brought in her way, she had 
 the following experience : " As we were 
 crossing the Pontine marshes I perceived 
 a shepherd seated on the bank of a canal, 
 whilst his sheep browsed in a field car 
 peted with flowers, beyond which one 
 could see the sea and Cape Circee. This 
 would make a charming picture, I said to 
 my companion the shepherd, the sheep, 
 the prairie, and the sea. These sheep 
 are all dirty, he replied ; you should see 
 the English sheep. Again, on the road 
 to Tenadna, I saw on the left the line of 
 the Apennines surrounded by superb 
 clouds that the setting sun had lightened ; 
 I could not refrain from expressing my 
 The superb admiration. These clouds only promise 
 
 clouds only . . , , 
 
 us ram to-morrow, said my companion. 
 Farther along on the journey, she adds : 
 " The road to Naples is charming ; here 
 and there beautiful trees are seen, and 
 the hedges are masses of wild roses and 
 scented myrtles. I was enchanted, though 
 my companion said he preferred the sunny, 
 fine slopes of Bordeaux, which promised 
 good wine." Madame le Brun called this 
 gentleman her "extinguisher," and soon had 
 the satisfaction of saying good-by to him. 
 
 promising 
 rain. 
 
In a Club Corner 27 
 
 In Gil Bias is an allusion to a dozen people A scenefro 
 
 . . . Gil Bias. 
 
 sitting at supper. It was whimsical enough : 
 the whole party plied their knives and forks 
 without speaking a word, except one man, 
 who talked incessantly, right or wrong, and 
 made up for the silence of the rest by his 
 eternal babble. He affected to be a wit, to 
 tell a good story, and took great pains to 
 make the good folks merry by his puns ; and 
 accordingly they did laugh most inextin 
 guishably ; but it was at him, not with him. 
 " If you are ever at a loss to support a 
 flagging conversation," says Leigh Hunt, 
 "introduce the subject of eating." No The subject 
 man is ignorant or reticent on that inter- - featins - 
 esting subject. Nor does he fail to be in 
 telligent and loquacious when his neigh 
 bors are to be discussed. Those persons, 
 it has been said, who from folly or from 
 carelessness tell one friend what another 
 friend says of him would do well to con 
 sider the observation, true or not, of the 
 acute and amiable Pascal : " All men natu- An obser. 
 
 111 1-, T . tion of Pas- 
 
 rally hate each other. I am certain that cat. 
 if they were to know accurately what they 
 occasionally had said of one another, there 
 would not be four persons in the world 
 who could long preserve their friendship 
 for one another." 
 
28 In a Club Corner 
 
 As to too much of the conversation in 
 
 tion in sick- . . _^ .... 
 
 rooms. sick-rooms, Dr. Holmes in his Autocrat re 
 marks : " As you go down the social scale, 
 you reach a point at length where the com 
 mon talk in sick-rooms is of churchyards 
 and sepulchres, and a kind of perpetual 
 vivisection is forever carried on upon the 
 person of the miserable sufferer." 
 
 The same witty and wise genius, in the 
 Poet at the Breakfast-Table, says : " Peo 
 ple you talk with every day have got to 
 
 Feedersfor have feeders for their minds, as much as 
 the stream that turns a mill-wheel has. It 
 is n t one little rill that s going to keep the 
 float boards turning round. Take a dozen 
 of the brightest men you can find in the 
 brightest city, wherever that may be, and 
 let em come together once a month, and 
 you 11 find out in the course of a year or 
 two the ones that have feeders from all the 
 hillsides. Your common talkers, that ex 
 change the gossip of the day, have no wheel 
 
 Wash of the in particular to turn, and the wash of the 
 
 street. ... . 
 
 ram as it runs down the street is enough 
 for them." 
 
 Truly it is said that, cultivate as you 
 will, decree as you will, begild with titles, 
 overload with privileges and possessions, 
 there is among men but one genuine 
 
In a Club Corner 29 
 
 superiority, the superiority of mind, a 
 
 . . . r 
 
 superiority resulting from the union of the 
 higher intellect with the higher feelings. 
 " Through life," says Thackeray, " Swift, 
 somehow, seems always to be alone. 
 Goethe was so. I can t fancy Shakespeare 
 otherwise. The giants must live apart. 
 The kings can have no company. . . . 
 Looking at the calm, fair face and clear 
 countenance of Addison, those chiseled 
 features pure and cold, I can t but fancy 
 that this great man was also one of the 
 lonely ones of the world. Such men have 
 very few equals, and they don t herd with world. 
 those. It is in the nature of such lords of 
 intellect to be solitary they are in the 
 world, but not of it ; and our minor strug 
 gles, brawls, successes, pass under them." 
 It always seemed to Holmes as if Emerson 
 looked upon this earth very much as a vis 
 itor from another planet would look on it. 
 He was interested, and to some extent 
 curious about it, but it was not the first 
 spheroid he had been acquainted with, by 
 any means. Richter has said, the more 
 powerful and intellectual and great two 
 men are, so much the less can they bear 
 each other under one ceiling, as great in 
 sects, which live on fruits, are unsocial 
 
^o In a Club Corner 
 
 (for example, in every hazel-nut there sits 
 only one chafer), whereas the little ones, 
 which live only on leaves, for instance, 
 the leaf-lice, cleave together inseparably. 
 
 Bums. Some one said of Burns, " He is great in 
 
 verse, greater in prose, still greater in con 
 versation." Eminent people, like Robert 
 son the historian, ladies of rank, like the 
 Duchess of Gordon, and the servants at the 
 inns, who, if Burns came in late, would 
 "get out of bed to hear him talk," testify 
 to his powers. We have an account of a 
 call that two Englishmen made upon him. 
 They found him fishing. He received 
 them with cordiality, and asked them to 
 
 A dinner share his humble dinner. He was in his 
 
 ivith the . , , - , . 
 
 poet. happiest mood, and the charm of his con 
 
 versation was altogether fascinating. He 
 ranged over a variety of topics, illuminat 
 ing whatever he touched. He related the 
 tales of his infancy and youth ; he recited 
 some of his gayest and some of his tender- 
 est poems ; in the wildest of the strains of 
 his mirth he threw in some touches of 
 melancholy, and spread around him the 
 electric emotions of his powerful nature. 
 The Highland whiskey improved in its 
 flavor ; the marble bowl was again and 
 again emptied and replenished ; the guests 
 
In a Club Corner 31 
 
 of the poet forgot the flight of time and 
 the dictates of prudence ; at the hour of 
 midnight they lost their way to Dumfries, 
 and could scarcely distinguish it when 
 assisted by the morning s dawn. 
 
 " Madame Recamier," said De Tocque- 
 
 i * ir r> \ Recamier. 
 
 ville (m conversation with Mr. Senior), 
 "was the delight of Paris, but she said 
 very little. She listened and smiled in 
 telligently, and from time to time threw 
 in a question or a remark to show that she 
 understood you. From long habit she 
 knew what were the subjects on which each 
 guest showed to most advantage, and she 
 put him upon them. The last, indeed, was 
 not difficult, for the guest knew better 
 even than she did his forte, and seized the 
 thread that led to it. It was only by infer 
 ence, only by inquiring why it was that 
 one talked more easily at her house than 
 elsewhere, that one discovered the perfec 
 tion of her art." At another time he said 
 to Mr. Senior, "I knew well Madame Re 
 camier. Few traces of her former beauty 
 remained ; but we were all her lovers and Her lovers 
 
 and slaves. 
 
 her slaves. The talent, labor, and skill, 
 which she wasted on her salon, would have 
 gained and governed an empire. She was 
 virtuous, if it be virtuous to persuade every 
 
}2 In a Club Corner 
 
 one of a dozen men to believe that you 
 wish to favor him, though some circum 
 stances always seemed to prevent your 
 doing so. Every friend thought himself 
 Little dis- preferred. She governed us by little dis- 
 
 tinctions. . . . 
 
 tmctions, by letting one man come five 
 minutes before the others, or stay five 
 minutes after, just as Louis XIV. raised 
 one courtier to the seventh heaven by 
 giving him the taper at night, and another 
 by taking his shirt from him in the morn 
 ing. As I have remarked, the Madame 
 said little, but knew what each man s forte 
 was, and placed from time to time a mot 
 which led him to it. If anything were 
 peculiarly well said, her face brightened. 
 You saw that her attention was always 
 active and always intelligent." 
 
 Charles Mathews, the elder, must have 
 been a delightful conversationalist in his 
 way. Perhaps no one ever existed who car 
 ried more genius into his jesting. Every 
 thing and everybody seemed imitable by 
 him. What a dinner that must have been 
 where Scott and Byron and Mathews sat 
 down together an occasion and event of 
 so much importance as to have been spe 
 cially noted by each one of them. Lockhart 
 says that Sir Walter recorded it in his 
 
In a Club Corner 33 
 
 note-book as "the most interesting day 
 
 he ever spent." The great actor s ruling Ruling ten. 
 
 dency, 
 
 tendency was conspicuous throughout the 
 whole of his life. It is said that the attend 
 ant in his last illness intended to give his 
 patient some medicine ; but a few moments 
 afterward it was discovered that the medi 
 cine was nothing but ink, which had been 
 taken from the vial by mistake, and his 
 friend exclaimed, " Good Heavens, Math- 
 ews, I have given you ink!" "Never 
 mind, my boy," said Mathews, faintly ; 
 "I 11 swallow a bit of blotting-paper." 
 
 Diplomatists are thought to be dissem 
 blers, though sometimes very remarkable 
 for their frankness. Count Cavour and cavourand 
 Prince Bismarck may be cited as instances. 
 Once when the Prussian envoy at Turin, 
 astonished at Cavour s freedom of speech, 
 was searching for some hidden meaning 
 in his words, Cavour replied quickly, " Do 
 not deceive yourself. I say only what I 
 think. As for the habit attributed to di 
 plomatists of disguising their thoughts, it 
 is one of which I never avail myself." He 
 used often to say laughingly to his friends, 
 " Now I have found out the art of deceiv 
 ing diplomatists : I speak the truth, and I 
 am certain they will not believe me." 
 
34 l n a Club Corner 
 
 cariyie. Thirty odd years ago, Carlyle, as a so 
 
 cial power, or a social plague, was already 
 troubling the still surface of London draw 
 ing-room life. " What is his talk like ? " 
 asked Miss Berry of her friend ; and 
 Kinglake answered, " Ezekiel." Thack 
 eray said, " The man is a bully, but he can 
 be silenced by persiflage ; " a remark that 
 is interesting in connection with Carlyle s 
 recorded verdict of Thackeray. 
 
 Scott. Scott was a fine humorist in conversa 
 
 tion. Irving has preserved a good speci 
 men of his talk. One morning at break 
 fast, when Dominie Thomson, the tutor, 
 was present, Scott was going on with great 
 glee to relate an anecdote of the Laird of 
 Macnab, " who, poor fellow," premised he, 
 "is dead and gone." "Why, Mr. Scott," 
 exclaimed his lady, " Macnab s not dead, 
 is he ? " " Faith, my clear," replied Scott, 
 with humorous gravity, "if he s not dead, 
 they have done him great injustice, for 
 they ve buried him." The joke passed 
 harmless and unnoticed by Mrs. Scott, but 
 hit the poor Dominie just as he had raised 
 a cup of tea to his lips, causing a burst of 
 laughter which sent half of the contents 
 about the table. Hogg said that Scott s 
 anecdotes were without end ; he was al- 
 
In a Club Corner 35 
 
 most certain they were all made off-hand, 
 as he never heard one of them either before 
 or after. 
 
 Lamb was present at a party of North Lamb. 
 Britons, where a son of Burns was ex 
 pected, and happened to drop a " silly ex 
 pression " (in his South British way), that 
 he wished it were the father instead of the 
 son, when four of them started up at 
 once to inform him that " that was impos 
 sible, because he was dead." An imprac 
 ticable wish was more than they could 
 conceive. 
 
 " What sort of a man was Douglas Jer- Douglas 
 rold ? " was asked of Mr. Addey, an old 
 London publisher. " He was a little man," 
 was the reply, " about five feet high, long 
 hair, prominent cheek-bones, a keen eye, 
 and his form a little bent, and he looked 
 up at you with a comical wag of his head. 
 I knew him very well. He was really kind- 
 hearted and sympathetic, but he was so 
 fond of fun and so sarcastic in his method 
 that he sometimes indulged his wit at the 
 expense of other people s feelings. Not 
 many got ahead of him. His publishers, 
 Bradbury & Evans, who, he thought, had 
 treated him rather shabbily, gave him a 
 couple of sucking pigs, which he took out 
 
?6 In a Club Corner 
 
 to his suburban cottage, and put in a pen. 
 He named them, one Bradbury and the 
 other Evans. A couple of months after 
 that, his publishers came out and dined 
 with him. After dinner he took them out 
 and showed them his pigs, and said, I 
 have named them after you, gentlemen. 
 They are growing wonderfully, and I be 
 lieve if I keep them they will grow the 
 greatest hogs in Europe, and I do not for 
 get the donors. Jerrold s conversation 
 sparkled with epigrams, and no man ever 
 laughed more heartily at his own jokes. If 
 you heard Douglas Jerrold roaring with 
 delight and holding his sides, you immedi 
 ately inferred that he had said something. 
 His laugh was unaffected, and very con 
 tagious. Like all literary men, he was 
 never half paid." He told Addey that for 
 Black-Eyed his great comedy of Black -Eyed Susan, 
 
 Susan , 
 
 which still holds possession of the stage, 
 he received just what Milton did for his 
 Paradise Lost twenty-five dollars and 
 the publisher made fifteen thousand from 
 it the first year. 
 
 " Call that a kind man ?" said an actor, 
 speaking of an acquaintance; "a man who 
 is away from his family and never sends 
 them a farthing? Call that kindness?" 
 
In a Club Comer 37 
 
 " Yes ; unremitting," replied Jerrold. 
 Speaking of patriotism, he said, " When 
 a man has nothing in the workl to lose, 
 he is then in the best condition to sacri 
 fice for the public good everything that 
 is his." "They say," he said, "a parson 
 first invented gunpowder, but one cannot 
 believe it till one is married." 
 
 There is a story of Moore asking Rogers 
 what he did when people who wanted his 
 autograph requested him to sign a sen 
 tence. "Oh, I give them, 111 -gotten 
 wealth never prospers, or Virtue is its 
 own reward. " " Then the more shame 
 for you," Luttrell broke in, "to circulate 
 such delusions." 
 
 The wit of Dumas has been pronounced 
 
 , Dumas 
 
 as near as any earthly thing may be to the 
 wit of heaven, which, by the inimitable 
 Sydney Smith, was called lightning. The 
 story of his parentage is well known. A 
 certain coxcomb, wishing to mortify the 
 great dramatist, asked him point-blank who 
 was his father. "A mulatto, sir," coldly 
 replied Dumas, imperceptibly divining the 
 intended insult. " And your grandfather ? " 
 " A negro, sir." " And your great-grand 
 father ? " " A baboon, sir ! " thundered 
 Dumas at his now terrified questioner; "a 
 
38 In a Club Corner 
 
 baboon, sir ! My ancestry begins where 
 yours ends." Wit of this sort strikes 
 and scathes like the lightning. It bites 
 and crushes like a vise. Sugden hated 
 Brougham, and took his revenge in the 
 A famous famous bon mot, that it was a pity he did 
 
 oou mot. 
 
 not know a little law, and then he would 
 have a smattering of everything. Lord 
 Thurlow was storming one day at his old 
 valet, who thought little of a violence with 
 which he had been long familiar, and " Go 
 to the devil, do ! " cried the enraged master ; 
 "Go, I say, to the devil." "Give me a 
 character, my Lord," replied the fellow, 
 dryly ; " people like, you know, to have 
 
 Curran. characters from their acquaintances." Cur- 
 ran, being asked what an Irish gentleman, 
 just arrived in England, could mean by 
 perpetually putting out his tongue, an 
 swered, "I suppose he s trying to catch 
 the English accent." In his last illness, 
 his physician observing in the morning 
 that he seemed to cough with more diffi 
 culty, he answered, "That is rather sur 
 prising, as I have been practicing all night." 
 
 Rogers. Rogers was unceasingly at war with 
 
 Lady Davy. One day at dinner she 
 called across the table, " Now, Mr. Rogers, 
 I am sure you are talking about me." 
 
In a Club Corner 39 
 
 " Lady Davy," was the retort, " I pass my 
 life in defending you." The plea which he x />/*/. 
 advanced for his bitterness was, in itself, 
 a satire. "They tell me I say ill-natured 
 things," he observed, in his slow, quiet, 
 deliberate way. " I have a very weak 
 voice ; if I did not say ill-natured things, 
 no one would hear what I said." He told 
 of an Englishman and a Frenchman who 
 had to fight a duel. That they might 
 have the better chance of missing one 
 another, they were to fight in a dark room. 
 The Englishman fired up the chimney, and 
 brought down the Frenchman ! " When I 
 tell this story in Paris," observed Rogers, 
 " I put the Englishman up the chimney." 
 
 Every one at all familiar with the writ- 
 ings of Lord Macaulay remembers the oft- 
 repeated sentence in his famous tribute to 
 the Catholic Church : " And she may still 
 exist in undiminished vigor when some 
 traveler from New Zealand shall, in the Macaulay s 
 midst of a vast solitude, take his stand on 
 a broken arch of London Bridge to sketch 
 the ruins of St. Paul s." In one of Horace 
 Walpole s letters to Sir Horace Mann, 
 written half a century or more before, may 
 be found this similar sentence : " At last, 
 
4O In a Club Corner 
 
 some curious traveler from Lima will visit 
 England, and give a description of the 
 ruins of St. Paul s, like the editions of Baal- 
 bee and Palmyra." Every reader should 
 be familiar with that most remarkable story 
 
 A Man of patriotism, A Man without a Country. 
 
 *caury. Madame de Genlis in her Memoirs refers 
 to the work of M. de Ballange, entitled The 
 Man without a Name, in which the author 
 painted with the most terrible energy all 
 the horrors of remorse for a fearful crime. 
 "There are ideas," says Landor, "which 
 necessarily must occur to minds of the 
 like magnitude and materials, aspect and 
 temperature. When two nations are in 
 the same phasis, they will excite the same 
 humors, and produce the same coincidences 
 
 coierid^s and combinations." Coleridge s sublime 
 
 Hymn. Hymn before Sunrise in the Vale of Cha- 
 mouni has been pronounced an audacious 
 plagiarism from a German poetess ; but 
 Coleridge, in the generous judgment of 
 the critic, did his plundering grandly ; he 
 was like the white-headed American eagle, 
 which swoops down with force enough to 
 seize the whole prey from his fellow, and 
 soar with it unmutilated in its beak. Fran 
 ces Anne Kemble in Old Woman s Gossip 
 preserves a charming instance of naive 
 
In a Club Corner 41 
 
 ignorance in a young guardsman, reduced 
 
 J . and one of 
 
 by the enthusiasm of the gay society of 
 
 J & J J 
 
 London into going, for once, to see a play 
 of Shakespeare s. After sitting dutifully 
 through some scenes in silence, he turned 
 to a fellow-guardsman, who was painfully 
 looking and listening by his side, with the 
 grave remark, " I say, George, dooced odd 
 play this ; it s all full of quotations." The 
 young military gentleman had occasionally, 
 it seems, heard Shakespeare quoted, and 
 remembered it. " What is a great man," 
 asks Emerson, " but one of great affinities, 
 who takes up into himself all arts, sciences, 
 all knowables, as his food ? Every book is 
 a quotation ; and every house is a quota 
 tion out of all forests, and mines, and stone 
 quarries ; and every man is a quotation Every man 
 
 > T i a, quotation. 
 
 from all his ancestors. " People are al 
 ways talking," said Goethe, "about origi 
 nality ; but what do they mean ? As soon 
 as we are born, the world begins to work 
 upon us, and this goes on to the end." 
 " So far as respects my own taste," says 
 the author of Modern Chivalry, " I read 
 with great pleasure oftentimes a book 
 which has not a single idea in it from be 
 ginning to end except in the quotations. 
 The only question that is made by me, is 
 
42 In a Club Corner 
 
 the quotation from a good author, or does 
 it amuse or instruct. Nor in reading good 
 moral observations, or anecdotes of great 
 men, do I care whether they are in a con 
 nected series, or strung together like Swift s 
 Tritical Dissertation on the Faculties of 
 the Human Mind. The Apophthegms of 
 Plutarch are somewhat in the same way. 
 The chapters of Athenaeus, and the Noctes 
 Atticae of Aulus Gellius, are of the same 
 rambling sort of composition. Montaigne s 
 Essays also ; and some of the introductory 
 chapters of Henry Fielding." A distin 
 guished actor, playwright, and dramatist, 
 defending himself against a charge of pla 
 giarism, says : " On looking through the list 
 The great of the works of our great dramatic writers, 
 
 dramatic T / . , . _,, 
 
 writers. I fail to perceive that Sheridan has acknowl 
 edged that out of his seven works five are 
 adaptations, and the other two far from 
 * original. Wycherley s four works are all 
 taken from the French. Vanbrugh and 
 Farquhar freely altered old plays, or, like 
 Moliere, took their plots and characters 
 where they could find them. It would 
 puzzle Messrs. Collier and Grant White to 
 find one of Shakespeare s plays that could 
 be certified as his own, so far as construc 
 tion is concerned. With the exception of 
 
In a Club Corner 43 
 
 Farquhar, who admitted that he had used 
 Fletcher s Wild Goose Chase in the con 
 struction of his comedy, The Inconstant, I 
 am not aware that any of our great dram 
 atists have thought fit to announce the 
 sources from which they drew their ma- AH borrow. 
 terials." Alfred Henry Huth, in his Life 
 and Writings of Henry Thomas Buckle, 
 expresses himself upon originality in liter 
 ature : " Dante avows his obligations to 
 Virgil, a poet himself greatly dependent on 
 Homer, and who, in his turn, has inspired 
 most of the heroic poets of the Middle Ages. 
 Ariosto has been greatly indebted to him, 
 to Ovid, and even to Horace. Shakespeare 
 has no original plots. Spenser is deeply 
 indebted to Ariosto, and we find at least 
 one example of a very important idea com 
 mon both to him and Shakespeare. Milton, Miitona 
 too, is a boundless borrower. Each one 
 improves a little or draws new truths from 
 the works of his predecessors. Nor are 
 the prose writers of fiction any more orig 
 inal than the poets. From the earliest 
 times before stories were committed to 
 writing their universal origin was in a fact, 
 such as a love story or a fight. This was 
 told in various forms, incidents were added, 
 stories divided, and mixed and made new 
 
44 
 
 In a Club Corner 
 
 After the 
 
 lander 
 
 again. Thus Spenser introduced an island 
 full of allegorical personages into his Faery 
 Queen, which was after the fashion of 
 many productions of this period ; this gave 
 birth to Fletcher s Purple Island, which 
 produced Bernard s Isle of Man, from 
 which, in its turn, arose Bunyan s Pilgrim s 
 Progress. His description of Vanity Fair 
 was probably taken from Bartholomew Fair 
 or his own experiences, as characters are 
 taken from life by various authors and 
 worked up into different forms: and so, 
 too, with feelings, that are common to the 
 human race ; for Dante and he both open 
 with the same sort of description of tribu 
 lation and doubt. Swift, again, in his Gul 
 liver s Travels, Fontenelle in his Plurality 
 of Worlds, Voltaire in his Micromegas, are 
 all indebted to Bergerac. Even Lord Ma- 
 caulay s New Zealander is believed by some 
 to have been taken from a conceit of Gib 
 bon s ; Sheridan s Mrs. Malaprop from 
 Fielding s Mrs. Slipslop ; Dickens owes 
 his style and many of his incidents, such 
 as the Duel and Samuel Weller s offer of 
 money to Pickwick, to Smollett, and Wel 
 ler s story of the muffins in all probability 
 to Beauclerk s account to Johnson of the 
 tragical end of Mr. Fitzherbert Indeed, a 
 
In a Club Corner 45 
 
 man who was really original in everything An 
 would be a very prodigy, as great a prodigy a 
 as a new animal not derived from some 
 similar ancestor. There is no single work 
 whose dependence may not be traced up 
 ward from suggester to suggester until its 
 origin is lost in antiquity, and it only re 
 mains for us to infer from analogous cases 
 that it originated in some fact." It is said 
 that Dr. Johnson at one time projected a 
 work to show how small a quantity of real 
 fiction there is in the world ; and that the 
 same images, with very little variation, 
 have served all the authors who have ever 
 written. Yet, as Coleridge has remarked, 
 plagiarists are always suspicious of being 
 stolen from, as pickpockets are observed 
 commonly to walk with their hands in 
 their breeches pockets. As well said, a The write* 
 
 _ - . ir -A. in a strait. 
 
 writer soon finds himself in a strait. 
 If he read much, and have a poor verbal 
 memory, the bare seed of a thought may 
 drop down into his life while the husk is 
 forgotten; by and by that idea comes 
 bubbling up to the surface of his mind ; he 
 snatches the prismatic thing as his own, 
 and if he do not bethink himself quickly, 
 he is indicted as a plagiarist. If he read 
 little, but is given to his own explorations, 
 
46 In a Club Corner 
 
 he is pretty sure to make the same dis 
 coveries that others have made before him. 
 con- Honest thinkers, Holmes says, are always 
 
 elusion. * 
 
 stealing unconsciously from each other. 
 Our minds are full of waifs and estrays 
 which we think are our own. Innocent 
 plagiarism turns up everywhere. Our best 
 musical critic tells us that a few notes of 
 the air of Shoo Fly are borrowed from a 
 movement in one of the magnificent har 
 monies of Beethoven. 
 
 ONE QUAL- The greatest edifice that man has ever 
 G^EAT. THE raised was, to Madame de Stael, the most 
 sublime monument in Rome, and the more 
 so that it at first baffles and disappoints 
 the mind. "One reaches the sublime only 
 by degrees. Infinite distances separate 
 it from that which is only beautiful. St. 
 st Peters. Peter s is a work of man which produces 
 on the mind the effect of a marvel of na 
 ture. In it the genius of man is glorified 
 by the magnificence of nature." I have 
 never in my life, said Madame de Genlis, 
 seen but two things which surpassed all 
 that my imagination could picture to me 
 beforehand ; these are the Ocean and St. 
 Peter s at Rome. " I have been four or 
 five times at St. Peter s," says Hawthorne, 
 
In a Club Corner 47 
 
 " and always with pleasure, because there 
 is such a delightful, summer-like warmth 
 the moment we pass beneath the heavy 
 padded leather curtains that protect the 
 entrances. It is almost impossible not to 
 believe that this genial temperature is the its genial 
 
 i c r i i 11 " s i tempera,- 
 
 result oi lurnace-heat, but, really, it is the t*re. 
 warmth of last summer, which will be in 
 cluded within these massive walls, and in 
 that vast immensity of space, till, six 
 months hence, this winter s chill will just 
 have made its way thither. It would be 
 an excellent place for a valetudinarian to 
 lodge during the winter in St. Peter s, per 
 haps establishing his household in one of 
 the papal tombs." "When the visitor," 
 says Hillard, " has passed into the interior 
 of St. Peter s, and so far recovered from 
 the first rush of tumultuous sensations 
 which crowd upon him as to be able to 
 look about him, he will be struck with, 
 and, if not forewarned, disappointed at, the 
 apparent want of magnitude." But he will 
 find that the windows of the church are 
 never opened, it is so immense as well as 
 so complete; that it has its own atmos- Anatmos- 
 phere, and needs no supply from the world own. 
 without ; that the most zealous professor 
 of ventilation would admit that there was 
 
48 In a Club Corner 
 
 no work for him to do here. " When we 
 dream of the climate of heaven, we make 
 it warmth without heat, and coolness with 
 out cold, like that of St. Peter s." " To 
 The Pope s see the Pope," exclaimed Northcote, "give 
 
 benediction. . , , . , 
 
 the benediction at St. Peter s ! raising him 
 self up and spreading out his hands in the 
 form of a cross, with an energy and dignity 
 as if he was giving a blessing to the whole 
 st. Mark s, world ! " Such a church as St. Mark s, a 
 visitor has remarked, cannot be conquered 
 without time. It must be visited again 
 and again, and slowly and patiently studied. 
 To dispatch such an edifice in an hour or 
 two is like trying to read through Gibbon 
 at a sitting. Long before the task is com 
 pleted, the eye refuses to look, and the 
 wearied brain to receive impressions, and 
 we find that in attempting to grasp every- 
 The great thing we retain nothing. The great wall 
 *chma. of China, extending for twelve hundred 
 English miles along what was once the 
 - whole northern frontier of the Chinese 
 empire, from twenty to twenty-five feet 
 high, wide enough for six horses to run 
 abreast, and furnished with a suitable num 
 ber of gates and bastions, contains, it has 
 been carefully estimated, more material 
 than all the buildings of the British em- 
 
In a Club Corner 49 
 
 pire put together. The Amazon, the might- The mighty 
 
 , i i i r Amazon. 
 
 lest river in the world, rises amid the lof 
 tiest volcanoes on the globe, and flows 
 through a forest unparalleled in extent. 
 We have no proper conception, says Or- 
 ton, of the vast dimensions of the thou 
 sand-armed river till we sail for weeks over 
 its broad bosom, beholding it sweeping 
 disdainfully by the great Madeira as if its 
 contribution was of no account, discharging 
 into the sea one hundred thousand cubic 
 feet of water per second more than our 
 Mississippi, rolling its turbid waves thou 
 sands of miles exactly as it pleases, plow 
 ing a new channel every year, with tribu 
 taries twenty miles wide, and an island in 
 its mouth twice the size of Massachusetts. 
 In the .oceanic river, observes a Cambridge 
 professor, the tidal action has an annual 
 instead of a daily ebb and flow ; it obeys a 
 larger orb, and is ruled by the sun and not 
 by the moon. Wallace says that when, 
 for the first time, the traveler wanders in 
 the primeval forests of the tropics, he can Primeval 
 
 i r i t_ r forests of 
 
 scarcely fail to experience sensations of the tropics. 
 awe, akin to those excited by the trackless 
 ocean or the Alpine snowfields. There is 
 a vastness, a solemnity, a gloom, a sense 
 of solitude and of human insignificance 
 
50 In a Club Corner 
 
 which for a time overwhelms him. It has 
 been remarked by every one who has seen 
 the pyramids that the sense of sight is de 
 ceived in the attempt to appreciate their 
 distance and magnitude. Though removed 
 several leagues from the spectator, they 
 appear to be close at hand ; and it is not 
 until he has traveled some miles in a direct 
 line toward them that he becomes sensible 
 of their vast bulk and also of the pure at 
 mosphere through which they are viewed. 
 One of the French philosophers who ac 
 companied Napoleon to Egypt tells us 
 that when he first visited the great pyra 
 mid he was surprised to see it so diminu 
 tive. It stood alone in a boundless plain. 
 There was nothing near it from which to 
 calculate its magnitude. But when the 
 camp was pitched beside it, and the tents 
 appeared like insignificant specks around 
 its base, he then perceived the immensity 
 of this mightiest work of man. It has been 
 regarded a weakness of practical natures to 
 laugh with Pliny at the pyramids, as mere 
 monuments of human vanity. We forget 
 the human weakness of personal commem 
 oration when we remember that the pyra- 
 mids are material records of a belief in im- 
 
 belief in im- 
 
 mortality, mortality, the oldest and the most enduring. 
 
In a Club Corner 51 
 
 It is easy to preach, but not so easy to PRECEPT 
 practice. We know so much better than PRACTICE. 
 we do. It has been said that when Charles 
 Lamb called Coleridge "an archangel 
 a little damaged," he painted the contrast 
 between human ideals and human experi- 
 
 _, . experience. 
 
 ence. The poet Gray speaks of the Greek 
 sophist that got immortal honor by dis 
 coursing so feelingly on the miseries of our 
 condition, that fifty of his audience went 
 home and hanged themselves, the orator 
 (the poet supposes) living many years after 
 in very good plight. "The Greeks," says 
 About, "who are the least scrupulous as 
 to honesty, observe very strictly the pre 
 cepts of the Church, and blindly obey the 
 priests. When a mother sells her daugh 
 ter to a rich person, she always stipulates 
 that so much shall be given for the daugh 
 ter, so much for the parents, and so much 
 for the Church. I have had the honor," he 
 says, "of dining with an assassin, and the 
 misfortune of shocking him. We were at 
 ^Egina, and we were eating a lamb a la 
 Pilikar, in the open air, and in the middle 
 of Lent. A Greek, whom we did not know, 
 came and sat down by us, ate our bread 
 and our figs, drank our wine, and with 
 drew, much shocked at our conduct, after 
 
 an assassin. 
 
52 In a Club Corner 
 
 he was filled. I learned next day that this 
 sulky guest had the death of a man upon 
 his conscience, and that justice was look 
 ing for him prudently, in such a way as 
 never to find him. He thought himself, 
 A better however, 3. better Christian than we." Sir 
 
 Christian. -, T 
 
 James Mackintosh spent ten years in In 
 dia, and the account he gives of the Hin 
 doo character is very curious. He says in 
 refinement of manners, cultivation, and 
 politeness, they are equal to Europeans ; 
 they talk of truth, honor, and moral obliga 
 tion as if they felt it, but that in fact they 
 neither act upon their principles them 
 selves nor expect you to act upon them. 
 Sir James knew a Hindoo rajah, a man 
 of great acquirements and of the most 
 polished manners, who, when he was dis 
 appointed in the collection of his taxes of 
 A pound of the sum he expected, ordered a pound of 
 eyes to be brought him of those who had 
 refused to pay the taxes. "I never can 
 make out how it is," says Ruskin, "that a 
 knight-errant does not expect to be paid 
 for his trouble, but a peddler-errant always 
 does; that people are willing to take 
 hard knocks for nothing, but never to sell 
 ribbons cheap ; that they are ready to go 
 on fervent crusades to recover the tomb of 
 
In a Club Corner ^ 
 
 a buried God, never on any travel to fulfill 
 the orders of a living God; -that they 
 will go anywhere barefoot to preach their 
 faith, but must be well bribed to practice 
 it ; and are perfectly ready to give the gos 
 pel gratis, but never the loaves and fishes " 
 has been remarked that in the propa 
 gation of a new religion, or in a new tenet 
 of a particular faith, what is moderate will 
 be less likely to prevail in the opinions of 
 men. The absurd is always the most pop 
 ular, and this upon the principle that arti 
 ficial tastes are stronger than the natural 
 and what produces the greatest excitement 
 is most pleasing to the mind. Hence it is 
 that mere morality and the dictates of na 
 ture and truth in the conduct of men are 
 undervalued in comparison of the dogmata 
 of fanatical faiths. Unintelligible reveries 
 are better relished in the pulpit than just 
 reasoning on the principles of right and 
 wrong in the actions of men ; and incom 
 prehensible theological disquisitions are 
 put into the hands of young people, as 
 more substantial food for the mind than 
 precepts of moral truth, which every step 
 in hfe will bring into practice, and explain 
 Hume says in one of his essays that "if 
 we should suppose, what never happens, 
 
 quisitions. 
 
54 In a Club Corner 
 
 that a popular religion were found in which 
 it was expressly declared that nothing but 
 morality could gain the divine favor ; if an 
 order of priests were instituted to incul 
 cate this opinion, in daily sermons, and 
 with all the arts of persuasion ; yet so in- 
 riu peoples veterate are the people s prejudices, that, 
 
 prejudices. . . . 
 
 for want of some other superstition, they 
 would make the very attendance on these 
 sermons the essentials of religion, rather 
 than place them in virtue and good morals." 
 " No man," says Dr. Johnson, " practices 
 as well as he preaches. I have," he said, 
 "all my life long, been lying till noon ; yet 
 I tell all young men, and tell them with 
 great sincerity, that nobody who does not 
 rise early will ever do any good. Only 
 consider ! You read a book ; you are con 
 vinced by it ; you do not know the author. 
 Suppose you afterwards know him, and 
 find that he does not practice what he 
 teaches ; are you to give up your former 
 convictions ? " Foster, in a note to one 
 of his essays, refers to a Spanish story of a 
 The devil village where the devil, having made the 
 
 compelled , . . _ i i 
 
 to turn people excessively wicked, was punished 
 
 preacher. tl , 
 
 by being compelled to assume the appear 
 ance and habit of a friar, and to preach so 
 eloquently, in spite of his internal repug- 
 
In a Club Corner 55 
 
 nance and rage, that the inhabitants were 
 completely reformed. When Dr. Johnson 
 said of old Lord Townshend, "though a 
 Whig, he had humanity," he meant to say 
 that his lordship s actions were better than Actions 
 
 .,... better than 
 
 his notions. A profoundly Christian man, notion*. 
 and very practical in his Christianity, once 
 said to me of a certain set of prominent 
 Americans, "Though infidels, there is this 
 to say in their favor, they are all phi 
 lanthropists." That journey of life s con 
 quest, in which hills over hills, and Alps on 
 Alps arose, and sank, do you think you 
 can make another trace it painlessly by 
 talking ? asks Ruskin. Why, you cannot 
 even carry us up an Alp, by talking. You 
 can guide us up to it, step by step, no oth 
 erwise even so, best silently. It is the 
 expressed opinion of Taine that in the 
 matter of morals, words amount to noth- words 
 
 ... . amount to 
 
 ing; in themselves, they are only so many nothing. 
 more or less disagreeable sounds. It is 
 the education precedent which gives them 
 force and meaning. If this have lodged 
 two or three sensible ideas in the boy s 
 head, talk rationally to him ; if not, as well 
 attempt to strike sparks from a log of 
 wood. You must address yourself to feel 
 ings which already exist, and no fine 
 
56 In a Club Corner 
 
 phrases can call them into life in a quarter 
 of an hour. Dr. Thomson said of God- 
 win (who, in the full tide of his theory of 
 perfectibility, declared he " could educate 
 tigers "), " I should like to see him in a 
 cage with two of his pupils." 
 
 LONG To speak short, think long, is the advice 
 
 of wisdom to speakers and writers. Can 
 it be that Paley meant to enforce the ad 
 monition, when in one of his College Lec 
 tures he urged the clergy, if their situation 
 required a sermon every Sunday, to " make 
 one and steal five " ? Though, so far as 
 the English Church is concerned, a witty 
 traveler has described the standard of the 
 sermons in the Establishment to be, 
 " twenty minutes in length and no depth 
 at all." 
 
 st. Patrick s Of all preachers, according to Joceline, 
 St. Patrick was the most tremendous. He 
 went through the four Gospels in one ex 
 position to the Irish at a place called Fin- 
 nablair, and he was three days and nights 
 about it, without intermission, to the great 
 delight of the hearers, who thought that 
 only one day had passed. St. Bridget was 
 present, and she took a comfortable nap, 
 and had a vision. 
 
In a Club Corner 57 
 
 It was wisely observed by Swift that OLD AGE. 
 every man desireth to live long, but no 
 body would be old. In one of Lucian s 
 Dialogues of the Dead is reported a con 
 versation between an old man and Diog- 
 
 enes. The philosopher, seeing all but **. 
 infants in tears, asks, in extreme surprise, 
 whether life can exercise some spell or 
 charm over mankind, so as to induce even 
 the aged to deplore its loss. " What can 
 be the cause of your sorrow ? " says he to 
 the old man. " You were, perhaps, once a 
 sovereign ? " " No." "At least a satrap ?" 
 "No." "A man of great wealth, then?" 
 " No ; nothing of the kind ; only a beggar 
 of fourscore and ten years, scarcely sup 
 porting life with a rod and line, childless, 
 lame, and blind." "And having been such, 
 you yet desire to live as such again ? " 
 "Yea, verily," replies the beggar, "for life 
 is sweet, and death is dire and detestable." 
 Lucian also reports an interview between 
 Cerberus and Menippus as to Socrates, in sacra** 
 the same dark region. " Cerberus, I be 
 seech you, by Styx, to inform me how 
 Socrates behaved when he came down 
 amongst you : I suppose, being a god, you 
 can talk as well as bark, when you have 
 a mind to it." "At first, Menippus," Cer- 
 
5& In a Club Corner 
 
 berus replied, "and whilst he was at a good 
 
 distance, the philosopher never looked 
 
 back, but advanced boldly forwards, seem- 
 
 Seemednot ing not to fear death in the least, and as if 
 
 at first to , , . . - , 
 
 Sear death, he meant to show his bravery to those who 
 stood afar off from the centre of Tartarus ; 
 but when he came into the cave, and found 
 it all dark and dismal, and, to hasten him a 
 little, I bit him by his poisoned foot, he 
 cried like a child, began to lament his 
 children, and writhed about." 
 
 It was Sir William Temple s opinion that 
 life is like wine ; who would drink it pure 
 must not draw it to the dregs. " I abhor," 
 said Emerson to Carlyle, "the inroads 
 which time makes on me and my friends. 
 To live too long is the capital misfortune." 
 In his closing years, life appeared to Hum- 
 boldt increasingly in the light of Dante s 
 celebrated simile, as a race to death, an 
 expression he loved to quote. At eighty- 
 eight he wrote to one of his friends : 
 " Pray avoid living to so unusual an age." 
 
 A saying Solon used to say to his friends that a 
 man of sixty ought never to fear death nor 
 to complain of the evils of life. He might 
 have said, further, that a man at that time 
 of life has already lived nearly twice his 
 right, according to the average, and that 
 
In a Club Corner 59 
 
 for so many years he has lived upon other 
 people s time. 
 
 "I am," said Sydney Smith, "going 
 slowly down the hill of life. One evil in oneevi 
 
 IT ,1 , old age. 
 
 old age is, that as your time is come, you 
 think every little illness is the beginning 
 of the end. When a man expects to be 
 arrested, every knock at the door is an 
 alarm. We are, at the close of life, only 
 hurried away from stomach-aches, pains 
 in the joints, from sleepless nights and 
 unamusing days, from weakness, ugliness, 
 and nervous tremors." "I suspect," he 
 said, at another time, "the fifth act of 
 life should be in great cities ; it is there, 
 in the long death of old age, that a man 
 most forgets himself and his infirmities ; 
 receives the greatest consolation from the 
 attentions of friends, and the greatest di 
 version from external circumstances." 
 
 "Youth," thought Souvestre, "is a 
 forced apprenticeship, in which one s time, 
 will, intelligence, everything, is the prop 
 erty of one s master. Our feet carry us 
 well, but stir only at the word of command. 
 Manhood imposes on us fresh duties at 
 every instant ; middle life increases the 
 burden of our responsibilities ; old age oidage 
 alone is really free. The world of which 
 
60 In a Club Corner 
 
 we were slaves signs then, at length, our 
 order of release. Ours are henceforth the 
 long nights of repose, the walks without 
 any defined object, the uninterrupted chit- 
 urs chats, the whimsical readings, the hours 
 * ." ** spent at one s ease ; no longer have we at 
 our doors the six week days crying out 
 to us like Bluebeard in the popular tale, 
 * Will you come down there from above ? 
 
 " The time that we count by the year 
 has gone, and the time that we must count 
 by the day comes in its stead. The less 
 one s income, the more important to use it 
 well. I have (says Diderot) perhaps half a 
 score of years at the bottom of my wallet. 
 In these ten years, fluxions, rheumatisms, 
 and the other members of that trouble 
 some family will take two or three of them ; 
 let us try to economize the seven that are 
 left, for the repose and the small happiness 
 that a man may promise himself on the 
 wrong side of sixty." 
 
 Charlotte Bronte thought that at best 
 
 Events and life is so constructed that the event does 
 
 not, cannot, will not, match the experience. 
 
 When Hogarth s life was nearly done he 
 made a picture showing the end of all 
 earthly things. On the canvas was a shat 
 tered bottle, a cracked bell, an unstrung 
 
In a Club Corner 61 
 
 bow, the sign-post of a tavern called The 
 World s End falling down, a shipwreck, 
 the horses of Phoebus lying dead in the 
 clouds, the moon in her last quarter, the 
 world on fire. " One more thing," said 
 Hogarth, "and I have done." Then he Hogartvs 
 
 last picture. 
 
 added to this picture a painters palette 
 broken. It was the last work of art he 
 ever executed. 
 
 Montaigne said, " God is favorable to 
 those whom he makes to die by degrees ; 
 t is the only benefit of old age ; the last 
 death will be so much the less full and 
 painful ; it will kill but a half or quarter of 
 a man." "We do not die wholly at our 
 deaths," said Hazlitt ; "we have mouldered 
 away gradually long before. Faculty after 
 faculty, interest after interest, attachment 
 after attachment disappear : we are torn 
 from ourselves while living, year after year 
 sees us no longer the same, and death only 
 consigns the last fragment of what we were 
 to the grave." Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes 
 revisited England when he was seventy- 
 five years old. " One incident of our ex- A touching 
 cursion to Stonehenge," he says, "had a f/****. 
 significance to me which renders it mem 
 orable in my personal experience. As we 
 drove over the barren plain, one of the 
 
62 In a Club Corner 
 
 party suddenly exclaimed, Look ! Look ! 
 See the lark rising ! I looked up with the 
 rest. There was the bright blue sky, but 
 not a speck upon it which my eyes could 
 distinguish. Again, one called out, Hark ! 
 Hark ! Hear him singing ! I listened, 
 but not a sound reached my ear. Was it 
 strange that I felt a momentary pang? 
 Those that look out of the windows are 
 darkened, and all the daughters of music 
 are brought low. Was I never again to see 
 or hear the soaring songster at Heaven s 
 Gate ? " Donald MacLeod describes the 
 scott, fmtr visit of Walter Scott to London, four years 
 
 years before r . c . 
 
 his death, before his death. The decay of his powers 
 was already very apparent. He spent six 
 weeks with the Lockharts and with his son 
 Charles. Here were old friends yet to 
 welcome him, and quiet dinners with the 
 king and others. He goes about, one day 
 to hear Coleridge discourse on the Samo- 
 thracian Mysteries, another day to sit to 
 the artist Northcote : again to exchange a 
 lock of his white hair with a pretty girl for 
 a kiss, and once to hear a lady sing one of 
 his own songs from the Pirate : 
 
 " Farewell, farewell, the voice you hear 
 
 Has left its last soft tones with you, 
 Its next must join the seaward cheer, 
 And shout amid the shouting crew." 
 
In a Club Corner 63 
 
 He liked the music, and whispered to 
 Lockhart, " Capital words : whose are 
 they ? Byron s, I suppose, but I don t re 
 member them." When told that they 
 were his own, he seemed pleased for an in 
 stant, but the pleasure vanished, and he 
 said, " You have distressed me. If mem- Memory 
 ory goes, all is gone with me, for that was ft 
 always my strong point." Oblivion was 
 scattering her poppy. 
 
 The wonder is that we should care so 
 much to remain here those of us that 
 have felt successively the touches of decay. 
 Dim eyes, dull ears, lost teeth, flaccid mus 
 cles, trembling nerves, uncertain locomo 
 tion, impaired memory, remind us of what 
 we were, and warn us of what we will be 
 if we linger. Fading, failing, is announced Fading, 
 in every function and faculty. We have faihng 
 had our little day. We did our poor best 
 in the fight that is over. We have known 
 the inspiration of effort and the delights of 
 achievement. We have received about all 
 we deserved. Poor or rich, we have had 
 our joys and our anxieties. Our sons are 
 fairly on the way. We have built houses 
 for them, to be superseded or remodeled. 
 We are at the tail of the procession. It 
 is easy to see that society has arranged to 
 
64 In a Club Corner 
 
 do without us. Our notions are obsolete 
 or superannuated. They call us names 
 when we express them. We hang our 
 faces on the wall, to be turned to it in 
 time, and forgotten. Our reason is called 
 in the way obstinacy. We are in the way of progress, 
 
 of progress. 
 
 and a hindrance to growth. Our little 
 savings are anticipated capital. Life in 
 surance has made our deaths interesting. 
 We cling to old clothes, old customs, old 
 associations, and acquired habits, and are 
 laughed at by those who will do the same. 
 Our minds have been traveled over till 
 those who are familiar with us take for 
 granted they know them better than we 
 know them ourselves. When we open our 
 mouths they assume to know precisely 
 what we mean to say. The point of our 
 talk is anticipated and made easy. Cir 
 cumspection is imbecility, experience dis 
 trust. Our signs of things are invisibilities, 
 which are revealed only to ourselves by 
 introspection and the gravest reflection. 
 why should Why should we want to stay, where we are 
 not wanted, and can do little good, 
 where impulse and inexperience are to 
 govern ? Experience is for philosophers, 
 and philosophy is not less hateful than 
 moderation. To our tombs we should go 
 
In a Club Corner 65 
 
 as consciously and uncomplainingly as we 
 go to our beds. 
 
 "The old," says Goethe, " lose one of 
 the greatest privileges of man, they are no 
 longer judged by their contemporaries." 
 Northcote said, "What takes off the 
 edge and stimulus of exertion in old age, stimulus 
 
 exertion 
 
 is : those who were our competitors in taken off. 
 early life, whom we wished to excel or 
 whose good opinion we were most anxious 
 about, are gone, and have left us in a man 
 ner by ourselves, in a sort of new world, 
 where we know and are as little known as 
 on entering a strange country. Our ambi 
 tion is cold with the ashes of those whom 
 we feared or loved." " As for envy," said 
 Plutarch, "which is the greatest evil at 
 tending the management of public affairs, 
 it least attacks old age. For dogs indeed, 
 as Heraclitus has it, bark at a stranger 
 whom they do not know ; and envy opposes 
 him who is a beginner on the very steps of 
 the tribune, hindering his access, but she Envyrec 
 meekly bears an accustomed and familiar 
 glory, and not churlishly or with difficulty. 
 Wherefore some resemble envy to smoke ; 
 for it arises thick at first, when the fire 
 begins to burn ; but when the flame grows 
 clear, it vanishes away." 
 
66 In a Club Corner 
 
 It is a maxim of La Rochefoucauld s 
 that " Old men delight in giving good ad 
 vice, as a consolation for the fact that they 
 can no longer set bad examples." Which 
 
 A quaint reminds one of a passage in quaint old 
 Roger Ascham s Schoolmaster : " It is a 
 notable tale that old Sir Roger Chamloe, 
 sometime chief justice, would tell of him 
 self. When he was Ancient in inn of 
 court, certain young gentlemen were 
 brought before him to be corrected for cer 
 tain rnisorders ; and one of the lustiest 
 said : Sir, we be young gentlemen ; and 
 wise men before we have proved all fash 
 ions, and yet those have done well. This 
 they said because it was well known Sir 
 Roger had been a good fellow in his youth. 
 But he answered them very wisely. In 
 deed, saith he, in youth I was as you are 
 now ; and I had twelve fellows like unto 
 myself, but not one of them came to a 
 good end. And therefore, follow not my 
 
 counsel example in youth, but follow my counsel in 
 age, if ever ye think to come to this place, 
 or to these years, that I am come unto ; 
 less you meet either with poverty or Tyburn 
 in the way. " 
 
 Cato the Elder begged of old men not 
 to add the disgrace of wickedness to old 
 
In a Club Corner 67 
 
 age, which was accompanied by many 
 other evils. " Certainly Mr. Shelley is right 
 in his notions about old age," thought De AH observe 
 
 tionofDe 
 
 Quincey ; " unless powerfully counteracted Q*i*uaf*. 
 by all sorts of opposite agencies, it is a 
 miserable corrupter and blighter to the 
 genial charities of the human heart." 
 
 "The unthinking think," says a wise 
 contemporary, " that death is an evil. It 
 may be to the individual. It is fortunate 
 that he has not the choice. As evil is 
 requisite to good, so death is requisite to 
 life. If men did not die, men could not be 
 born. Without the passing away and the 
 ever renewal of life, the world would be 
 like a living thing chained to a corpse." 
 
 " Death is in one thing very good," said 
 La Bruyere: " it puts an end to old age." 
 Goethe, in the second part of Faust, rep 
 resents his hero, in blind old age, cultivat 
 ing the barren sea sand. Swift said, " It A saying of 
 
 Swiffs. 
 
 is impossible that anything so natural, so 
 necessary, and so universal as death should 
 ever have been designed by Providence as 
 an evil to mankind." 
 
 The famous French chemist, Chevreul, 
 now over one hundred years old, told a 
 friend "the secret of long living." I have 
 never been, he said, " a pessimist, and I 
 
68 
 
 hi a Club Corner 
 
 Enjoy tht 
 present. 
 
 A foolish 
 ambition. 
 
 have continually kept myself from being 
 too much of an optimist. Let us not 
 trouble ourselves about to-morrow. Let 
 us enjoy the present." Bonstetten, a life 
 long friend of Madame de Stael, and who 
 died at ninety, wrote : " To resist with 
 success the frigidity of old age, one must 
 combine the body, the mind, and the heart ; 
 to keep these in parallel vigor, one must 
 exercise, study, and love." 
 
 " It would," says Addison, in The Tat- 
 ler, " be a good appendix to the Art of 
 Living and Dying, if any one would write 
 the Art of Growing Old, and teach men to 
 resign their pretensions to the pleasures 
 and gallantries of youth, in proportion to 
 the alteration they find in themselves by 
 the approach of age and infirmities. The 
 infirmities of this stage of life would be 
 much fewer, if we did not affect those 
 which attend the more vigorous and active 
 part of our days ; but, instead of studying 
 to be wiser, or being contented with our 
 present follies, the ambition of many of us 
 is also to be the same sort of fools we 
 formerly have been." A short time before 
 Colley Gibber s death, Horace Walpole 
 hailed him, on his birthday, with a good 
 morning, and " I am glad, sir, to see you 
 
In a Club Corner 69 
 
 looking so well." " Egad, sir," replied the 
 old gentleman all diamonded and pow 
 dered, and dandified " at eighty-four, it s 
 well for a man that he can look at all." eight y -fo t tr. 
 "There are lives," says Philip Gilbert 
 Hamerton, "such as that of Major Pen- 
 dennis, which only diminish in value as 
 they advance when the man of fashion 
 is no longer fashionable, and the sports 
 man can no longer stride over the ploughed 
 fields. The old age of the Pendennises is The Pen- 
 
 . , . . . . , dennises 
 
 assuredly not to be envied ; but how rich and the 
 
 r - Humboldts 
 
 is the age of the Humboldts! I compare 
 the life of the intellectual to a long wedge 
 of gold the thin edge of it begins at 
 birth, and the depth and value of it go on 
 indefinitely increasing till at last comes 
 Death, who stops the auriferous processes." 
 The only way, Steele thought, of avoid 
 ing a trifling and frivolous old age is to lay 
 up in our way to it such stores of knowl 
 edge and observation as may make us use 
 ful and agreeable in our declining years. 
 The mind of man in a long life will become The mind a 
 a magazine of wisdom or folly, and will J/wSfeM 
 consequently discharge itself in something " 
 impertinent or improving. For which rea 
 son, as there is nothing more ridiculous 
 than an old trifling story-teller, so there is 
 
70 In a Club Corner 
 
 nothing more venerable than one who has 
 turned his experience to the entertainment 
 and advantage of mankind. In short, we, 
 who are in the last stage of life, and are 
 apt to indulge ourselves in talk, ought to 
 worth consider if what we speak be worth beinof 
 
 considering. 
 
 heard, and endeavor to make our discourse 
 like that of Nestor, which Homer compares 
 to the flowing of honey for its sweetness. 
 
 Mrs. Piozzi, when she was past eighty, 
 wrote affectionate love letters and gave 
 presents to a handsome actor named Con- 
 way, with whom she was passionately in 
 love. 
 
 Madame de Pompadour, hearing that 
 
 Cram. Crebillon was very poor in his old age, in 
 duced the king to allow him a pension of 
 an hundred louis. Crebillon hastened to 
 thank his benefactress. She was confined 
 to bed with a slight indisposition, when he 
 was announced ; she desired him to be ad 
 mitted. Affected by the sight of this fine 
 old man, she gave him a very gracious re 
 ception. He was affected by it, and was 
 leaning on the bed to kiss her hand, when 
 the king came in. "Ah, madame," cried 
 
 surprised Crebillon, " the king has surprised us ; I 
 
 by the king. 
 
 am undone. 
 
 " I am grown older by many years," says 
 Montaigne, "since my first publication; 
 
In a Club Corner 7 ; 
 
 but I very much doubt whether I am grown 
 an inch the wiser. I now, and I anon, are 
 two several persons ; but whether the bet- TWO severa 
 
 persons. 
 
 ter now, or anon, I am not able to deter 
 mine. It were a fine thing to be old, if we 
 only traveled toward improvement ; but 
 tis a drunken, stumbling, reeling, ill- 
 favored motion, like that of reeds, which 
 the air casually waves to and fro at pleas 
 ure. Antiochus, in his youth, vigorously 
 wrote in favor of the Academy ; and in his 
 old age he wrote against it. Would not 
 which of these two soever I should follow 
 be still Antiochus ? " 
 
 "I have lived," says Thoreau, "some 
 thirty years on this planet, and I have yet 
 to hear the first syllable of valuable or even 
 earnest advice from my seniors. They 
 have told me nothing, and probably cannot 
 tell me anything, to the purpose. Here is 
 life, an experiment to a great extent un- Life an ex - 
 tried by me ; but it does not avail me that 
 they have tried it. If I have any experi 
 ence which I think valuable, I am sure to 
 reflect that this my Mentors said nothing 
 about." 
 
 " People always fancy," said Goethe, 
 laughing, "that we must become old to 
 become wise ; but, in truth, as years ad- 
 
72 In a Club Corner 
 
 vance, it is hard to keep ourselves as wise 
 as we were. Man becomes, indeed, in the 
 
 in different different stages of his life, a different being ; 
 
 fSStltvif. but he cannot say that he is a better one, 
 and, in certain matters, he is as likely to 
 be right in his twentieth, as in his sixtieth 
 year. We see the world one way from a 
 plain, another way from the heights of a 
 promontory, another from the glacial fields 
 of the primary mountains. We see, from 
 one of these points, a larger piece of the 
 world than from the other, but that is all, 
 and we cannot say that we see more truly 
 from any one than from the rest." " Age 
 ought to make us tolerant," he said on an 
 other occasion ; " I never see a fault which 
 I did not myself commit." 
 
 It is stated that when Harvey announced 
 to the world his great discovery of the cir 
 culation of the blood, among the physicians 
 who received it there was not one above 
 the age of forty. 
 
 Transplant- Transplanting old people has been 
 
 JK likened to transplanting old trees; a 
 
 twelvemonth usually sees them wither and 
 die away. Grattan said of Flood, who was 
 brought late into Parliament, as Cobbett 
 and Jeffrey, that "the oak of the forest 
 was too old to be transplanted at sixty." 
 
In a Club Corner 73 
 
 Lady Mary Wortley Montagu wrote to 
 her husband, " Tis a maxim with me to A good 
 
 . maxim. 
 
 be young as long as one can : there is 
 nothing can pay one for that invaluable 
 ignorance which is the companion of 
 youth : those sanguine groundless hopes, 
 and that lively vanity, which make up the 
 happiness of life. To my extreme mortifi 
 cation, I grow wiser every day." 
 
 Content is not. Youth would hasten 
 the hours, age arrest them altogether. 
 Time ! " Nothing is so short, when we 
 wish to complete a work ; nothing can 
 creep slower when we are expecting, or fly 
 more rapidly when we are enjoying pleas 
 ure ; nothing is more divisible, or can be 
 more extensive, more neglected, or more 
 regretted when lost ; nothing can be done 
 without it : Time swallows all that is un 
 worthy to reach posterity, and immor 
 talizes all that is great and wise." 
 
 "Eternity! What is that?" was asked Eternity. 
 at the Deaf and Dumb Institution at Paris, 
 and the beautiful and striking answer was 
 given by one of the pupils, " The lifetime 
 of the Almighty." 
 
 Cicero puts these words into the mouth 
 of his hero, in his Dialogue on Old Age : 
 "The day of my death it will not be easy 
 
J4 In a Club Corner 
 
 MO desk* to to retain me here below. I do not desire 
 to be recast, like Pelias ; if some god 
 thought of conferring on me a favor by 
 proposing to me to recommence my jour 
 ney from infancy, and to crawl about a 
 second time in swaddling-clothes, I should 
 refuse unhesitatingly. The race being 
 run, I have no desire to be recalled from 
 the goal to the starting-point. Not that I 
 affect to depreciate life, as certain philoso 
 phers have often done ; I do not repent 
 having lived, because I think I have lived 
 so as not to have been born in vain ; but I 
 shall quit existence as an inn, and not as a 
 dwelling-place. Nature has given man the 
 material world that he may stay there 
 awhile ; she does not condemn him to re 
 main forever. O happy day ! when I shall 
 escape from the crowd and from the mire, 
 
 The divine to rejoin the celestial assembly, the divine 
 
 senate of - , , 
 
 sou/s. senate of souls. 
 
 There are lives, it has been said, that 
 are so rounded and crowned by their com 
 pleted deeds of love, that death seems to 
 have appeared in the fullness of their prime 
 only to consecrate them forever ; others 
 stand apart from human ties in a solitude 
 which makes time seem of little conse 
 quence, and the grave a not unfamiliar 
 
In a Club Corner 75 
 
 country. Solitude is often less solitary 
 than society where solitude is calm and 
 clear ; solitude only brings home to one 
 one s own isolation. At all events, the 
 evidence of a hundred death-beds, of the Evidence of 
 
 ... . . . death-beds. 
 
 utmost diversity, entirely goes to prove, 
 that among sincere and high-minded men 
 and women, death appears to be rather a 
 process of coming to one s self, of entering 
 into a certain calm and self-possession, 
 than one of pain, of alarm, or even of sur 
 prise. 
 
 A short time before Maria Theresa, 
 queen of Hungary and Bohemia, breathed 
 her last, having apparently fallen into a 
 sort of insensibility, and her eyes being 
 closed, one of the ladies near her person, 
 in reply to an inquiry respecting the state 
 of the empress, answered that her majesty 
 seemed to be asleep. " No," replied she ; 
 " I could sleep if I would indulge repose ; 
 but I am sensible of the near approach of 
 death, and I will not allow myself to be 
 surprised by him in my sleep. I wish to mshedto 
 
 - . , . i i > meet her dis- 
 
 meet my dissolution awake. solution 
 
 ... awake. 
 
 On an old parchment, in Arabic, is in 
 scribed, " I came to the place of my birth, 
 and cried, The friends of my youth, where 
 are they ? and Echo answered, Where 
 
In a Club Corner 
 
 Life at 
 eighty-two. 
 
 are they ? " "I am grown so old," said 
 Dr. Franklin, at eighty-two, " as to have 
 buried most of the friends of my youth ; 
 and I now often hear persons, whom I 
 knew when children, called old Mr. Such- 
 a-one, to distinguish them from their sons, 
 now men grown and in business ; so that, 
 by living twelve years beyond David s 
 period, I seem to have intruded myself into 
 the company of posterity, when I ought to 
 have been abed and asleep. ... I look 
 upon death to be as necessary to our con 
 stitutions as sleep. We shall rise refreshed 
 in the morning." "When I look around 
 me," said Goethe, " and see how few of 
 the companions of earlier years are left 
 Life like a to me, I think of a summer residence at a 
 S iSceat r a bathing-place. When you arrive, you first 
 
 bathing- . . . . 
 
 place. become acquainted with those who have 
 already been there some weeks, and who 
 leave you in a few days. This separation 
 is painful. Then you turn to the second 
 generation, with which you live a good 
 while, and become really intimate. But 
 this goes also, and leaves us lonely with 
 the third, which comes just as we are going 
 away, and with which we have properly 
 nothing to do." Charles Lamb, in a letter 
 to one of his distant correspondents, im- 
 
In a Club Corner 77 
 
 plores him to "come back." "Come back," 
 he says, " before I am grown into a very 
 old man, so as you shall hardly know me. 
 Come before Bridget walks on crutches. 
 Girls whom you left children have become 
 
 . sage ma- 
 
 sage matrons while you are tarrying there, trons. 
 The blooming Miss W r (you remem 
 ber Sally W ) called upon us yesterday, 
 
 an aged crone. Folks, whom you knew, 
 die off every year. Formerly, I thought 
 that death was wearing out, I stood 
 ramparted about with so many healthy 
 friends. The departure of J. W., two 
 springs back, corrected my delusion. Since 
 then the old divorcer has been busy. If 
 you do not make haste to return there will 
 be little left to greet you, of me, or mine." 
 John Kenyon, writing a note of sympathy 
 to Crabb Robinson, on occasion of the 
 death of his grand-nephew, said, "Only 
 live on, and this once smiling world is 
 changed into a huge cemetery, in which we 
 ourselves hardly care to linger." There is 
 a Turkish tale to the effect that when A 
 Solomon was ruling on earth, the angel 
 Gabriel was sent to him one day with a 
 goblet filled with the water of life, and bear 
 ing from on high the message that, if he 
 chose, he might drink of the water and 
 
7# In a Club Corner 
 
 become immortal. Calling together all his 
 wisest counselors, he asked their advice. 
 They, with one consent, advised him to 
 drink and live forever. Then he sum 
 moned the birds of the air and the beasts 
 of the field, and all of them gave the 
 same advice, with one solitary exception. 
 This was the hedgehog. Approaching the 
 throne, and bending its brow to the ground, 
 thus did it speak : " If this water may be 
 shared by thee with thy kith and kin, then 
 drink and enjoy the bliss of living. But if 
 it is intended for thee alone, then do not 
 drink. For sad would it be for thee to 
 live on, but to see thy kinsmen and friends 
 one after the other disappear." "True are 
 thy words, O hedgehog ! " replied Solo 
 mon. "To me alone has the water of life 
 been sent. As thou hast counseled so will 
 I decide." And the water of life did he 
 not drink. 
 
 You remember the touching dialogue in 
 Lucian, between Protesilaus and Pluto : 
 " O Pluto ! our great lord and master, the 
 Jupiter of these regions of the dead, and 
 thou, daughter of Ceres, despise not a lov 
 er s prayer ? " " What would you ask of 
 us, friend, and who are you ? " said Pluto. 
 " I am Protesilaus, the Phylacian, son of 
 
In a Club Corner 79 
 
 Iphiclus, an ally of the Grecians, and was 
 
 the first man slain at Troy : my desire is, nesiredto 
 
 return back. 
 
 that I may return back, and live a little 
 longer." "That is a desire, Protesilaus, 
 which all the dead have ; but which was 
 never granted to any." "It is not," said 
 Protesilaus, " for the sake of living, but on 
 account of my wife, whom I had just mar 
 ried, and left in her bridal-bed, when I set 
 out on my voyage, and, unfortunately, the 
 moment I landed, was slain by Hector : 
 the love of her makes me very unhappy ; all 
 I wish for is but to see her for a short time, 
 and return to you again." " Have not you 
 drank the waters of Lethe?" asked Pluto. The -waters 
 
 of Lethe in- 
 
 "I have," answered Protesilaus, "but to sufficient. 
 no purpose ; this thought is still afflicting." 
 Johnson s tender affection for his de 
 parted wife, of which there are many evi 
 dences in his Prayers and Meditations, ap 
 pears very feelingly in this passage from 
 his diary kpt while he was in Paris : 
 " The sight of palaces and other great 
 buildings leaves no very distinct images, 
 unless to those who talk of them. As I 
 entered the Palais Bourbon, my wife was 
 in my mind ; she would have been pleased. 
 Having now nobody to please, I am little 
 pleased." The old gentleman in Gil Bias, 
 
8o In a Club Corner 
 
 it is observed, who complained that the 
 peaches were not as fine as they appeared 
 to be when he was young, had more reason 
 than appears on the face of it. He missed 
 not only his former palate, but the places 
 he ate them in, and those who ate them 
 with him. When Wilkie was in the Escu- 
 Titian sfa- rial, looking at Titian s famous picture of 
 ture. the Last Supper, in the refectory there, 
 
 an old man said to him, " I have sat daily 
 in sight of that picture for more than three 
 score years, during that time my compan 
 ions have dropped off, one after another, 
 all who were my seniors, all who were my 
 contemporaries, and many, or most of those 
 who were younger than myself ; more than 
 one generation has passed away, and these 
 the figures in the picture have remained 
 unchanged. I look at them till I some 
 times think that they are the realities, and 
 we but the shadows." 
 
 "At the age of seventy - five," said 
 Goethe, " one must of course think fre 
 quently of death. But this thought never 
 gives me the least uneasiness, I am so 
 The soul in- fully convinced that the soul is indestruc- 
 
 destructible. ... ., . .. .,, 
 
 tible, and that its activity will continue 
 through eternity. It is like the sun, which 
 seems to our earthly eyes to set in night, 
 
In a Club Corner 81 
 
 but is in reality gone to diffuse its light 
 elsewhere." 
 
 " The tomb is not an endless night ; 
 
 It is a thoroughfare a way 
 That closes in a soft twilight 
 And opens in eternal day." 
 
 While waiting at the station at Uttox- OBLIVION. 
 eter, before his departure, Hawthorne 
 asked a boy who stood near him an in 
 telligent and gentlemanly lad, twelve or 
 thirteen years old, whom he took to be a 
 clergyman s son if he had ever heard 
 the story of Dr. Johnson, how he stood an 
 hour doing penance near that church, the 
 spire of which rose before them. The 
 boy stared and answered, " No ! " " Were 
 you born at Uttoxeter ? " "Yes." He 
 was asked if no circumstance such as had 
 been mentioned was known or talked about 
 among the inhabitants. " No," said the 
 boy; "not that I ever heard of." "Just 
 think," reflects the great novelist, " of the 
 absurd little town, knowing nothing of the The absurd 
 only memorable incident which ever hap 
 pened within its boundaries since the old 
 Britons built it, this sad and lovely story, 
 which consecrates the spot (for I found it 
 holy to my contemplation, again, as soon 
 
82 
 
 In a Club Corner 
 
 A writer s 
 experience 
 in Bath. 
 
 A man of 
 genius and 
 a lord. 
 
 as it lay before me) in the heart of a 
 stranger from three thousand miles over 
 the sea ! " Some years ago, a writer in 
 Temple Bar, when in Bath, being anxious 
 to amuse himself with verifying all the 
 places and streets, etc., mentioned in Per 
 suasion and Northanger Abbey, he turned 
 into a library close to Milsom Street, and 
 asked for the volume ; he was told not only 
 that they had not got it, but had never 
 even heard of Jane Austen! And what 
 was still worse, and hurt his feelings more, 
 was that when he sought the inn which 
 her genius had made so memorable, though 
 he found it, lo and behold ! it was no 
 longer the White Hart, it had sunk into 
 the Queen, or the Royal Hotel, or some 
 thing equally commonplace. When Swift 
 was desired by Lord Oxford to introduce 
 Parnell to his acquaintance, he refused, 
 upon this principle, that a man of genius 
 was a character superior to that of a lord 
 in a high station ; he therefore obliged his 
 lordship to walk with his treasurer s staff 
 from room to room through his own de 
 partment, inquiring which was Dr. Par 
 nell, in order to introduce himself, and beg 
 the honor of his acquaintance. Dr. James 
 Alexander, describing a visit to the India 
 
In a Club Corner 83 
 
 House, says he inquired for Charles Lamb 
 of the old doorkeeper, who replied he had 
 been there since he was sixteen years old, 
 and had never heard of any Mr. Lamb. 
 But the doorkeeper of the British Museum 
 knew him very well. Not long after Irving Irving. 
 had attained celebrity in Great Britain by 
 his writings, an English lady and her 
 daughter were passing along some gallery 
 in Italy and paused before a bust of Wash 
 ington. After gazing at it for a few mo 
 ments, the daughter turned to her mother 
 with the question : " Mother, who was 
 Washington?" "Why, my dear, don t 
 you know ? " was the astonished reply ; 
 " he wrote the Sketch Book." The health 
 of Darwin was anything but good ; and Darwin. 
 an old family servant a woman over 
 hearing his daughter express some anxiety 
 about his condition, sought to reassure her 
 by saying : " Hi believe master d be hall 
 right, madam, hif e only ad something 
 to hoccupy is mind ; sometimes e stands 
 in the conservatory from mornin till night 
 just a lookin at the flowers. Hif e 
 only ad somethin to do, e d be hewer so 
 much better, hi m sure." An ignorant old 
 fellow who had known Hawthorne was met Hawthorne. 
 by Mr. Harry Fenn in Salem, who vouch- 
 
84 In a Club Corner 
 
 safed to the artist the information that 
 Hawthorne "writ a lot o letters I heern 
 he wrote a scarlet letter or two, whatever 
 that is." The great-grandniece of Mrs. 
 Barbauld gives in her recently published 
 Memories many interesting anecdotes of 
 the writers of the last generation. Con- 
 satmtei cerning Samuel Rogers, whose generosity 
 and whose polished manners she praises, 
 she says : " Going one night to the gal 
 lery of the opera, which he thought the 
 best place for hearing, he noticed a respect 
 able-looking elderly man gazing at him 
 very intently for some time. At last be 
 tween the acts he left his seat, and placing 
 himself in front of Mr. Rogers, said in a 
 solemn tone, Pray, sir, is your name 
 Samuel Rogers ? Mr. Rogers, who al 
 ways cherished the hope that his works 
 were popular with the lower classes, re 
 plied most graciously that it was. Then, 
 sir/ said the man, I should be glad to 
 know, if you please, why you have changed 
 your poulterer ? 
 
 SUBSISTING Literature has been pronounced a good 
 
 BY AUTHOR- ... 
 
 SHIP. staff but a bad crutch, fascinating, cheer 
 
 ing, and enlivening, tending to promote 
 life, health, and an equable mind in those 
 
In a Club Corner 85 
 
 who pursue it for pleasure ; but woe to 
 those who are dependent upon their brains 
 for daily bread, thrice woe, if others are 
 dependent upon them. Coleridge advised, 
 never pursue literature as a trade. Haw- Literature 
 thorne, wrote, God keep me from ever " 
 being really a writer for bread. Lamb ex 
 claims, in a letter to Barton : " What ! 
 throw yourself on the world without any 
 rational plan of support beyond what the 
 chance of employment of booksellers would 
 afford you ? Throw yourself rather, my 
 dear sir, from the steep Tarpeian rock 
 slap-dash, headlong down upon iron spikes. 
 I have known many authors want bread : 
 some repining, others enjoying the sweet 
 security of a spunging-house ; all agreeing 
 they had rather have been tailors, weavers, 
 what not, rather than the things they 
 were ! I have known some starved 
 some go mad one dear friend literally 
 dying in a work-house. O ! you know not, 
 may you never know, the miseries of sub 
 sisting by authorship ! T is a pretty ap- A pretty ap 
 pendage to situations like yours or mine, ****** 
 but a slavery worse than all slavery to be 
 a bookseller s dependent ; to drudge your 
 brains for pots of ale and breasts of mut 
 ton ; to change your free thoughts and 
 
86 In a Club Corner 
 
 voluntary numbers for ungracious task 
 work ! The booksellers hate us." " With 
 the greatest possible solicitude," urged 
 Herder, " avoid authorship. Too early or 
 immediately employed, it makes the head 
 waste and the heart empty ; even were 
 there no other worse consequences. A 
 person who reads only to print, in all 
 probability reads amiss ; and he who sends 
 away through the pen and the press every 
 thought, the moment it occurs to him, will 
 in a short time have sent all away, and 
 will become a mere journeyman of the 
 printing-office, a compositor." "Writing 
 for the press," says John Stuart Mill, " can 
 not be recommended as a permanent re 
 source to any one qualified to accomplish 
 anything in the higher departments of 
 literature or thought ; not only on account 
 of the uncertainty of this means of liveli- 
 some view* hood, especially if the writer has a con- 
 
 ofMilPt. ... 
 
 science and will not consent to serve any 
 opinions except his own, but also because 
 the writings by which one can live are not 
 the writings which themselves live, and are 
 never those in which the writer does his 
 best. Books destined to form future think 
 ers take too much time to write, and when 
 written, come, in general, too slowly into 
 
In a Club Corner 87 
 
 notice and repute to be relied on for sub 
 sistence." The mother of Agassiz are- The mother 
 
 of Agassiz 
 
 markable woman wrote to her son about to her son. 
 the time he began to associate with Hum- 
 boldt, Cuvier, and other eminent natural 
 ists : " You know your mother s heart too 
 well to misunderstand her thought, even 
 should its expression be unacceptable to 
 you. With much knowledge, acquired by 
 assiduous industry, you are still at twenty- 
 five years of age living on brilliant hopes, 
 in relation, it is true, with great people, 
 and known as having distinguished talent. 
 Now, all this would seem to be delightful 
 if you had an income of fifty thousand 
 francs ; but, in your position, you must 
 absolutely have an occupation which will 
 enable you to live, and free you from the 
 insupportable weight of dependence on 
 others. From this day forward, my child, 
 you must look to this end alone if you 
 would find it possible to pursue honorably 
 the career you have chosen. Otherwise 
 constant embarrassments will so limit your 
 genius, that you will fall below your own 
 capacity." To a young poet without for- Voitaireto 
 tune Voltaire wrote : " Think first to im- poet. 
 prove your circumstances. First live ; 
 then compose." In the same strain is the 
 

 88 In a Club Corner 
 
 postscript to an unpublished letter of 
 Scott to a Walter Scott s, to a reverend friend, writ- 
 r }riend. ten at the time he was hard at work on 
 The Fair Maid of Perth : " Will you ex 
 cuse my offering a piece of serious advice ? 
 Whatever pleasure you may find in litera 
 ture, beware of looking to it as a profes 
 sion, but seek that independence to which 
 every one hopes to attain by studying the 
 branch of industry which lies most within 
 your reach. In this case you may pursue 
 your literary amusements honorably and 
 happily, but if ever you have to look to 
 literature for an absolute and necessary 
 support, you must be degraded by the 
 necessity of writing, whether you feel in 
 clined or not, and besides must suffer all 
 the miseries of a precarious and dependent 
 existence." Pitch low, adapt to the multi 
 tude, has too often been the humiliating, 
 mercenary advice of publishers to authors. 
 A publisher A publisher once said to Froude : " Sir, 
 if you wish to write a book that will sell, 
 consider the ladies maids. Please the 
 ladies maids, and you please the great 
 reading world." "The reason why these 
 fellows hate us [meaning the publishers] 
 I take to be," says Lamb, " that contrary 
 to other trades, in which the master gets 
 
In a Club Corner 89 
 
 all the credit (a jeweler or silversmith for 
 instance), and the journeyman, who really 
 does the fine work, is in the background ; 
 in our work the world gives all the credit 
 
 . . gives credit. 
 
 to us, whom they consider as their journey 
 men, and therefore do they hate us, and 
 cheat us, and oppress us, and would wring 
 the blood of us out, to put another sixpence 
 in their mechanic pouches." At literary 
 dinners the health of Napoleon, who shot 
 a publisher, will ever be a standing toast ; 
 and legends will continue to be repeated 
 as to the existence of a precious edition of 
 the Bible in which the misprint occurs 
 " publishers and sinners." 
 
 Previous to the inauguration of Hum- 
 boldt s bust in Central Park, and when it 
 was announced in the newspapers that Dr. 
 Francis Lieber was to deliver the German 
 speech, a friend of Lieber s was thus ad 
 dressed by a car acquaintance who pointed 
 to Lieber s name in the newspaper : 
 " Don t you think it remarkable, sir, that a 
 man like Dr. Lieber should publicly speak 
 for that Helmbold and his Buchu ? " 
 meaning the then conspicuous patent med 
 icine vender and his commodity. " Helm- 
 bold must pay him a thundering price 
 
go In a Club Corner 
 
 that I know." The platform orator, Mr. 
 Parsons, had been advertised for his lecture 
 on the great Richard Brinsley Sheridan. 
 The president of the lecture association, 
 before introducing the lecturer, stated to 
 A uttie con. the audience that "it had been deemed ad- 
 
 Jused. 
 
 visable by the committee to change the pro 
 gramme for the evening ; that Mr. Parsons 
 would not lecture upon Richard Brindle 
 Sheridan, but would, as requested, give his 
 lecture upon The Mediterranean." The 
 impression existed with a good many that 
 the lecture first announced was upon Sher 
 idan the general ; they had had enough 
 of him ; they did n t want a war speech, 
 or anything of the kind ; especially they 
 did n t want to hear recited again, for the 
 thousandth time, Sheridan s Ride. One 
 handsome fellow, handsomely dressed, with 
 a handsome wife on his arm on the way 
 to the lecture was heard to say, that he 
 detested Sheridan s Ride ; that he had 
 heard it recited so often he had thought 
 he would never hear it again ; but he sup 
 posed he must be tortured by it once more. 
 Advised to A Yorkshireman was advised to read some 
 
 read Plato. . .. 111 T-I 
 
 really good book, and Plato was mentioned 
 as likely to suit him. Afterward he was 
 asked, " Well, what do you think of Plato ? " 
 
In a Club Corner 97 
 
 " Plato ? O, that Plato ! I 11 tell you what 
 I think of him. He s as big a humbug as 
 ever lived. Why, man, Emerson has said 
 it all before him." We once heard a 
 preacher in his sermon sweepingly con 
 demn the writings of Alexander Pope as writings of 
 
 Pope con- 
 
 immoral and dangerous. At the conclu- 
 sion, he read out, and effectively too to 
 be sung by the congregation the beau 
 tiful hymn, " Vital spark of heavenly flame ! 
 Quit ! oh quit," etc. Sitting one day in 
 the family room reading The Spectator, a 
 young lady of the neighborhood came in 
 unexpectedly. To have something to say, 
 I remarked, after greeting, that I had just 
 picked up the old Spectator, which was al 
 ways new and interesting to me. " Yes," 
 responded the miss, lispingly ; " my father 
 subscribed for a copy when it first came 
 out." Not knowing that the precious book 
 was published in London a century before 
 her father was born, and at the slow rate 
 of a number a day. Referring casually, 
 for purpose of illustration, to the habit of 
 Neander, the church historian, of tearing 
 
 , , c . , r .-11 and the pre- 
 
 unconsciously the feathery part of a quill tedious 
 to pieces while he lectured, a pretentious 
 lady at the other end of the table, deter 
 mined not to conceal her learning, inter- 
 
92 In a Club Corner 
 
 rupted, with the utmost sincerity, by ex 
 claiming, " That s the gentleman, I be 
 lieve, who swam the Hellespont." Thirty 
 Thomas years ago or more Thomas Starr King 
 Kmf* added to his fame as a pulpit orator by de- 
 
 famous lee- J 
 
 ture. livering throughout the country a lecture 
 
 upon Socrates. A gentleman who had 
 heard the famous lecture in the neighbor 
 ing city, was speaking of it with enthusi 
 asm to some of his friends in one of the 
 public rooms of the hotel where he lived, 
 when a self-conceited ignoramus and moral 
 bully conspicuous in business and 
 church circles looking for all the world 
 the incarnation of virtue and wisdom, but 
 who never lost an opportunity of exposing 
 his ignorance scattered the company as 
 if a bomb had exploded in their midst, by 
 remarking, with the greatest complacency, 
 " Mr. King, very likely, has traveled 
 amongst the Socrates ! " He had heard of 
 the Japanese and Chinese why not the 
 Socrates ! 
 
 SHAKE- \Vas n t it Madame de Stael who vexed 
 
 SPEARE. 
 
 Heine by asking him, " What do you think 
 of Shakespeare ? " " She might as well 
 have asked me," wrote the indignant poet 
 afterward, "what I thought of the Uni- 
 
In a Club Corner 93 
 
 verse." Blanco White tells that he once 
 possessed a little pocket edition of Shake 
 speare, in several small volumes, on the 
 margins of which he marked with pencil Marking- 
 lines the passages which struck him with assaf " 
 admiration. At first a few passages were 
 marked, some happy phrase, having to 
 him, a foreigner, often more force than to 
 a native of England, was noted. Now and 
 then something that, if it had no other 
 right to particular comment, reminded him 
 of the poets of his own country. Then 
 would come one of those wonderful pas 
 sages which, expressed in language of the 
 utmost simplicity, reveal secrets of our 
 common nature with almost the effect of 
 magic, and make the whole world akin. 
 Line after line scene after scene was 
 thus noted, till the margin of almost every 
 page bore traces of his pencil. A friend of 
 James T. Fields said that " reading Cym- cymbeime 
 
 11- -i 1 / i . , with notes. 
 
 belme through a margin ot notes is like 
 playing the pianoforte with mittens on ; " 
 and she was fond of quoting a remark once 
 dropped in her hearing by a famous ac 
 tress : " Shakespeare sets his readers 
 souls on fire with flashes of genius ; his 
 commentators follow close behind with 
 buckets of water putting out the flames." 
 
94 
 
 In a Chtb Corner 
 
 A reminis 
 cence of 
 Henry Ir 
 ving *. 
 
 When Bowdler mentioned his scheme of a 
 purified Shakespeare to Dr. Harrington, 
 " No, no, sir," said the old gentleman, 
 "let us, when we have the woodcock, en 
 joy the little trail (entrails) on the toast." 
 "I remember," said Henry Irving, "that 
 at one of the revivals of Shakespearean 
 plays at the Lyceum, a gentleman leaving 
 the theatre was heard to express the opin 
 ion that the play was not a bad one ; that 
 he thought it might have a tolerable run, 
 but that it would be very much improved 
 by omitting the quotations. The play was 
 Macbeth." Some one told Fields of a pre 
 tentious woman who was once heard to 
 say at a dinner-table, that she had " never 
 read Shakespeare s works herself, but had 
 always entertained the highest opinion of 
 him as a man." Which called out M. W., 
 who convulsed the little group by relating 
 A comical a comical story of venerable Mr. B., who 
 believes unqualifiedly in Boston as not the 
 hub only, but the forward wheels also, of 
 the Universe. The excellent old gentle 
 man, having confessed that he had never 
 found time, during his busy life, to read 
 the " immortal plays," was advised to do 
 so, during the winter then approaching. 
 In the spring G. called on the estimable 
 
 story. 
 
In a Club Corner 95 
 
 citizen, and casually asked if he had read 
 any of the plays during the season just 
 passed. Yes, he replied, he had read 
 them all. " Do you like them ?" returned Asked;/ he 
 
 , .. , . J . . liked the 
 
 G., feeling his way anxiously to an opm- plays. 
 ion. " Like them ! " replied the old man, 
 with effusive ardor; "that is not the word, 
 sir ! They are glorious, sir ; far beyond 
 my expectation, sir ! There are not twenty 
 men in Boston, sir, who could have writ 
 ten these plays ! " "I take an interest, 
 my lord," said Mrs. Wititterly, with a faint 
 smile, "such an interest in the drama." 
 "Ye-es. It s very interasting," replied 
 Lord Frederick Verisopht. " I m always 
 ill after Shakespeare," said Mrs. Wititterly. 
 " I scarcely exist the next day ; I find the 
 reaction so very great after a tragedy, my 
 lord, and Shakespeare is such a delicious 
 creature." "Ye-es!" replied Lord Fred 
 erick. " He was a clayver man." On the 
 margin of an old folio copy of Shake 
 speare s plays was found this note by the 
 poet Keats: "The genius of Shakespeare Keats 
 was an innate universality ; wherefore he 
 laid the achievements of human intellect 
 prostrate beneath his indolent and kingly 
 gaze. He could do easily men s utmost. 
 His plan of tasks to come was not of this 
 
 es 
 timate. 
 
9<5 /;/ a Club Corner 
 
 world. If what he proposed to do here 
 after would not in the idea answer the aim, 
 how tremendous must have been his con 
 ception of ultimates ! " 
 
 PARADOXES. There are truths and facts, so strange 
 and absurd, that, state them how you may, 
 they seem paradoxical. Lieutenant Ray 
 gives some very remarkable experiences in 
 the Arctic region. In excavating the fro 
 zen earth he found it harder to work than 
 granite. Powder had no effect whatever 
 upon it, and when a blast was inserted it 
 would always " blow out." The drills used 
 were highly tempered, but in a few hours 
 at farthest the tempering was gone. He 
 found that the extreme cold had the same 
 effect on tempered steel as extreme heat. 
 The steel would lose its temper, become 
 observation softened, and bend easily. De Tocque- 
 Tocque- ville thought it astonishing that the masses 
 should find their position the more intoler 
 able the more it is improved. It has been 
 remarked upon as curious that Guizot, 
 from whose lectures Mazzini said he first 
 learned to love civil and religious liberty, 
 should have " truckled to the base measures 
 of Louis Philippe." Strange that in Ar 
 cadia ninety-five per cent, of the inhabit- 
 
In a Club Corner gj 
 
 ants should be unable to read and write ; 
 that in Venice, a city built upon the water, 
 water to drink should sell for a penny a 
 glass ; that the beautiful valleys of Switz- Switzerland 
 erland should be infected with such a dis- an s lt 
 gusting disease as goitre ; that in Spain, 
 where all men smoke, and most women, 
 the culture of tobacco should be forbidden 
 by law. It is an historical fact that a fugi 
 tive slave was the founder of Virginia. It 
 is believed in England that the famous 
 commodore in the American navy, John 
 Paul Jones, was once horsewhipped by a 
 British officer, Jones being pronounced 
 a poltroon. In Buckle s note-book is this : 
 " Wrote account of bad emperors favoring 
 Christianity and the good emperors perse 
 cuting it." And this : " Began and finished 
 notes of Spain and Inquisition/ to 
 prove that morals have not diminished per 
 secution." The Czar (Alexander II.) who Alexander 
 
 77 +tfi 
 
 emancipated the serfs was assassinated Twgenuff. 
 in the name of liberty ; and the novel 
 ist (Turgenieff) whose humanity was his 
 glory was an exile from his country by 
 the direction of the Emperor (Alexander 
 II.) who admired him and was governed 
 by him in great works, because the liber 
 alism of the author was too much for the 
 
9# In a Club Corner 
 
 imperialism of the Russian system. Tre- 
 lawny wrote of Shelley after seeing him 
 the first time : " I was silent from as 
 tonishment ; was it possible this mild- 
 The beard- looking, beardless boy could be the veri- 
 
 less boy a 
 
 table monster at war with all the world? 
 
 excommunicated by the Fathers of the 
 Church, deprived of his civil rights by the 
 fiat of a grim Lord Chancellor, discarded 
 by every member of his family, and de 
 nounced by the rival sages of our literature 
 as the founder of a Satanic school." Yet 
 " we have only to read Shelley s Essays on 
 Christianity," says Symonds, in his biog 
 raphy of the poet, "in order to perceive 
 what reverent admiration he felt for Jesus, 
 and how profoundly he understood the 
 true character of his teaching. That work, 
 brief as it is, forms one of the most valu- 
 A contribu- able extant contributions to a sound the- 
 
 t ion to sound 
 
 theology. ology, and is morally far in advance of the 
 opinions expressed by many who regard 
 themselves as especially qualified to speak 
 on the subject. It is certain that as Chris 
 tianity passes beyond its mediaeval phase, 
 and casts aside the husk of outworn dog 
 mas, it will more and more approximate to 
 Shelley s exposition. Here and there only 
 is a vital faith, adapted to the conditions 
 
In a Club Corner 99 
 
 of modern thought, indestructible because 
 essential, and fitted to unite instead of 
 separating minds of diverse quality. It 
 may sound paradoxical to claim for Shelley A paradox 
 
 , , . ical claim. 
 
 of all men a clear insight into the enduring 
 elements of the Christian creed ; but it 
 was precisely his detachment from all its 
 accidents which enabled him to discern its 
 spiritual purity, and placed him in a true 
 relation to the Founder. For those who 
 would neither on the one hand relinquish 
 what is permanent in religion, nor yet on 
 the other deny the inevitable conclusions 
 of modern thought, his teaching is indubi 
 tably valuable. His fierce tirades against 
 historic Christianity must be taken as 
 directed against an ecclesiastical system 
 of spiritual tyranny, hypocrisy, and super 
 stition, which, in his opinion, had retarded 
 the growth of free institutions, and fet 
 tered the human intellect. Like Cam- LikeCam- 
 panella, he distinguished between Christ, 
 who sealed the gospel of charity with his 
 blood, and those Christians who would be 
 the first to crucify their Lord if he re 
 turned to the earth." Doran, in his Table 
 Traits, attributes to a clergyman the ac 
 cidental invention of bottled ale. Dean 
 Nowell was out fishing, with a bottle of the 
 
ioo In a Club Corner 
 
 freshly-drawn beverage at his side, when 
 intelligence reached him touching the peril 
 his life was in under Mary, which made 
 him fly, after flinging away his rod and 
 Origin of thrusting his bottle of ale under the grass. 
 
 bottled ale. 
 
 When he could again safely resort to the 
 same spot, he looked for his bottle, which, 
 on being disturbed, drove out the cork like 
 a pellet from a gun, and contained so 
 creamy a fluid, that the dean, noting the 
 fact, and rejoicing therein, took care to be 
 well provided with the same thencefor 
 ward. We have it upon the authority of 
 Morley that one of Burke s chief pane 
 gyrists, who calls him one of the greatest 
 of men, and, Bacon alone excepted, the 
 greatest thinker who ever devoted himself 
 to the practice of English politics, oddly 
 enough insists upon it that this great man 
 and great thinker was actually out of his 
 mind when he composed the pieces for 
 which he has been most admired and re- 
 Sonnet, TO vered. It is curious that the finest sonnet 
 in the English language, in the judgment 
 of Coleridge and other eminent critics, 
 should have been written by a Spaniard. 
 It has been remarked as not a little singu 
 lar that the house in Cheyne-row, Chelsea, 
 so long the home of Carlyle, the great de- 
 
In a Club Corner J ioi 
 
 nouncer of quacks, should have become the 
 property of a quack medicine proprietor. 
 On her way to prison, one of the officers 
 said to Madame Roland, brutally, "Your Madame 
 husband s flight is a proof of his guilt." ****&& 
 She indignantly replied : " It is so atrocious 
 to persecute a man who has rendered 
 such services to the cause of liberty. His 
 conduct has been so open and his accounts 
 so clear, that he is perfectly justifiable in 
 avoiding the last outrages of envy and 
 malice. Just as Aristides, and inflexible 
 as Cato, he is indebted to his virtues for 
 his enemies. Let them satiate their fury 
 upon me. I defy their power, and devote 
 myself to death. He ought to save him 
 self for the sake of his country, to which 
 he may yet do good." Sainte-Beuve char 
 acterizes Cowper as essentially the family Cowperthe 
 poet, though he had never been a husband 
 or a father ; the poet of the home, of the 
 ordered, pure, softly animated interior, of 
 the grove seen at the bottom of the garden, 
 or of the fireside. Tycho Brahe, afraid of 
 casting a stain upon his nobility by pub 
 lishing his observations on a new star, did 
 not scruple to debase his lineage by mar 
 rying a servant-girl. Hood saw on Sir 
 Thomas Lawrence s easel an unfinished 
 
IO2 In a Club Corner 
 
 head of Wilberforce, so very merry, so 
 rosy, so good-fellowish, that nothing less 
 than the Life and Correspondence just pub 
 lished could have persuaded him that he 
 
 Peterbor- was really a serious character. Peterbor- 
 
 tosingser* ough, though an avowed free-thinker, sat 
 up all night at sea, Macaulay tells us, to 
 compose sermons, and was with difficulty 
 prevented from edifying the crew of a man- 
 of-war with his pious oratory. The widow 
 of Nicholas Rowe received a pension from 
 the crown, " in consideration," not of his 
 dramatic genius, but "of the translation of 
 Lucan s Pharsalia." That famous trea 
 tise, The Religio Medici, now understood 
 to have been written by Sir Thomas 
 Browne for his own edification, was pub 
 lished surreptitiously by the printer. Feni- 
 more Cooper, in an interview with Sir 
 Charles Murray, who in early life spent a 
 year among the Pawnees, remarked to 
 him, alluding to the publication of The 
 Prairie Bird, " You have had the advantage 
 
 Coopemever of me, for I was never among the Indians. 
 
 J32L. All that I know of them is from reading 
 and from hearing my father speak of them. 
 He saw a great deal of the red men when 
 he first went to the western part of the 
 State of New York about the close of the 
 
In a Club Corner 103 
 
 past century." Bruce, the traveler, was 
 scarcely believed in as a narrator of facts ; A truthful 
 
 , . , traveler ac- 
 
 but he was accepted as a sort of gigantic ceptedasa. 
 
 , . , . . gigantic 
 
 liar, whose achievements in that way were ur. 
 worthy of respect. An old Scotch lady 
 who knew him said that even in the society 
 in which he was welcome, his African 
 stories were never believed, though the 
 credibility of them has since been abun 
 dantly established. " I was present in a 
 large company," said Horace Walpole, "at 
 dinner, when Bruce was talking away. 
 Some one asked him what musical instru 
 ments were used in Abyssinia. Bruce 
 hesitated, not being prepared for the ques 
 tion : and at last said, I think I saw one 
 lyre there. George Selwyn whispered his 
 next man, Yes ; and there is one less 
 since he left the country. " It is referred 
 to as a curious fact that, although dramatic 
 composition requires more worldly experi 
 ence and knowledge of human nature than 
 any other, almost all our best comedies ourbest 
 
 , . . comedies 
 
 have been written by very young men. written b y 
 Those of Congreve were all produced be- yi 
 fore he was five and twenty. Farquhar 
 composed The Constant Couple in his 
 twenty-second year, and died at thirty. 
 Vanbrugh was a young ensign when he 
 
104 
 
 In a Club Corner 
 
 Haydn. 
 
 Hogarth. 
 
 sketched out The Relapse and The Pro 
 voked Wife, and- Sheridan reached the sum 
 mit of his dramatic reputation at twenty- 
 six. Haydn thought it unfortunate that 
 circumstances had led him so preponder 
 antly into the field of instrumental compo 
 sition, rather than into that of operatic 
 writing. Hogarth persisted to the last in 
 believing that the world was in a con 
 spiracy against him with respect to his 
 talents as a historical painter, and that a 
 set of miscreants, as he called them, were 
 employed to run his genius down. When 
 Michel AH- Michel An gel o proposed to fortify his na 
 tive city, Florence, and was desired to keep 
 to his painting and sculpture, he answered 
 that those were his recreations, but what he 
 really understood was architecture. They 
 say it was Liston s firm belief that he was 
 a great and neglected tragic actor ; it is 
 said, too, that every one of us believes in 
 his heart, or would like to have others be 
 lieve, that he is something which he is not. 
 "At school," said Daniel Webster, "there 
 was one thing I could not do. I could not 
 make a declamation. I could not speak 
 before the school." Boswell said we must 
 not estimate a man s powers by his being 
 able or not able to deliver his sentiments in 
 
 Listen. 
 
 Daniel 
 Webster. 
 
In a Club Corner 105 
 
 public. Isaac Hawkins Browne, one of the 
 first wits in Great Britain, got into Par 
 liament, and never opened his mouth. Sel- 
 wyn, the man renowned for social wit, was 
 utterly deficient in the gift of oratory. He 
 sat forty years in Parliament for Glouces 
 ter, and never spoke on any question. 
 Addison, versed in all literature, and so Addis<m. 
 familiar with the oratorical remains of the 
 ancients, is known to have been unable to 
 conclude a speech that he had begun. Dr. 
 Johnson said that Garrick, though accus- Garrick. 
 tomed to face multitudes, when produced 
 as a witness in Westminster Hall, was so 
 disconcerted by a new mode of public ap 
 pearance, that he could not understand 
 what was asked. He told Sir William 
 Scott that he himself had several times 
 tried to speak in the Society of Arts and 
 Sciences, but " had found he could not get 
 on." William Gerard Hamilton told Bos- 
 well that Johnson had observed to him Johnson. 
 that it was prudent for a man who had 
 not been accustomed to speak in public, to 
 begin in as simple a manner as possible 
 a speech which he had prepared ; " but," 
 added he, "all my flowers of oratory for 
 sook me." Olivet, in his History of the 
 French Academy, says that La Rochefou- 
 
106 In a Club Corner 
 
 La Roche- cauld could not summon resolution, at his 
 election, to address the Academy. Al 
 though chosen a member, he never en 
 tered ; for such was his timidity, that he 
 could not face an audience and pronounce 
 the usual compliment on his introduction ; 
 he whose courage, whose birth, and whose 
 
 smoiiett. genius were alike distinguished. Smollett, 
 who malignantly criticised Garrick in Rod 
 erick Random and Peregrine Pickle, labo 
 riously panegyrized him in his History, 
 telling him in a letter that "he thought it 
 a duty incumbent on him to make a public 
 atonement, in a work of truth, for the 
 wrongs done him in a work of fiction." It 
 
 Mantes- is said of Montesquieu that he was so much 
 affected by the criticisms which he daily 
 experienced that they contributed to hasten 
 his death. The public schools of France, 
 
 Irving. we believe, make use of Irving s Sketch 
 Book as a text-book in English, yet the 
 illustrious author confessed his sufferings 
 from the opinion of a Philadelphia critic, 
 who, on reviewing The Sketch Book, on its 
 first appearance, said that Rip Van Winkle 
 was a silly attempt at humor quite un 
 worthy of the author s genius. 
 
In a Club Corner 107 
 
 Lamb said, " He who thought it not SOLITUDE. 
 good for man to be alone preserve me 
 from the more prodigious monstrosity of 
 being never by myself ! " Byron said, "All 
 the world are to be at Madame de StaeTs 
 to-night, and I am not sorry to escape any 
 part of it. I only go out to get me a fresh 
 appetite for being alone." " In the world," 
 said De Senancour, "a man lives in his 
 own age; in solitude in all ages." " Con 
 versation," observes Gibbon, " enriches the 
 understanding, but solitude is the school 
 of genius." " Solitude," as Lowell ex 
 presses it, " is as needful to the imagination 
 as society is wholesome to the character." 
 "Solitude," says De Quincey, "though 
 silent as light, is, like light, the mightiest 
 of agencies ; for solitude is essential to 
 man. All men come into this world alone; 
 all leave it alone. Even a little child has 
 a dread, whispering consciousness, that if 
 he should be summoned to travel into 
 God s presence, no gentle nurse will be 
 allowed to lead him by the hand, nor 
 mother to carry him in her arms, nor little 
 sister to share his trepidations. King and 
 priest, warrior and maiden, philosopher and 
 child, all must walk those mighty galleries 
 alone. How much this fierce condition of 
 
io8 In a Club Corner 
 
 eternal hurry upon an arena too exclusively 
 
 human in its interests is likely to defeat 
 
 the grandeur which is latent in all men, 
 
 Theordma- may be seen in the ordinary effect from 
 
 too much living too constantly in varied company. 
 
 company. . J . 
 
 The word dissipation, in one of its uses, 
 expresses that effect ; the action of thought 
 and feeling is too much dissipated and 
 squandered. To reconcentrate them into 
 meditative habits, a necessity is felt by all 
 observing persons for sometimes retiring 
 from crowds. No man ever will unfold the 
 capacities of his own intellect who does not 
 at least checker his life with solitude. 
 HOW muck How much solitude, so much power." Late 
 
 solitude, so .-,.,- o , ~ . , ., T . . 
 
 much power, in life, Sydney Smith wrote : " Living a 
 great deal alone (as I now do) will, I be 
 lieve, correct me of my faults, for a man 
 can do without his own approbation in 
 much society; but he must make great 
 exertions to gain it when he is alone ; with 
 out it, I am convinced, solitude is not to be 
 endured." Klopstock, in his Messiah, ex 
 presses it : " Solitude holds a cup sparkling 
 with bliss in her right hand, a raging dag 
 ger in her left ; to the blest she offers her 
 goblet, but stretches towards the wretch 
 the ruthless steel." Julian Hawthorne, 
 writing of his father, says that not even 
 
In a Club Corner 109 
 
 the author s wife ever saw him in the act 
 of writing. He had to be alone. Years 
 after The Scarlet Letter was published, the The scarlet 
 
 ..,,,. . Letter. 
 
 author revisited the solitary upper room in 
 which it was written, and entered in his 
 note-book, " In this dismal chamber fame 
 was won." Balzac, when he had thought 
 out one of his philosophical romances, and 
 amassed his materials, retired to his study, 
 and from that time until his book was 
 finished, society saw him no more. When 
 he appeared again among his friends he 
 looked like his own ghost. Lincoln, it is Lincoln. 
 said, had a habit of occasionally spending a 
 whole day by himself in the broad prairie 
 under the blue expanse of heaven, which 
 gave to his face, for a time afterwards, 
 a certain expression of otherworldliness. 
 The only pulpit orator who ever helped 
 me to a conception of the patriarchs and 
 prophets was a circuit-rider who read his 
 Bible in the wilderness. Jesus went up 
 into the mountain alone to pray. Moses Moses. 
 was buried in a lost ravine : " angels were 
 his pall-bearers, and God Almighty dug his 
 grave." No man knoweth his sepulchre 
 unto this day. 
 
no In a Club Corner 
 
 STYLE. Read, says Southey, all the treatises 
 
 upon composition that ever were composed, 
 and you will find nothing which conveys 
 so much useful instruction as the account 
 given by John Wesley of his own way of 
 writing. " I never think of my style," 
 says he, "but just set down the words that 
 come first. Only when I transcribe any 
 thing for the press, then I think it my duty 
 to see that every phrase be clear, pure, and 
 proper : conciseness, which is now as it 
 were natural to me, brings quantum sufficit 
 of strength. If after all I observe any 
 stiff expression, I throw it out, neck and 
 shoulders." "The ultimate rule is," said 
 Carlyle : " learn so far as possible to be 
 intelligible and transparent no notice 
 taken of your style, but solely of what you 
 express by it." " Remember," says Cow- 
 Persficuity per, " that, in writing, perspicuity is always 
 lf th e a bat- more than half the battle. The want of it 
 is the ruin of more than half the poetry 
 that is published. A meaning that does 
 not stare you in the face is as bad as no 
 meaning, because nobody will take the 
 pains to poke for it." " Clear writers, like 
 clear fountains," wrote Landor, "do not 
 seem so deep as they are : the turbid look 
 the most profound." " In composing, as a 
 
In a Club Corner 1 1 1 
 
 general rule," advised Sydney Smith, " run 
 your pen through every other word you 
 have written ; you have no idea what vigor 
 it will give your style." Bacon, it has been Bacon. 
 well said, packs his meaning till the plain 
 words take on an air of enigma from their 
 very excess of significance ; it is a con 
 densed speech, a dialect borrowed from 
 the gods. "The best passages in our chief 
 prose writers, no less than in our poets, are 
 where the phraseology has become orac 
 ular; the verbiage grows wiser than the 
 thoughts, more tender than the feelings ; 
 and the man who falls into this trance of 
 language is himself the most amazed at 
 the glory and the beauty of the utterance." 
 " A style grows from within, and forms 
 only round a nucleus of thought." " Lan 
 guage is part of a man s character." " A 
 good writer does not write as people write, 
 but as he writes." "The sentences of Sen- The sen- 
 eca are stimulating to the intellect ; the sT^ca, 
 
 f ,, . ...... , Epictetus, 
 
 sentences of Epictetus are fortifying to the *>ui Marcus 
 
 - ,, Aurelhts. 
 
 character ; the sentences of Marcus Au- 
 relius find their way to the soul." Carlyle, 
 in describing the style of Marquis Mirabeau 
 (father of the great Mirabeau), gives a 
 pretty good description of his own : " Mar 
 quis Mirabeau had the indisputablest ideas ; 
 
Ill 
 
 In a Club Corner 
 
 gest of styles. 
 
 Teufels- 
 drockh. 
 
 but then his style ! In very truth, it is the 
 The stran- strangest of styles, though one of the rich 
 est : a style full of originality, picturesque- 
 ness, sunny vigor ; but all cased and slated 
 over, threefold, in metaphor and trope ; 
 distracted into tortuosities, dislocations ; 
 starting out into crotchets, cramp turns, 
 quaintnesses, and hidden satire ; which the 
 French had no ear for. Strong meat, too 
 tough for babes ! " So it was that England 
 had at first no palate for his own strong, 
 tough meat. He wrote in his Journal : 
 " Literature still all a mystery ; nothing 
 paying ; Teufelsdrb ckh beyond measure 
 unpopular. An oldest subscriber came in 
 to Fraser and said, If there is any more 
 of that damned stuff, I will, etc., etc. ; on 
 the other hand, an order from America 
 (Boston or Philadelphia) to send a copy of 
 the magazine so long as there was any 
 thing of Carlyle s in it. Napier un 
 expectedly, and even gratefully, accepted 
 Characteristics, Froude tells us. He con 
 fessed that he could not understand it ; but 
 anything which Carlyle wrote, he said, had 
 the indubitable stamp of genius upon it, 
 and was therefore most welcome in the 
 Edinburgh Review. Charles Sumner ob 
 served to Lord Jeffrey that he thought 
 
 Character 
 istics. 
 
In a Club Corner 
 
 Carlyle had changed his style since he 
 wrote the article on Burns. " Not at all," 
 said Jeffrey ; " I will tell you why that it 
 is different from the other articles I 
 altered it." " T is a good rule of rhetoric," 
 thought Emerson, "which Schlegel gives J 
 In good prose every word is underscored ; 
 which, I suppose means, never italicize. 
 Dr. Channing s piety and wisdom had such 
 weight that, in Boston, the popular idea of 
 religion was whatever this eminent divine 
 held. But I remember that his best friend, 
 a man of guarded lips, speaking of him in 
 a circle of admirers, said : I have known 
 him long, I have studied his character, and 
 I believe him capable of virtue. An emi 
 nent French journalist paid a high compli 
 ment to the Duke of Wellington, when his 
 documents were published : Here are 
 twelve volumes of military dispatches, and 
 the word glory is not found in one of 
 them." 1 "Right words in right places," Rightwards 
 was Daniel Webster s idea of style, which ? 
 he came as near realizing as any one ; for 
 even the fastidious Samuel Rogers was 
 free to say that he knew nothing in the 
 English language so well written as Mr. 
 Webster s letter to Lord Ashburton on the 
 subject of the impressment of seamen. Of 
 
n 4 in a Club Corner 
 
 Montaigne and his style, Emerson says : 
 " The sincerity and marrow of the man 
 reaches to his sentences. I know not any 
 where the book that seems less written. 
 It is the language of conversation trans 
 ferred to a book. Cut these words and 
 they would bleed ; they are vascular and 
 alive." 
 
 PUBLIC Examples without doubt may be cited 
 
 SPEAKING. r . , ... 
 
 of great writers who have been illustrious 
 as speakers ; but it is a general truth, that 
 to write a book is a bad preparation for 
 public and premeditated speaking. Liter 
 ary labor, as judiciously observed, is reg 
 ular and methodical. The writer proposes 
 to himself an ideal perfection, inconsistent 
 with the unforeseen or accidental turn of a 
 debate. Almost all the merits of a book 
 are defects in a speech. A great book is 
 written for the future. A speech is made 
 for the present. Its business is the busi 
 ness of to-day. A book is thought; a 
 speech is action. What is explained in a 
 FOX S asser- book is only hinted at in a debate. Fox 
 asserted that if a speech read well it was 
 not a good speech. A speech is to be 
 heard and not read. Lysias, says Plutarch, 
 wrote a defense for a man who was to be 
 
In a Club Corner 7/5 
 
 tried before one of the Athenian tribunals. 
 Long before the defendant had learned the 
 speech by heart, he became so much dissat- Dissatisfied 
 isfied with it that he went in great distress w 
 to the author. " I was delighted with your 
 speech the first time I read it ; but I liked 
 it less the second time, and still less the 
 third time ; and now it seems to be no 
 defense at all." " My good friend," said 
 Lysias, "you quite forget that the judges 
 are to hear it only once." When Dr. 
 Johnson furnished Boswell with the ma 
 terials for an address to a committee of the 
 House of Commons on an election petition 
 he added, " This you must enlarge on. 
 You must not argue there as if you were 
 arguing in the schools. You must say the 
 same thing over and over again, in differ 
 ent words. If you say it but once, they 
 miss it in a moment of inattention." The 
 masters of eloquence have enforced the 
 rule. It was an axiom of Thiers that when 
 a speaker wants to carry away a stolid 
 assembly or uncultured mass, he should 
 often present the same argument, but each 
 time in a new verbal dress. Therefore he 
 did not fear repeating himself, but was 
 careful to vary the form of his repetitions. 
 Fox advised Sir Samuel Romilly, when 
 
/ 1 6 In a Club Corner 
 
 about to sum up the evidence jn Lord Mel 
 ville s trial, " not to be afraid of repeating 
 observations which were material, since it 
 were better that some of the audience 
 should observe it than that any should not 
 understand." Though he himself was cen 
 sured for the practice, he declared it to be 
 his conviction, from long experience, that 
 
 Pitframpii- the system was right. Pitt urged a similar 
 defense for the amplification which was 
 thought by some to be a defect in his style. 
 "Every person," he said, "who addressed 
 a public assembly, and was anxious to make 
 an impression upon particular points, must 
 either be copious upon those points or 
 repeat them, and that he preferred copious 
 ness to repetition." Lord Brougham gives 
 his testimony on the same side. The 
 orator, he remarks, often feels that he 
 could add strength to his composition by 
 compression, but his hearers would then 
 be unable to keep pace with him, and he is 
 compelled to sacrifice conciseness to clear- 
 
 Erskine^ ness. Erskine s great artifice, we are told, 
 
 artifice. i i r T T i i 
 
 lay in his trequent repetitions. He had 
 one or two leading arguments and facts on 
 which he was constantly dwelling. But 
 then he had marvelous skill in varying his 
 phraseology, so that no one was sensible 
 
In a Club Corner //7 
 
 of tautology in the expressions. Like the 
 doubling of a hare, he was perpetually 
 coming to his old place. Landor, in one 
 of his Imaginary Conversations, makes Per- pe 
 icles say to Alcibiades, that, "When we 
 have much to say, the chief difficulty is to 
 hold back some favorite thought, which 
 presses to come on before its time, and 
 thereby makes a confusion in the rest. If 
 you are master of your temper, and con 
 scious of your superiority, the words and 
 thoughts will keep their ranks, and will 
 come into action with all their energy, 
 compactness, and weight. Never attempt 
 to alter your natural tone of voice ; never 
 raise it above its pitch : let it at first be 
 somewhat low and slow. This appears 
 like diffidence ; and men are obliged to 
 listen the more attentively, that they may 
 hear it. Beginning with attention, they 
 will retain it through the whole speech ; 
 but attention is, with difficulty, caught in 
 the course of one." But intense interest 
 and profound feeling are also necessary to Desiderata. 
 effective oratory. An eminent English 
 man said to Hawthorne that Sir Lytton 
 Bulwer asked him whether he heard his 
 heart beat when he was going to speak. 
 " Yes." " Does your voice frighten you ? " 
 
/ 18 In a Club Corner 
 
 " Yes." " Do all your ideas forsake 
 you ? " " Yes." " Do you wish the floor to 
 open and swallow you? " "Yes." "Why, 
 then, you ll make an orator!" The same 
 
 Canning. gentleman told of Canning, too, how once, 
 before rising to speak in the House of 
 Commons, he bade his friends feel his 
 pulse, which was throbbing terrifically. 
 " I know I shall make one of my best 
 speeches," said Canning, "because I m in 
 such an awful funk ! " Pitt did not like to 
 take part in a debate when his mind was 
 full of an important secret of state. " I 
 must sit still," he once said to Lord Shel- 
 burne on such an occasion ; " for, when 
 once I am up, everything that is in my 
 mind comes out." "In order," says Judge 
 
 TO speak Brackenridgc, "to speak short upon any 
 
 short, think . J 
 
 ion s . subject think long. Much reflection is 
 
 the secret of all that is truly excellent in 
 oratory. No man that speaks just enough, 
 and no more, ever wearies those that hear 
 him. And that is enough which exhausts 
 the subject, before the patience of the 
 auditory." Prince Bismarck once said, 
 "The day will yet come, when what is 
 called eloquence will be regarded as a 
 quality injurious to the state, and punished 
 when it is guilty of a long speech." 
 
In a Club Corner 119 
 
 Of making many books there is indeed BOOKS AND 
 no end. It is told of an Oriental king that 
 his library was so large that it required one 
 hundred persons to take care of it, and a 
 thousand dromedaries to transport it. He 
 ordered all useless matter weeded out, and 
 after thirty years labor it was reduced to 
 the carrying capacity of thirty camels. 
 Still appalled by the number of volumes, 
 he ordered it to be condensed to a single 
 dromedary load, and when the task was 
 completed, age had crept upon him, and 
 death awaited him. Think of " that catho- Thatcatho- 
 lic dome in Bloomsbury," as Thackeray sio 
 calls the British Museum (to which, it will 
 be recollected, he likened "the dome which 
 held Macaulay s brain"), "under which 
 one million volumes are housed." Dr. 
 Holmes has told how to see the great 
 treasure-house ; and what he has said would 
 apply to the books it contains. " Take 
 lodgings," he says, " next door to it, in a 
 garret, if you cannot afford anything any 
 better, and pass all your days at the 
 Museum during the whole period of your 
 natural life. At three score and ten you 
 will have some faint conception of the con 
 tents, significance, and value of the great 
 British institution." Whitaker s reference 
 
I2O In a Club Corner 
 
 catalogue of current literature alone, pub 
 lished in London, is ten inches thick, and 
 contains over sixty-eight thousand refer 
 ences. One hundred and thirty publishers 
 are represented in it. The preparation of 
 
 Theuniver- a. universal index of subjects, the record of 
 all that human beings have ever written 
 upon anything, an English writer suggests 
 must be left for the German government 
 when it has conquered the world, or for 
 the scion of the Rothschilds, or the Astors, 
 or the Vanderbilts, who is one day to ap 
 pear, and who to a fortune of twenty mil 
 lions is to add burning philanthropy and 
 acute bibliomania. In view of the vast 
 quantity of printed matter Schopenhauer 
 urges "the paramount importance of ac- 
 
 The library quiring the art not to read." The library 
 
 of Voltaire. ^ r . , 
 
 of Voltaire is represented as neither so 
 numerous nor so varied as his fortune and 
 the extent of his knowledge seemed to 
 require. He thought we ought to set 
 bounds to our reading, and that when we 
 had seen a certain number of authors we 
 had seen all. " Books which please for a 
 year, which please for ten years, and which 
 please forever," says Sir James Mackintosh, 
 "gradually take their destined stations." 
 " Posterity," says Matthew Arnold, "alarmed 
 
In a Club Corner 121 
 
 at the way in which its literary baggage 
 grows upon it, always seeks to leave be 
 hind it as much as it can, as much as 
 it dares everything but masterpieces." 
 Emerson says, "There is no luck in liter- Noiuckin 
 
 J literary 
 
 ary reputation. They who make up the reputation. 
 final verdict upon every book are not the 
 partial and noisy readers of the hour when 
 it appears ; but a court as of angels, a 
 public not to be bribed, not to be entreated, 
 and not to be overawed, decides upon 
 every man s title to fame. Only those 
 books come down which deserve to last." 
 Thackeray thought it a comfort that the 
 thousands and thousands of pictures in the 
 Louvre are not all masterpieces, and that 
 there is a good stock of mediocrity in this 
 world, and that we only light upon genius Genius at 
 
 . .. rare inter- 
 
 now and then, at rare angel intervals, vais. 
 handed round like Tokay at dessert, in a 
 few houses, and in very small quantities 
 only. Fancy how sick one would grow of 
 it, if one had no other drink. The great 
 books in the great libraries are few indeed 
 in comparison to the whole number, and 
 their condition is proof of how little they 
 are handled by the multitude of readers. 
 Weeding, according to the highest stand 
 ards, would leave the miles of shelves com- 
 
/22 In a Club Corner 
 
 paratively empty. Jeffrey, in reviewing 
 Campbell s Specimens of the British Poets, 
 published in 1819, says: "Of near two 
 hundred and fifty authors, whose works are 
 cited in these volumes, by far the greater 
 part of whom were celebrated in their gen 
 eration, there are not thirty who now enjoy 
 anything that can be called popularity 
 whose works are to be found in the hands 
 of ordinary readers, in the shops of ordinary 
 booksellers, or in the press for republica- 
 tion. About fifty may be tolerably familiar 
 to men of taste or literature ; the rest 
 slumber on the shelves of collectors, and 
 are partially known to a few antiquaries 
 and scholars. . . . Now, if this goes on for 
 a hundred years longer, what a task will 
 await the poetical readers of 1919! Our 
 living poets will then be nearly as old as 
 Pope and Swift are at present, but there 
 will stand between them and that gener- 
 The fresh ation nearly ten times as much fresh and 
 
 and fashion- /.,.,, 
 
 t>te. fashionable poetry as is now interposed 
 
 between us and those writers ; and if Scott, 
 and Byron, and Campbell have already cast 
 Pope and Swift a good deal into the shade, 
 in what form and dimensions are they 
 themselves likely to be presented to the 
 eyes of their great-grandchildren ? The 
 
In a Club Corner 
 
 thought, we own, is a little appalling ; and, 
 
 we confess, we see nothing better to im- Nothing- 
 
 . better to 
 
 agine than that they may find a comtort- imagine. 
 able place in some new collection of 
 specimens the centenary of the present 
 publication. There if the future editor 
 have anything like the indulgence and ven 
 eration for antiquity of his predecessor 
 there shall posterity hang with rapture on 
 the half of Campbell, and the fourth part 
 of Byron, and the sixth of Scott, and the 
 scattered tithes of Crabbe, and the three 
 per cent of Southey ; while some good- 
 natured critic shall sit in our mouldering 
 chair, and more than half prefer them to 
 those by whom they have been superseded." 
 The Tennysons and the Longfellows of the 
 present day must in like manner surfer by 
 new candidates for poetical fame, and so 
 the fashion and taste will ever go on chang 
 ing the " immortals " of a thousand years 
 composing a still diminutive list. " It is," 
 says De Quincey, "one of the misfortunes of the 
 of life that one must read thousands of 7*wi> 
 books only to discover that one need not 
 have read them." "In science," Bulwer 
 suggests, " read, by preference, the newest 
 works ; in literature, the oldest. The classic 
 literature is always modern. New books 
 
124 In a Club Corner 
 
 revive and redecorate old ideas ; old books 
 suggest and invigorate new ideas." Car- 
 lyle speaks of a book that in a high de 
 gree excited him to self-activity, which he 
 
 The best regarded as the best effect of any book. 
 
 KM& "The principal use of reading to me," says 
 Montaigne, " is that, by various objects, it 
 rouses my reason ; it employs my judg 
 ment, not my memory." "The tendency 
 of education through books," says Mark 
 Pattison, " is to sharpen individuality, and 
 to cultivate independence of mind, to make 
 a man cease to be the contented servant 
 of the things that perish. The conversa 
 tion of the man who reads to any purpose 
 will be flavored by his reading ; but it will 
 not be about his reading. The people who 
 read in order to talk about it, are the people 
 
 The books who read the books of the season because 
 
 fashion. they are the fashion books which come 
 in with the season and go out with it. We 
 read books that we may escape from the 
 terrible ennui of society. We go to read, 
 not from craving for excitement, but as a 
 refuge from the tedium vitae, the irksome- 
 ness of herding with uninteresting fellow 
 mortals." The scholar consults books as 
 the mechanic employs his tools. Milton s 
 " industrious and select reading," in prep- 
 
In a Club Corner 125 
 
 aration for the great work to which he ded 
 icated a whole life, "long choosing, and 
 late beginning," is as well known as the 
 thirty years spent by Edward Gibbon in 
 preparing for and in composing his history. 
 Carlyle read twenty-five large volumes be- Literary 
 
 r i r i i i r i i preparation, 
 
 fore he felt himself competent to begin his 
 essay on Diderot, and Dickens felt it nec 
 essary to look through with some care the 
 barrow load of French books sent him by 
 Carlyle before beginning his Tale of Two 
 Cities. Then there are big books huge 
 folios foundations of great libraries 
 that are never read or even consulted. 
 The first books given to Dartmouth Col 
 lege, we are told, were of that character. 
 Like the matchlock guns, they could not 
 be held out for use without a rest. There 
 are several hundred volumes of them : two 
 feet long, eighteen inches wide, and six 
 inches thick. An old librarian of the col 
 lege said the old folios were never read. The old 
 Those who affected to know more than ma* " 
 their classmates took them out. One 
 learned senior told him that he always had 
 three charged to him, one for a footstool, 
 one for a cushion to his chair, and one for 
 his water pail to rest on. " What harm 
 can a book do that costs a hundred crowns ? " 
 
126 In a Club Corner 
 
 once asked Voltaire. "Twenty volumes 
 folio will never cause a revolution ; it is 
 The uttie the little portable volumes of thirty sous 
 /uuruL that are to be feared." The completed 
 Chinese Encyclopaedia comprises five thou-" 
 sand and twenty volumes ; price seven 
 thousand five hundred dollars. " The crys 
 tallized thoughts of the wisest and best of 
 all time, the recorded experiences of men, 
 and the accumulated knowledge of the 
 world, are mighty instruments for living 
 men. One cannot learn everything, but a 
 perfect library must have all the things 
 which books can teach to all men." " By 
 my books," a scholar has said, " I can con 
 jure up to vivid existence before me all 
 the great and good men of antiquity ; and 
 for my individual satisfaction I can make 
 them act over again the most renowned of 
 Magical their exploits. The orators declaim for me ; 
 
 influence of ... % . . 
 
 books. the historians recite ; the poets sing ; m 
 a word, from the equator to the pole, and 
 from the beginning of time until now, by 
 my books, I can fly whither I please." In 
 a letter to Vittori, after giving a humorous 
 description of the manner in which he 
 passed his time in his country-house 
 snaring thrushes, cutting wood, and play 
 ing at cricca and tric-trac with a butcher, 
 
In a Club Corner 727 
 
 a miller, and two kiln-men, Machiavelli 
 says : " But when evening comes I return 
 home, and shut myself up in my study. 
 Before I make my appearance in it, I take 
 off my rustic garb, soiled with mud and 
 dirt, and put on a dress adapted for courts . 
 or cities. Thus fitly habited I enter the The an 
 antique resorts of .the ancients; where, 
 being received, I feed on that food which 
 alone is mine, and for which I was born. 
 For an interval of four hours I feel no 
 annoyance ; I forget every grief, I neither 
 fear poverty nor death, but am totally 
 immersed." Lady Mary Wortley Mon 
 tagu at the age of sixty-two wrote to her 
 daughter : " I give you thanks for your 
 care of my books. I yet retain, and care 
 fully cherish, my taste for reading. If 
 relays of eyes were to be hired like post- 
 horses, I would never admit any but silent 
 companions ; they afford a constant vari- A constant 
 ety of entertainment, which is almost the wfr****- 
 
 ment. 
 
 only one pleasing in the enjoyment, and 
 inoffensive in the consequence." At sixty- 
 eight she wrote also to her daughter, "The 
 active scenes are over at my age. I in 
 dulge, with all the art I can, my taste for 
 reading. If I would confine it to valuable 
 books, they are almost as scarce as valu- 
 
128 In a Club Corner 
 
 able men. I must be content with what I 
 
 can find. As I approach a second child- 
 
 pieasures of hood, I endeavor to enter into the pleas- 
 
 second child- . . 
 
 hood. ures of it. Your youngest son is, perhaps, 
 at this very moment, riding on a poker, 
 with delight, not at all regretting that it 
 is not a gold one, and much less wishing 
 it an Arabian horse, which he could not 
 know how to manage. I am reading an 
 idle tale, not expecting wit or truth in it, 
 and am glad it is not metaphysics to puzzle 
 my judgment, or history to mislead my 
 opinion. He fortifies his health by exer 
 cise ; I calm my cares by oblivion. The 
 methods may appear low to busy people ; 
 but if he improves his strength, and I 
 forget my infirmities, we both attain very 
 desirable ends." That remarkable passage 
 in one of Dickens stories, in which Harriet 
 Carker is described reading to Alice Brown 
 who could forget it ? She read to the 
 
 The Eternal poor woman " the Eternal Book for all the 
 weary and the heavy-laden ; for all the 
 wretched, fallen, and neglected of this 
 earth read the blessed history, in which 
 the blind, lame, palsied beggar, the crimi 
 nal, the woman stained with shame, the 
 shunned of all our dainty clay, has each a 
 portion, that no human pride, indifference, 
 
In a Club Corner 129 
 
 or sophistry through all the ages that this 
 world shall last, can take away, or by the 
 thousandth atom of a grain reduce read 
 the ministry of Him, who, through the 
 round of human life, and all its hopes and 
 griefs, from birth to death, from infancy to 
 age, had sweet compassion for, and interest 
 in, its every scene and stage, its every suf 
 fering and sorrow." 
 
 Talleyrand said of Chateaubriand that VANITY. 
 he became deaf when people ceased talk 
 ing about him. It is well for us, some one 
 has remarked, that we are born babies in 
 intellect. Could we understand half what 
 most mothers say and do to their infants, 
 we should be rilled with a conceit of our 
 own importance, which would render us 
 insupportable through life. It was told of 
 a distinguished Englishman of the last 
 generation that, on leaving the university, 
 he was thus addressed by the head of his 
 college : " Mr. Blank, the tutors think 
 highly of you : your fellow-students think 
 highly of you : I think highly of you ; but 
 nobody thinks so highly of you as you seif-con 
 think of yourself." Recalling the story of 
 the senior wrangler fresh from his tri 
 umph, who, entering a theatre at the same 
 
In a Club Corner 
 
 time with royalty, fancied that the audience 
 were standing up to do him honor. Riche 
 lieu is said to have valued himself much 
 Richelieu s on his personal activity, for his vanity 
 
 vanity. . < , 
 
 was as universal as his ambition. A 
 nobleman at the house of Grammont one 
 day found him employed in jumping, and 
 with all the ease and tact of a Frenchman 
 and a courtier, offered to jump against him. 
 He suffered the Cardinal to jump higher, 
 and soon after found himself rewarded by 
 an appointment. Carlyle tells an incident 
 
 Rousseau s, that recalls Rousseau s vanity. He con 
 sented to accompany Madame de Genlis to 
 the theatre, stipulating strict incognito ; 
 "he would not be seen there for the 
 world." The pit, however, recognized him, 
 but did not cheer him ; and this philoso 
 pher hurried indignantly from the scene, 
 not because he was discovered, but be- 
 
 Thackemy cause he was not applauded. Thackeray 
 
 the opposite. . __, . T 
 
 was the opposite. " Even when I am read 
 ing my lectures," he said, " I often think to 
 myself, What a humbug you are, and I 
 wonder the people don t find it out." He 
 thought the best antidote for self-conceit 
 was for a man to live where he could meet 
 his betters, intellectual and social. But 
 why cure anything so grateful and gra- 
 
In a Club Corner 131 
 
 cious ? Vanity, as well said, does indeed 
 wrap a man up like a cloak. It bestows its 
 blessings freely upon the poet striving Blessin 
 against general misappreciation ; it enables m 
 the poor loser in the great battle of life to 
 make himself happy with some trifling suc 
 cess ; it softens the bitter pangs of disap 
 pointment, and gives fresh strength for 
 new struggles ; it prevents resentment, 
 and facilitates the intercourse of society ; 
 it can make any man contented with his 
 lot, and lets the poor drudge in the kitchen 
 think without envy of the statesman in the 
 parlor. Who would not be tempted to 
 frequent irritation if he could enjoy that 
 gift for which the poet so foolishly prayed, 
 the gift of seeing himself as others saw 
 him, and recognize his infinitesimal impor 
 tance in the eyes of his fellows ? It is 
 because of the tender illusions of vanity 
 that a man can accept the petty sphere of 
 his own activity for the wider circle of 
 the world, and shut out the annihilating 
 image of the vast forces beyond. It is the 
 safeguard against a depressing fatalism, 
 Vanity has as many virtues as the vaunted 
 
 r T i i i depressing 
 
 panaceas of medical quackery ; and were fatalism. 
 it not for that softening oil, the wheels of 
 life would grate harsh music too discor- 
 
132 In a Club Corner 
 
 dant for mortal ears. Measureless boon ! 
 Thank thee, Heaven ! 
 
 MiS EAND It: * s re ^ atec ^ tnat Sir Giles Rooke had 
 once to preside at the trial of a young 
 woman who was charged with having 
 stolen a saw, valued at ten pence, from 
 an old-iron shop. The evidence was clear 
 against her ; but it was found that she had 
 committed the offense from the pressure 
 of extreme want. The jury felt the hard 
 ship of the case, and the cruelty of pun 
 ishing with severity an offense committed 
 under such circumstances ; and despite the 
 clearness of the evidence, consulted for 
 some little time in doubt together. At 
 length, however, they agreed, and the fore 
 man, rising with evident agitation, delivered 
 
 verdict, their verdict, Guilty. Upon this, Judge 
 Rooke addressed them in the following 
 terms : " Gentlemen of the jury, the ver 
 dict which you have given is the very 
 proper verdict ; under the circumstances 
 of the case you could have given no other. 
 I perceive the reluctance with which you 
 have given it. The court, sympathizing 
 with you in the unhappy condition of the 
 prisoner, will inflict the lightest punish 
 ment the law will allow. The sentence is 
 
In a Club Corner 133 
 
 that the prisoner be fined one shilling, and 
 be discharged ; and if she has not one in 
 her possession, I will give her one for the 
 purpose." The audience, jury, and coun 
 sel, showed how deeply they were moved 
 by the language of the venerable judge. 
 Early in this century, we are told, it was 
 the custom in Portugal for the Society of society of 
 Mercy to supply the instruments of pun- ercy 
 ishment for condemned criminals. They 
 were always present at executions, and 
 sometimes provided rotten ropes, which 
 broke with the offender, and when he fell, 
 they covered him with the flag of mercy, 
 and he was out of the reach of the civil 
 power. There is a pretty fable of a Gue- 
 bre prophet, who was carried by an angel 
 to a spot whence he beheld the place of The place oj 
 torment of the wicked, and informed by 
 the angel of the various reasons for the 
 various conditions in which he saw the 
 several sufferers. His attention was at 
 length especially caught by the situation 
 of a man whose whole naked body was sur 
 rounded by raging flames, with the single 
 exception of his left foot. " And what," 
 said the prophet to the angel ; " what, my 
 lord, is the cause of that particular excep 
 tion ? " " The man whom thou beholdest," 
 
Corner 
 
 returned the angel, " was, in his lifetime, a 
 wicked king. His oppression of his sub 
 jects was grievous, and thou seest how he 
 Suffering of suffereth for his guilt. But, one day, that 
 
 a ivicked . , . , , 
 
 king. miserable tyrant (tyrant though he was) 
 walked near to a sheep cote, where it 
 chanced that he saw a lamb tethered to 
 a stake, and was hungering after the re 
 mainder of some hay which had been placed 
 near it, but of which it had already con 
 sumed all that was within its reach. The 
 wicked prince, feeling upon that occasion 
 one emotion of pity, stretched out his left 
 foot, and pushed the hay within the reach 
 of the lamb. Thou perceivest, then, O 
 prophet, how surely, among all the sons of 
 men, He loveth all his creatures, and how 
 He beareth in mind every act of love which 
 Effect of a is performed for them. A single act of 
 sgect f mercy, bestowed upon a hungry lamb, has 
 saved from the flames of hell the left foot 
 of even a wicked tyrant." There is a Mo 
 hammedan version of one of the actions 
 attributed in India to Buddha. One day a 
 dove came flying up to Moses, and begged 
 for protection against a pursuing hawk. 
 And Moses pitied the dove, and let it take 
 refuge in his bosom. But presently up 
 flew the hawk, and charged Moses with 
 
In a Club Corner 135 
 
 injustice and cruelty, inasmuch as he had 
 deprived it of the food it was about to give 
 to its hungering little ones. And Moses 
 felt that in acting kindly towards the dove 
 he had acted cruelly towards the hawk. 
 So, in order to reconcile justice with Reconciling 
 
 justice -with 
 
 mercy, he cut off from his own body a mercy. 
 piece of flesh as large as the dove, and was 
 about to give it to the hawk for its long 
 ing little ones, when the hawk cried : " O 
 prophet of God, I am Michael, and what 
 seems to thee a dove is Gabriel. We came 
 to thee under these forms in order to test 
 and to make manifest thy high-mindedness 
 and thy generosity." And then the two 
 seeming birds disappeared. " I have found 
 men more kind than I expected, and less 
 just," said Dr. Johnson, at the close of his 
 wide experience of life ; and the remark 
 would be echoed, we suppose (says an Eng 
 lish writer), by every one whose experience 
 or whose anticipations have not been pe 
 culiar. Almost every one, we think, has at 
 least once in his life felt that became in coming in 
 
 . , . , , i i contact with 
 
 contact with a just mind, that his short- a just mind. 
 comings were estimated without exaggera 
 tion, his offenses visited with no more than 
 their merited penalty. If he ask himself 
 what hand has administered this tonic to 
 
136 In a Club Corner 
 
 fainting self-esteem, this anodyne to the 
 flutterings of a restless vanity, he will in 
 variably find, we believe, that it was that 
 something of one whose ideal was something different 
 e. from justice. We do not believe that any 
 
 human being ever impressed another with 
 the sense of justice, in the face of any real 
 difficulty or obstacle, who was otherwise 
 than boundlessly forgiving. Think of all 
 that a great patriot must condone in his 
 supporters, during a death-struggle with a 
 mighty foe. One shudders to imagine all 
 that must have been permitted, for in 
 stance, by a William the Silent. " Charity," 
 says Ruskin, at his best, " is the summit of 
 justice it is the temple of which justice 
 YOU can t is the foundation. But you can t have the 
 top without the bottom ; you cannot build 
 
 upon charity. You must build upon jus 
 tice, for this main reason, that you have 
 not, at first, charity to build with. It is 
 the last reward of good work. Do jus 
 tice to your brother (you can do that, 
 whether you love him or not), and you will 
 come to love him. But do injustice to him, 
 because you don t love him, and you will 
 come to hate him. * 
 
In a Club Corner 137 
 
 It is certain that Richard Brinsley Sheri- SHERIDAN. 
 dan will always be an interesting character 
 to attentive readers and students of Eng 
 lish literature. Orators, dramatists, play 
 wrights, statesmen, enlightened men and 
 women of the world, close students of 
 human nature, will be particularly inter 
 ested in him, for the reason, that the 
 development of extraordinary powers, and 
 the notable achievements of genius, must 
 ever and everywhere be engaging to 
 thoughtful people. 
 
 It is not often that traits can be traced 
 so unmistakably to progenitors as in the Traits of 
 case of Sheridan. His grandfather was a 
 clergyman, but lost his chaplaincy and all 
 hope of further preferment by preaching a 
 sermon on the birthday of George I. from 
 the text : " Sufficient unto the day is the 
 evil thereof." He died, as stated, in great 
 poverty and distress, having maintained 
 through all the changes of fortune a gay 
 and careless cheerfulness, not allowing a 
 day to pass, according to Lord Cork, 
 " without a rebus, an anagram, or a madri 
 gal." He published translations of Greek 
 and Latin classics, and wrote letters, many 
 of which were held of sufficient conse 
 quence to be included in Swift s Miscel- 
 
, 3 8 
 
 In a Club Corner 
 
 His father 
 set up as a 
 rival to 
 Gar rick. 
 
 lanies. His father was an actor, an elo 
 cutionist, and a lexicographer. He played 
 at Drury Lane, and was set up, we are 
 told, by his friends as a rival to Garrick. 
 One of his published works was a life of 
 his godfather, Jonathan Swift, with whom 
 his father must have been intimate. His 
 mother was a novelist of considerable dis 
 tinction, her romances still retaining a re 
 spectable place in English literature. The 
 distinguishing traits of his grandfather, his 
 father, and his mother, were developed and 
 stimulated by his attachment to Miss Lin- 
 ley, a young and beautiful singer, in defense 
 of whom he fought two duels, to whom he 
 was afterwards married, and by whom his 
 subsequent life was greatly determined. 
 
 " He said his wife should sing in public 
 summary, no more, and she did not. In a few years 
 he had written the most brilliant comedies 
 produced since the time of Shakespeare. 
 A few years later he delivered the most 
 electrifying speech ever heard in the House 
 of Commons. He was in Parliament thirty 
 years, and manager of Drury Lane for 
 about the same period. When George IV. 
 was Prince of Wales, Sheridan was his 
 most intimate friend and adviser, shaping, 
 no doubt, the future whisper of the throne. 
 
o 
 
 money in 
 
 Public 
 
 affairs. 
 
 In a Club Corner 
 
 Sheridan was almost a Republican in poli 
 tics. He stood by the French Revolution 
 ists, by Ireland, and the oppressed myriads 
 of India. He held during his life but two 
 or three offices, and made no money in 
 public affairs. Against these merits and 
 achievements is placed the fact that he 
 made a multitude of engagements and kept 
 but few of them ; that he was generally 
 in straits for money ; and that he drank 
 at times more port than was good for 
 him. The real moral of his life seems to 
 be that without a sense of order the most 
 versatile genius will be continually in hot 
 water. Sheridan could raise large sums 
 of money for Drury Lane, and manage it 
 through its golden age, yet he allowed 
 small creditors to swarm around him as 
 if helpless. Later in life he settled fifteen 
 thousand pounds upon his second wife, and 
 met with a heavy financial disaster when 
 Drury Lane burned. Yet his debts after 
 death amounted to only four thousand Debts only 
 pounds. Such a bankrupt would not 
 amount to a third rate in these days." 
 
 From being regarded at school as "a 
 most impenetrable dunce," he rose to be, 
 in many respects, one of the most dis 
 tinguished men in the world " The other 
 
140 In a Club Corner 
 
 night," writes Byron, in his Diary, "we 
 were all delivering our respective and 
 various opinions upon Sheridan, and mine 
 was this : Whatever Sheridan has done 
 or chosen to do has been par excellence 
 Always the always the best of its kind. He has writ- 
 
 best. 
 
 ten the best comedy (School for Scandal) ; 
 the best opera, The Duenna (in my mind 
 far before that St. Giles s lampoon, The 
 Beggars Opera) ; the best farce (the Critic 
 it is only too good for a farce) ; and the 
 best address (Monologue on Garrick) ; and, 
 to crown all, delivered the very best ora 
 tion (the famous Begum speech) ever con 
 ceived or heard in England. Somebody 
 told Sheridan this, the next day, and, on 
 hearing it, he burst into tears." The 
 impeach. speech on the impeachment of Warren 
 Hastings, Burke declared to be "the most 
 astonishing effort of eloquence, argument, 
 and wit, united, of which there was any 
 record or tradition." Fox said, "all that 
 he had ever heard, all that he had ever 
 read, when compared with it, dwindled into 
 nothing, and vanished like vapor before 
 the sun ; " and Pitt acknowledged " that it 
 surpassed all the eloquence of ancient and 
 modern times, and possessed everything 
 that genius or art could furnish, to agitate 
 
In a Club Corner \4 l 
 
 and control the human mind." At the 
 close of it occurs this celebrated passage : 
 "Justice I have now before me, august and 
 pure; the abstract idea of all that would 
 be perfect in the spirits and the aspirings 
 of men! where the mind rises, where 
 the heart expands where the counte 
 nance is ever placid and benign where 
 her favorite attitude is to stoop to the un 
 fortunate to hear their cry and to help 
 them, to rescue and relieve, to succor 
 and save : majestic from its mercy ; ven 
 erable from its utility; uplifted without 
 pride ; firm without obduracy ; beneficent 
 in each preference ; lovely, though in her 
 frown! " 
 
 The speech occupied five hours and a 
 half in the delivery. An anecdote is given 
 as a proof of its irresistible power in a 
 
 r ,-. . eloquence. 
 
 note upon Bissett s History of the Reign 
 of George III. : "The late Mr. Logan, well 
 known for his literary efforts, and author 
 of a most masterly defense of Mr. Hastings, 
 went that day to the House of Commons, 
 prepossessed for the accused and against 
 the accuser. At the expiration of the first 
 hour he said to a friend, All this is de 
 clamatory assertion without proof; when 
 the second was finished, This is a most 
 
142 In a Club Corner 
 
 wonderful oration ; at the close of the 
 third, Mr. Hastings has acted very un 
 justifiably ; the fourth, Mr. Hastings 
 is a most atrocious criminal; and, at 
 last, * Of all monsters of iniquity, the most 
 enormous is Warren Hastings. " 
 s^ch at The next year occurred his great speech 
 &rHmiL at Westminster Hall " the great hall of 
 William Rufus, the hall which had re 
 sounded with acclamations at the inaugura 
 tion of thirty kings" which lasted four 
 days. 
 
 His carelessness and dilatoriness were 
 proverbial. Sir Jonah Barrington, in a 
 note to one of his Personal Sketches, says : 
 " I had an opportunity of knowing that Mr. 
 Sheridan was offered one thousand pounds 
 for his speech in the Warren Hastings case 
 by a bookseller the day after it was spoken 
 in the House of Commons, provided he 
 would write it out correctly from the notes 
 taken, before the interest had subsided ; 
 and yet, although he certainly had occasion 
 for money at the time, and assented to the 
 Delay in proposal, he did not take the trouble of 
 writing u writing a line it The publisher was of 
 
 course displeased, and insisted on his per 
 forming his promise, upon which Sheridan 
 laughingly replied in the vein of Falstaff : 
 
In a Club Corner 143 
 
 No, Hal, were I at the strappado, I would 
 do nothing by compulsion. He did, how 
 ever, write it out at length, but too late, 
 and got nothing for it." 
 
 An incident in keeping with this occurred 
 just as he was parting with an acquaint 
 ance. "I wrote you a letter," said Mr. Mr. Smyth s 
 
 c- L , .< MI letter. 
 
 Smyth ; it was an angry one ; you will 
 be so good as to think no more of it." 
 " Oh, certainly not, my dear Smyth," said 
 Sheridan ; " I shall never think of what 
 you have said in it, be assured ; " and put 
 ting his hand in his pocket, " Here it is," 
 he cried, offering it to Smyth, who was glad 
 enough to get hold of it ; and looking at it 
 as he was going to throw it into the fire, lo 
 and behold, he saw that it had never been 
 opened ! 
 
 Sheridan s solicitor found his client s 
 wife one day walking up and down in her 
 drawing-room, apparently in a frantic state 
 of mind. He inquired of Mrs. Sheridan Mrs. sheri- 
 the cause of such violent perturbation. 
 She only replied that her husband was a 
 " villain." On the man of business further 
 interrogating her as to what had so sud 
 denly awakened her to a sense of that fact, 
 she at length answered with some hesita 
 tion : " Why, I have discovered that all the 
 
144 I H a Club Corner 
 
 love-letters he sent me were the very same 
 as those which he sent to his first wife ! " 
 
 The versatility of his genius and his ex 
 traordinary knowledge of human nature 
 and of human affairs naturally made him 
 hesitate in his written performances. In 
 From his his preface to The Rivals he says: "On 
 
 preface to J 
 
 The Rivals, subjects on which the mind has been much 
 informed, invention is slow of exerting 
 itself. Faded ideas float in the fancy like 
 half-forgotten dreams ; and the imagina 
 tion in its fullest enjoyments becomes sus 
 picious of its offspring, and doubts whether 
 it has created or adopted." 
 
 The history of The School for Scandal is 
 a curious one. The play was written piece 
 meal, and in great haste, having been an 
 nounced before the parts were delivered to 
 the players. Moore, speaking of the orig 
 inal manuscript, says that the last five 
 scenes were roughly scribbled on odd 
 scraps of paper, the last leaf bearing the 
 school for inscription in Sheridan s writing of " Fin- 
 "jinukttL" ished, thank God," with the prompter s 
 addendum, "Amen. W. Hopkins." No 
 printed copies of the play, authenticated 
 by the author, are in existence. All was 
 thought out carefully in Sheridan s mind 
 before paper was blotted. One of his sis- 
 
In a Club Corner 145 
 
 ters tells that his phrase at home was, 
 
 " The comedy is finished ; I have now 
 
 nothing to do but to write it." The entire 
 
 work has been pronounced an El Dorado EI Dorado 
 
 of wit, where the precious metal is thrown 
 
 about by all classes as carelessly as if they 
 
 had not the least idea of value. 
 
 The great success of the play was an 
 astonishment to him, if not something of 
 a terror. " Walking along Piccadilly with 
 Sheridan," says Kelly, " I asked him if he 
 had told the queen that he was writing 
 another play. He said he had, and was 
 actually about one. Not you/ said I to 
 him ; * you will never write again ; you are 
 afraid to write. Of whom am I afraid? 
 said he, fixing his penetrating eye on me. 
 I said, You are afraid of the author of The 
 School for Scandal/ " 
 
 Sheridan was very particular as to how Particular 
 his plays should be represented. In The resentation 
 Memoirs of Charles Mathews, by his wife, 
 is an interesting illustration. Mathews was 
 to play Sir Peter Teazle, in The School 
 for Scandal. Sheridan, then proprietor of 
 Drury Lane theatre, expressed his desire 
 to Mr. Mathews that he would allow the 
 author to read the part to him, and give 
 his idea of the manner he thought that Sir 
 
146 In a Club Corner 
 
 Peter Teazle should be acted. Mathews 
 had many misgivings on this subject, and 
 most embarrassing it proved in the result ; 
 for so totally unlike was Sheridan s read- 
 
 reading. 
 
 ing of the character from every other con 
 ception of it, that it was next to impos 
 sible for the actor to adopt any one of his 
 suggestions. Had it not been known 
 that Sheridan was the author of the play, 
 it would have been difficult to credit his 
 acquaintance with the part in question. 
 The consequence may be anticipated. 
 Sheridan was dissatisfied with Mathews 
 performance, and the part was given to 
 another. 
 
 There are many anecdotes told, illustra 
 ting his extravagance and carelessness in 
 money matters. His brother said that he 
 once found the window frames stuffed with 
 papers to prevent them from rattling, and, 
 on taking them out, saw that they were 
 Novel use of bank-notes, which Sheridan had used for 
 
 bank-notes. 
 
 this purpose some stormy night and never 
 missed them. Sheridan made his appear 
 ance one day in a new pair of boots. 
 These attracting the notice of some of his 
 friends "Now guess," said he, "howl 
 came by these boots ? " Many probable 
 guesses then were made. " No," said 
 
In a Club Corner 147 
 
 Sheridan, " you have not hit it, and never 
 will : I bought them and paid for them." 
 On another occasion it is said he was very 
 much distressed for a pair of boots, and in distress 
 
 _ for boots. 
 
 had not money enough to pay for them. 
 He sent his servant to a shoemaker s shop 
 to tell them to send his master a pair of 
 boots. When the boots came, Sheridan 
 complained (like Lord Foppington) "that 
 the right boot pinched him execrably," 
 and ordered him to take it back, leaving 
 the left boot behind. He then sends his 
 servant to another shoemaker s, and serves 
 him the same trick ; only sent the left boot 
 back. He thus got a pair of boots, and 
 left his servant to settle the matter with 
 the shoemakers. A friend remonstrating 
 with him, when he was living in Orchard 
 Street, on the extravagance of his estab 
 lishment, and the smallness of his means 
 to support it, he said, " My dear friend, it 
 is my means." On being asked what wine 
 he liked best, he replied, " Other people s." 
 He told Lord North he had taken a -new 
 house, and that everything would now go 
 on like clock-work. " Ah," replied his 
 lordship, "tick, tick." He jocularly re- Tick, 
 marked one day to a creditor who de- ttck * 
 manded instant payment of a long stand- 
 
148 In a Club Corner 
 
 ing debt with interest : " My dear sir, you 
 know it is not my interest to pay the prin 
 cipal ; nor is it my principle to pay the in 
 terest." 
 
 Grief for hu His grief for his wife was in sharp con 
 trast with his gayety and carelessness. " I 
 never," says Michael Kelly, the famous 
 music composer and singer, " I never be 
 held more poignant grief than Mr. Sheri 
 dan felt for the loss of his beloved wife ; 
 and although the world, which knew him 
 only as a public man, will perhaps scarcely 
 credit the fact, I have seen him, night 
 after night, sit and cry like a child, while I 
 sang to him, at his desire, a pathetic little 
 song of my own composition, They Bore 
 Her to Her Grassy Grave." 
 
 From all accounts he must have been 
 a great talker. " Poor dear Sherry ! " ex 
 claims Byron ; " I shall never forget the 
 day he, and Rogers, and Moore, and I, 
 passed together ; when he talked and we 
 listened, without one yawn, from six till 
 one in the morning." 
 
 It is said that he never spoke well until 
 after he had drank a couple of bottles of 
 port. Father O Leary said, "This was 
 like a porter ; he could not get on with 
 out a load on his head." When he wrote, 
 
In a Club Corner 149 
 
 he always drank. " A glass of wine," he 
 used to say, "would encourage the bright 
 thought to come ; and then it was right to 
 take another to reward it for coming." He 
 told Byron that on the night of the grand o the night 
 success of his School for Scandal, he was Sem 
 knocked down and put into the watch- 
 house, for making a row in the street, and 
 being found intoxicated by the watchman. 
 Everybody has heard of his answer to the 
 watchman who found him bereft of that 
 "divine particle of air," called reason. 
 "He, the watchman," says Byron, "found 
 Sherry in the street, fuddled and bewil 
 dered, and almost insensible. "Who are 
 you, sir ? " no answer. " What s your 
 name ? " a hiccough. " What s your 
 name, I say ? " Answer, in a slow, de 
 liberate, and impressive tone, " Wilber- 
 force ! " 
 
 When somebody asked Sheridan how it 
 was he succeeded so well in the house, he 
 replied, "Why, sir, I had not been there H */* 
 very long before I found three fourths of C 
 the members were fools, and the whole 
 loved a joke. I resolved, therefore, not to 
 shock them by too much severity of argu 
 ment, and to amuse them by a sufficient 
 quantity of humor. This is the whole 
 
750 In a Club Corner 
 
 secret of my success." Once, being on a 
 parliamentary committee, he arrived when 
 all the members were assembled and 
 seated, and about to commence business. 
 He looked round in vain for a seat, and 
 then, with a bow and a quaint twinkle in 
 One of his his eyes, said, "Will any gentleman move, 
 
 $ (I II 20$. 
 
 that I might take the chair ? " During the 
 year 1806, having been told that his ene 
 mies took pleasure in speaking ill of him, 
 on account of his favoring an obnoxious 
 tax which his party was about to force 
 through the house, " Well, let them," he 
 said ; " it is but fair that they should have 
 some pleasure for their money." Some 
 mention having been made in his presence 
 of a tax upon milestones, he said, " Such 
 a tax would be unconstitutional, as they 
 are a race that cannot meet to remon 
 strate." 
 
 Another. The saying ascribed to Sheridan, when 
 seated at the window, a few days before 
 his death, and seeing a hearse go by, he 
 exclaimed, " Ah, that is the carriage, after 
 all ! " was in everybody s mouth, and com 
 pared with the slow-coach joke of Rogers, 
 who, when told that it was called the 
 " Regulator," remarked, " I thought so, for 
 all the others go by it." 
 
In a Club Corner 151 
 
 He was disputing one day with Monk 
 Lewis, the author of The Castle Spectre, 
 which had rilled the exhausted treasury of 
 Drury Lane, when the latter, in support of 
 his argument, offered to bet Sheridan all 
 the money The Castle Spectre had brought The castle 
 that he was right. "No," answered the 
 manager ; " I cannot afford to bet so much 
 as that ; but I will tell you what I will do 
 I 11 bet you all it s worth." 
 
 Lord Lauderdale, happening to say that 
 he would repeat some good things of 
 Sheridan s, he replied, " Pray, don t, my 
 dear Lauderdale ; a joke in your mouth is 
 no laughing matter." 
 
 Being asked, "Why do we honor ambi 
 tion and despise avarice, while they are 
 both but the desire of possessing?" "Be 
 cause," said Sheridan, " the one is natural, 
 the other artificial ; the one the sign of 
 mental health, the other of mental decay ; 
 the one appetite, the other disease." 
 
 Rogers once said to him, "Your admi 
 ration of Mrs. Siddons is so high, that I M rs .sid- 
 wonder you never made open love to 
 her." "To her!" exclaimed Sheridan; "to 
 that magnificent and appalling creature ; 
 I should as soon think of making love to 
 the Archbishop of Canterbury." 
 
/5-2 In a Club Corner 
 
 One day he met two royal dukes in St. 
 
 James Street, and the younger flippantly 
 
 remarked, " I say, Sherry, we have just 
 
 been discussing whether you are a greater 
 
 fool or rogue : what is your opinion, old 
 
 boy ? " Sheridan bowed, smiled, and, as 
 
 the he took each of them by the arm, replied, 
 
 i Why, faith, I believe I am between both." 
 
 Haydon, the painter, says that once, 
 
 when Sheridan was dining at Somerset 
 
 House, and they were all in fine feather, 
 
 the servant rushed in, exclaiming, " Sir, the 
 
 house is on fire!" "Bring another bottle 
 
 of claret," said Sheridan; "it is not my 
 
 house." 
 
 One can hardly think of Garrick without 
 thinking also of Dr. Johnson. The great 
 actor and the great moralist are so con 
 nected that it is difficult to disassociate 
 them. They were friends for more than 
 forty years, and for most of that time they 
 were intimate. The latter kept a private 
 school at Edial Hall, and the former was 
 one of his three pupils. They went up to 
 London together, without money or friends, 
 to force their fortunes. Garrick fixed upon 
 the law, but poverty interrupted his studies. 
 Receiving a legacy from an uncle, he com- 
 
In a Club Corner 153 
 
 menced business with his brother as a wine 
 merchant. Foote used to say, by way of 
 derision, that he remembered Garrick liv- FOO&S 
 ing in Durham-yard, with three quarts of M 
 vinegar in the cellar calling himself a wine 
 merchant. He did not continue in the 
 trade long, for we find him persevering in 
 his attendance upon the theatre, writing 
 theatrical criticisms, practicing declama 
 tion, and soon making his appearance as 
 an actor, taking the name of Lyddal. 
 
 His genius for mimicry began to dis- Genius for 
 
 i i A -i mimicry. 
 
 play itself at a very early age. At eleven, 
 we are told, he acted in a play, The Re 
 cruiting Officer, before a select audience, 
 with great applause. As manager of the 
 company, he applied to Johnson for a pro 
 logue, without success. Afterwards the 
 future colossus of literature was a favorite 
 subject for his mimicry. Funny it must 
 have been to the boys of the little school 
 at Edial to see the future great actor, 
 whose death, Johnson said, " eclipsed the 
 gayety of nations, and impoverished the 
 stock of harmless pleasures," take off "the Taking off 
 tumultuous and awkward fondness " of 
 their master for "Tetty" or "Tetsey," as 
 he called his wife, who was fat, fifty, and 
 anything but pretty. 
 
54 
 
 In a Club Corner 
 
 acting. 
 
 A master. 
 
 He rose very rapidly in his profession. 
 In a year or two he was famous. His 
 His natural natural acting charmed a public weary, as 
 was said, of the rant and affectation of 
 Macklin or Quin. " Garrick, Madam," 
 said Dr. Johnson to Mrs. Siddons, "was 
 no declaimer ; there was not one of his 
 own scene-shifters who could not have 
 spoken To be, or not to be, better than he 
 did ; yet he was the only actor I ever saw 
 whom I could call a master both in tragedy 
 and comedy. A true conception of char 
 acter, and natural expression of it, were his 
 distinguished excellences." It has been 
 said, of all the men of his time, he is the 
 man whom one would perhaps most will 
 ingly have seen, because the gifts which 
 threw not only Englishmen, but French 
 men like Diderot, and Germans like Lich- 
 tenberg, into amazement and ecstasy, are 
 exactly those gifts which literary descrip 
 tion can do least to reproduce. Burke 
 said that he was the acutest observer of 
 nature that he had ever known. 
 
 Garrick had a brother living in the coun 
 try, who was an idolatrous admirer of his 
 genius. A rich neighbor, a grocer, being 
 about to visit London, this brother insisted 
 on his taking a letter of introduction to the 
 
 Burke s 
 tribute. 
 
In a Club Corner 755 
 
 actor. Not being able to make up his 
 mind to visit the great man the first day, 
 the grocer went to the play in the evening, 
 and saw Garrick in Abel Drugger. On his in AM 
 return to the country, the brother eagerly 
 inquired respecting the visit he had been 
 so anxious to bring about. " Why, Mr. 
 Garrick," said the good man, " I am sorry 
 to hurt your feelings, but there s your let 
 ter. I did not choose to deliver it." " Not 
 to deliver it ! " exclaimed the other, in as 
 tonishment. " I happened to see him when 
 he did not know me, and I saw that he 
 was such a dirty, low-lived fellow, that I 
 did not like to have anything to do with 
 him." 
 
 So prodigious was his fame that the 
 great Mr. Pope was drawn from his retreat 
 at Twickenham to see him ; and Lord Or 
 rery was so struck with his performance 
 that he said, " I am afraid the young man 
 will be spoiled, for he will have no com 
 petitor." Hogarth saw him in Richard HogartWs 
 III., and on the following night in Abel 
 Drugger : he was so struck, that he said to 
 Garrick, " You are in your element, when 
 you are begrimed with dirt, or up to your 
 elbows in blood." Quin, in his sarcastic 
 vein, said : " This is the wonder of a day ; 
 
1 56 In a Club Corner 
 
 Garrick is a new religion ; the people fol 
 low him as another Whitefield ; but they 
 will soon return to Church again." 
 A mutss A Mr. Shireff, a deaf and dumb man, 
 
 liiutidtion 
 
 was asked, " Did you know Garrick ? " 
 "Yes," the man replied, in his own way. 
 " Did you ever see him act ? " " Yes," 
 was the reply again. " Did you admire 
 him?" "Yes." "How could that be, 
 when you could not hear him, and, of 
 course, could not understand him ? " The 
 answer, when it came, was astonishing in- 
 GarricKs deed \ " Garrick s face was a language ! " 
 He must have been a trying sitter to the 
 painters. A story is told of the way he 
 tried the patience and temper of Gains 
 borough. He paid sixteen visits to the 
 artist s studio, and on each occasion had 
 imperceptibly wrought a change in his 
 features ; at last the painter, declaring he 
 could not paint a man with such a " Pro 
 tean phiz," threw down his brush in de 
 spair. Macaulay says : " I have seen sev- 
 Picturesaii eral pictures of Garrick, none resembling 
 different. ^ Q ^^ . and j have heard Hannah More 
 
 speak of the extraordinary variety of coun 
 tenances by which he was distinguished." 
 Boswell, referring to Garrick s fame, said 
 he was assuming the airs of a great man. 
 
In a Club Corner 157 
 
 Johnson said, " Sir, it is wonderful how 
 little Garrick assumes. Consider, sir; 
 celebrated men, such as you have men 
 tioned, have had their applause at a dis 
 tance ; but Garrick had it dashed in his Applause 
 
 dashed tn 
 
 face, sounded in his ears, and went home his face. 
 every night with the plaudits of a thousand 
 in his cranium. Then, sir, Garrick did not 
 find, but made his way to the tables, the 
 levees, and almost to the bed-chambers of 
 the great." Johnson would attack, and al 
 most abuse, Garrick, but he would permit 
 no one else to do so especially to speak 
 of him apologetically. He once said to 
 Boswell, with a stern look, "Sir, I have 
 known David Garrick longer than you 
 have known him ; and I know no right you 
 have to talk to me on the subject." 
 
 Foote, being notoriously lavish with his 
 money, was fond of taking off Garrick s 
 reputed niggardliness. At the Chapter Reputed 
 
 r i iiiggardl 
 
 Coffee-house, Foote and his friends were . 
 making a contribution for the relief of a 
 poor fellow, a decayed player, who was 
 nicknamed the Captain of the Four Winds, 
 because his hat was torn into four spouts. 
 Each person of the company dropped his 
 mite into the hat, as it was held out to 
 him. " If Garrick hears of this," ex- 
 
158 In a Club Corner 
 
 claimed Foote, " he will certainly send us 
 his hat." He had a small bust of Garrick 
 placed upon his bureau. " You may be 
 surprised," said he, "that I allow him to be 
 
 Foots, so near my gold ; but you will observe he 
 has no hands." Foote and Garrick were 
 leaving the Bedford one night when Foote 
 had been the entertainer, and on his pull 
 ing out his purse to pay the bill, a guinea 
 dropped. Impatient at not immediately 
 finding it, "Where on earth can it be gone 
 to ? " he said. " Gone to the devil, I think," 
 rejoined Garrick, who had sought for it 
 elsewhere. "Well said, David," cried 
 Foote ; " let you alone for making a guinea 
 go farther than anybody else." 
 
 Johnson said, when some one present 
 accused Garrick of penuriousness, "Gar- 
 
 johnsotfs rick, sir, has given away more money than 
 any man in England that I am acquainted 
 with, and that not from ostentatious views. 
 Garrick was very poor when he began life ; 
 so, when he came to have money, he prob 
 ably was very unskillful in giving away, and 
 saved when he should not. But Garrick 
 began to be liberal as soon as he could." 
 
 They had much to say about his vanity, 
 especially those who were envious of him. 
 It is said that a gentleman of the law, who 
 
In a Club Corner 159 
 
 could not miss an opportunity of laughing 
 at the great actor s vanity, met him one 
 day, and told him he had been applied to ^. 
 by the booksellers to publish an edition of 
 the Statutes at Large, and he hoped he 
 should find a snug niche in them to intro 
 duce him. At a dinner at Thrale s, a gen 
 tleman attacked Garrick for being vain. 
 Johnson said, " No wonder, sir, that he is 
 vain ; a man who is perpetually flattered in 
 every mode that can be conceived. So 
 many bellows have blown the fire, that one 
 wonders he is not by this time become a 
 cinder." 
 
 " It was in Lear s madness," as Murphy 
 observes, "that Garrick s genius was re- His geniu 
 
 . , in Lear s 
 
 markably distinguished. He had no sud- madness. 
 den starts, no violent gesticulation ; his 
 movements were slow and feeble ; misery 
 was depicted in his countenance ; he moved 
 his head in the most deliberate manner ; 
 his eyes were fixed, or, if they turned to 
 any one near him, he made a pause, and 
 fixed his look on the person after much 
 delay ; his features at the same time telling 
 what he was going to say, before he uttered 
 a word. During the whole time, he pre 
 sented a sight of woe and misery, and a 
 total alienation of mind from every idea 
 
160 In a Club Corner 
 
 but that of his unkind daughters. He was 
 Hints that used to tell how he acquired the hints that 
 Zhepart. guided him, when he began to study this 
 great and difficult part : he was acquainted 
 with a worthy man, who lived in Leman 
 Street, Goodman s Fields ; this friend had 
 an only daughter about two years old ; he 
 stood at his dining-room window, fondling 
 the child, and dandling it in his arms, when 
 it was his misfortune to drop the infant 
 into a flagged area, where it died instantly. 
 He remained at his window screaming in 
 agonies of grief. The neighbors flocked 
 to the house, took up the child, and de 
 livered it dead to the unhappy father, who 
 wept bitterly, and filled the street with 
 lamentations. He lost his senses, and 
 from that moment never recovered his un 
 derstanding. As he had a sufficient for 
 tune, his friends chose to let him remain 
 in his house, under two keepers appointed 
 by a physician. Garrick frequently went 
 Hisdis- to see his distracted friend, who passed the 
 jrLnd. remainder of his life in going to the win 
 dow, and there playing in fancy with his 
 child. After some dalliance, he dropped 
 it, and, bursting into a flood of tears, filled 
 the house with shrieks of grief and bitter 
 anguish. He then sat down in a pensive 
 
In a Club Corner 161 
 
 mood, his eyes fixed on one object, at times 
 looking slowly round him, as if to implore 
 compassion. Garrick was often present at 
 this scene of misery, and was ever after 
 used to say, that it gave him the first idea 
 of King Lear s madness." 
 
 The great actor was extremely sensitive, sensitive- 
 His great sensibility made him fear, defer * 
 to, and ever ready to conciliate the public. 
 "When he first acted Macbeth," Davies 
 tells us, " he was so alarmed with the fears 
 of critical examination, that during his 
 preparation for the character, he devoted 
 some part of the time to the writing of a 
 humorous pamphlet upon the subject. He 
 knew that his manner of representing Mac 
 beth would be essentially different from 
 that of all the actors who had played it for 
 twenty or thirty years before, and he was 
 therefore determined to attack himself 
 ironically, to blunt, if not to prevent, the 
 remarks of others. This pamphlet was A curious 
 called An Essay on Acting ; in which 
 will be considered the mimical Behavior 
 of a certain fashionable faulty Actor, and 
 the Laudableness of such unmanly, as well 
 as inhuman Proceedings ; to which will 
 be added, A Short Criticism on his act 
 ing Macbeth. It had this motto on the 
 
1 62 In a Club Corner 
 
 title-page : Macbeth has murdered Gar- 
 rick. " 
 
 His extreme sensibility was not incon- 
 sistent with his stage feeling. It is re 
 corded of him, that whilst he was drowning 
 the house in tears, in the fourth act of 
 Lear, he put his tongue in his cheek, and 
 said to King, during the applause, " D n 
 me, Tom, it will do, it will do." It made 
 him painfully dread ridicule. On one occa 
 sion, it is said, Quin went to the pit to see 
 his rival act. It was at a time when Ho 
 garth s Marriage a la Mode was familiar to 
 every one. One of the prints of that series 
 represents a negro boy bringing in the tea 
 things. When Garrick, with his diminu 
 tive figure and blackened face, came for 
 ward as Othello, Quin exclaimed, " Here is 
 Pompey, but where is the tray ? " The 
 effect was electrical, and Garrick never 
 attempted Othello again. 
 Footeand Foote was gigantic, as Garrick was di- 
 
 Garrick. ... -T-I r 
 
 mmutive in stature. The former was 
 audacious and aggressive in manner, the 
 latter good-natured, vivacious, and deferen 
 tial ; but he could defend himself. We are 
 told of how a project of Foote s to publicly 
 ridicule Garrick fell through in a singular 
 manner. The parties met, as if by acci- 
 
In a Club Corner 
 
 dent, at the house of a nobleman, the com 
 mon friend of both ; when alighting at the 
 same time from their chariots at his lord 
 ship s door, and exchanging significant 
 looks at each other, Garrick broke silence 
 first by asking, "Is it war or peace?" 
 " Oh ! peace, by all means," replied Foote, 
 with apparent good will, and the two spent 
 the day amicably together. 
 
 Davies states that after Mr. Garrick had 
 been abroad about a year and a half, sa 
 tiated with the amusements and pleasures 
 of the continent, he turned his thoughts 
 towards his native country. But before he 
 would set out for Calais, he was resolved 
 to put in practice his usual method of pre 
 venting censure, and blunting the edge of 
 ridicule, by anticipation. For this purpose, 
 before he left Paris, he sat down very 
 seriously to write a kind of satirical poem 
 on himself ; it was called The Sick Monkey, The sick 
 and the plan of it was, the talk or censure 
 of other animals and reptiles on him and 
 his travels, etc. This poem he sent from 
 Paris to a friend, with a request that he 
 would have it printed, to prepare for his 
 reception in London. It attracted little 
 attention, and died almost still-born. 
 
 He had intuitively perceived what was 
 
164 In a Club Corner 
 
 The world soon to take place. The world likes change. 
 
 likes change, 
 
 The play-goers of London got tired even of 
 Garrick. It is related as a fact, that one 
 night the cash receipts of Drury Lane, 
 though Garrick and Mrs. Gibber performed 
 in the same play, amounted to no more 
 than three pounds, fifteen shillings, and 
 sixpence ! 
 
 ON GIVING The wise do not need counsel, and fools 
 will not take it, is one of the pregnant sen 
 tences of Seneca. And what, to say truth, 
 is more difficult than counsel in the con 
 duct of life ? Right and wrong, says Man- 
 zoni, never are divided with so clean a 
 cut, that one party has the whole of either. 
 To give advice, as to do good, we must 
 know how to do it ; and, like everything 
 else, we can only know this through the 
 medium of our own passions, our own judg 
 ment, our own ideas ; which not unfre- 
 quently are rather as correct as they are 
 capable of being, than as they ought to be. 
 "When one has looked about him in the 
 
 Goethe to world long enough," said Goethe to Ecker- 
 
 Eckermann. 
 
 mann, "to see how the most judicious 
 enterprises frequently fail, and the most 
 absurd have the good fortune to succeed, 
 he becomes disinclined to give any one 
 
In a Club Corner 165 
 
 advice. At bottom, he who asks advice 
 shows himself limited ; he who gives it 
 gives also proof that he is presumptuous. 
 If any one asks me for good advice, I say, 
 I will give it, but only on condition that 
 you will promise not to take it." " I have 
 always hated to give advice," says Haw 
 thorne, in the same strain, " especially 
 when there is a prospect of its being taken. 
 It is only one-eyed people who love to ad- One-eyed 
 
 . J . people. 
 
 vise, or have any spontaneous promptitude 
 of action. When a man opens both his 
 eyes, he generally sees about as many 
 reasons for acting in any one way as in 
 any other, and quite as many for acting in 
 neither ; and is therefore likely to leave 
 his friends to regulate their own conduct, 
 and also to remain quiet as regards his 
 especial affairs till necessity shall prick 
 him onward. Nevertheless, the world and 
 individuals flourish upon a constant sue- A succession 
 
 c i i i ,,TTTI i of blunders. 
 
 cession of blunders. " Why do you so 
 imich admire the Helen of Zeuxis?" said 
 Nicostratus. "You would not wonder 
 why I so much admired it," replied the 
 painter, "if you had my eyes." Once 
 when Giotto, a friend of Dante, had been 
 summoned to Naples by King Robert, and 
 was executing some paintings for that sov- 
 
1 66 In a Club Corner 
 
 ereign, the king remarked to him : " Giotto, 
 if I were in your place, now that the 
 weather is so hot, I would give up paint 
 ing for a time, and take my rest." "And 
 Giotto to the so I would do, certainly," replied Giotto, 
 "if I were in your place." "To look on 
 things like a philosopher," says Moliere, 
 "there s nothing occurs to me more fan 
 tastical and more impertinent than for one 
 man to pretend to cure another." 
 
 LIMITS. There are limits to everything human. 
 
 Emerson s stumbling-block at college was 
 mathematics. There is authority for the 
 story that at a late period in life he unwit 
 tingly cheated a poor Irishman, while pay 
 ing him for some work, by calculating that 
 seven times seven were twenty-seven, and 
 the error was not detected until Pat, who 
 had doubts about the matter, consulted a 
 neighbor and came back for a settlement. 
 At Drury Lane theatre the most important 
 novelty from Henderson was King John ; 
 
 A_ scene in and in the great scene with Hubert, his 
 deep smothered undertones had a terrible 
 effect upon those near enough to enjoy the 
 cunning of the scene. The distant auditor 
 complained, as will constantly be the case 
 in theatres of any size, unless a mode of 
 
In a Club Corner i6j 
 
 utterance be adopted by the actor, removed 
 very far from the natural elevation or usual 
 articulation of the voice. As we think, 
 says Dr. Holmes, the same thing over 
 many millions of times, and as many per 
 sons keep up their social relations by the 
 aid of a vocabulary of only a few hundred Our united 
 
 , f J , . vocabulary. 
 
 words, or, in the case of some very fash 
 ionable people, a few scores only, a very 
 limited amount of thinking material may 
 correspond to a full set of organs of sense, 
 and a good development of the muscular 
 system. The author of Lothair makes 
 Pinto exclaim, " English is an expressive 
 language, but not difficult to master. Its 
 range is limited. It consists, as far as 
 I observe, of four words: nice, jolly, 
 charming, and bore ; and some gram 
 marians add, fond. " Our language, it is 
 estimated, contains about one hundred and 
 twenty-five thousand words ; yet, remarks 
 an English writer, of this immense number 
 it is surprising how few are in common The few 
 use. I have seen it stated on scholarly c*mmmm* 
 authority that a child does not commonly 
 use more than a hundred words ; and, un 
 less he belongs to a cultivated family, he 
 will never habitually employ more than 
 three or four hundred. An American 
 
168 
 
 In a Club Corner 
 
 scholar estimates that few practical writers 
 or speakers use as many as ten thousand 
 words in threescore years of public life. 
 Speakers employ not so many by a large 
 writers em- count as writers employ. Max M tiller says 
 words. that "a well educated person that has been 
 at a public school in England and at an 
 English university, who reads his Bible and 
 Shakespeare, and all the books in Mudie s 
 Library that is, nineteen twentieths of 
 all the books published in England sel 
 dom uses more than three or four thousand 
 words in actual conversation." Eloquent 
 speakers, he thinks, may rise to a command 
 of ten thousand. " Even Milton," writes 
 Milton uses another critic, " Milton, whose wealth of 
 
 eight tkou- . . i i T>V T i 
 
 sand. words seems amazing, and whom Dr. John 
 
 son charges with using a Babylonish dia 
 lect, uses only about eight thousand ; and 
 Shakespeare, the myriad -minded/ only 
 fifteen thousand." The Old Testament 
 contains less by some hundreds than six 
 thousand words. 
 
 "o OR- K " " What did you say ? " cried Mrs. Joe 
 
 SELVES UP. Gargery, beginning to scream. "What 
 
 did you say ? What did that fellow say to 
 
 me, Pip ? What did he call me, with my 
 
 husband standing by ? O ! O ! O ! " Each 
 
In a Club Corner 169 
 
 of these exclamations was a shriek ; and 
 Pip remarks of his sister, what is equally 
 true of all the violent women he had ever 
 seen, that passion was no excuse for her, 
 because it was undeniable that instead of 
 lapsing into passion, she consciously and 
 deliberately took extraordinary pains to 
 force herself into it, and became blindly 
 furious by regular stages. The full grown 
 Goojerat, or maneless lion of South Africa, The GOO- 
 IS furnished with a rudimentary claw at 
 the end of his tail. This little appendage 
 was supposed by the ancients to be instru 
 mental in lashing the animal into fury, 
 and Mr. Gordon Gumming says that the 
 natives believe it to be the residence of 
 an evil spirit which never deserts its post 
 until death overtakes the beast and gives 
 it notice to quit. We strain ourselves up, 
 each in his own way, somewhat as Ma- 
 cready worked himself up for his great 
 parts on the stage. " Mr. Macready, you 
 know," said a director of Her Majesty s 
 theatre, "when engaging his dresser, 
 whom I knew very well, arranged that 
 when he shook him he should pay him 
 double wages, and when he struck him his 
 pay should be trebled. I think that dresser 
 used to get treble wages all the while Ma- 
 
i jo In a Club Corner 
 
 cready was at Drury Lane. I went once 
 to Macready s dressing-room during the 
 performance. The tragedian had the 
 dresser in the corner and was nearly chok- 
 g ing him. He was rehearsing his part. He 
 
 his part. 
 
 afterward rushed upon the stage and star 
 tled his audience by his brilliant acting." 
 Talma, in order to work up his grand 
 bursts of passion, would seize upon any 
 unfortunate super whom he came upon 
 behind the scenes, and shake him until he 
 himself had become breathless and the 
 man frightened beyond all control at his 
 assumed violence. The peculiarities both 
 of Macready and Talma were only in ac 
 cordance with that precedent furnished in 
 ancient history, though with less disas 
 trous results. According to Plutarch, 
 j S <>P,the JEsop, the Roman actor, so interested him- 
 self in the characters he undertook that, 
 one day, when he played Atreus, he in that 
 scene where it falls to his lot to consider 
 how he might best destroy the tyrant Thy- 
 estes, worked himself up into such a pitch 
 of ungovernable rage that he struck one of 
 the minor performers with his sceptre and 
 laid him dead at his feet. 
 
In a Club Corner 17 
 
 Human society is always swaying, back- 
 ward and forward vibrating, like the FORCES. 
 pendulum, from one extreme to another ; 
 for a moment only, now and then, is it 
 upright, and governed by reason. Mod 
 eration is exceptional and hateful. Happy 
 if the world s favorite to-day be not its 
 victim to-morrow. A dramatist was walk 
 ing one day in the Rue St. Honore with 
 his friend Talma, then at the commence- Talma. 
 ment of his career, when a young officer in 
 a shabby lieutenant s uniform met them, 
 and said to the actor, " Remember to 
 morrow." Talma nodded assent, and the 
 other passed on. " Who is that ? " was 
 asked. "The torment of my life," was the 
 reply. "A young fellow without a sou, 
 who is perpetually plaguing me for tickets 
 of admission to the theatre. Not a bad 
 judge, I must say," he continued. " Knows 
 all our classics by heart, and won t listen 
 to anything but Corneille and Racine." 
 Some twenty years later, the two friends 
 chanced to meet again in the Place du 
 Carrousel, at the very moment when Na- 
 poleon was starting for his daily ride. On 
 seeing Talma he stopped his horse, and 
 spoke a few words to him. When he had 
 left them, the tragedian, turning to his 
 
772 In a Club Corner 
 
 companion, asked if he recollected the 
 young lieutenant who used formerly to 
 bother him for tickets. On the latter s 
 confessing that he had quite forgotten the 
 circumstance, "Ah," observed Talma, "I 
 have more reason to remember him than 
 you have. He is Emperor now, and I am 
 a poor devil of an actor." The House of 
 
 Warren Commons impeached Warren Hastings in 
 1787; the House of Commons uncovered 
 and stood up to receive him in 1813. 
 Traveling through Switzerland, Napoleon 
 was greeted with such enthusiasm that 
 Bourrienne said to him, " It must be de 
 lightful to be greeted with such demon 
 strations of enthusiastic admiration." 
 " Bah ! " replied Napoleon, " this same un 
 thinking crowd, under a slight change of 
 circumstances, would follow me just as 
 
 Mirabeau. eagerly to the scaffold." Mirabeau, on a 
 famous occasion, amid the threatening 
 clamors of an angry crowd said, "A few 
 days ago I too was to be carried in tri 
 umph, and now they are bawling through 
 the streets, the great treason of the Count 
 of Mirabeau. This lesson was not nec 
 essary to remind me that the distance is 
 short between the Capitol and the Tarpe- 
 ian Rock." "What throngs! what accla- 
 
In a Club Corner 
 
 mations," exclaimed the flatterers of Crom 
 well, when he was proclaimed Protector of 
 the Commonwealth of England. Crom 
 well replied, " There would be still more, if 
 they were going to hang me." The multi- 
 tudes that went before and that followed rusaiem. 
 Christ into Jerusalem, crying, " Hosanna 
 to the Son of David : Blessed is he that 
 cometh in the name of the Lord : Hosanna 
 in the highest," "cried out again, Crucify 
 him. Then Pilate said unto them, Why, 
 what evil hath he done ? and they cried 
 out the more exceedingly, Crucify him." 
 The elements of a riot are varied and 
 mixed, like the composite clothes that were 
 worn by Dennis, the hangman, in Barnaby 
 Rudge garments belonging to the per 
 sons he had hanged. Dickens, in his de 
 scription of the Lord George Gordon riots, 
 gives prominence, not only to Dennis, the 
 executioner, but to Hugh, the brute, Simon 
 Tappertitt, the locksmith s half-crazy ap 
 prentice, and Barnaby Rudge, the half- 
 idiot. Every one remembers Hugo s anal- Hugo s 
 
 3 analysts. 
 
 ysis of a tumult. " Irritated convictions, 
 embittered enthusiasms, aroused indigna 
 tions, martial instincts suppressed, youth 
 ful courage exalted, and generous blind 
 nesses ; curiosity, a taste for a change, 
 
/ J4 I H a Club Corner 
 
 thirst for something unexpected, the feel 
 ing which causes us to find pleasure in 
 reading the announcement of a new piece, 
 or on hearing the machinist s whistle ; 
 Hatreds, vague hatreds, rancors, disappointments, 
 
 rancors, . -...,. . , . 
 
 disappoint- every vanity which believes that destiny 
 has been a bankrupt to it ; straitened 
 circumstances, empty dreams, ambitions 
 surrounded with escarpments, every man 
 who hopes for an issue from an overthrow, 
 and lastly, at the very bottom, the mob, 
 
 That mud that mud which takes fire such are the 
 
 which takes , r n , 
 
 fire. elements of not. The greatest and the 
 
 most infamous, beings who prowl about 
 beyond the pale of everything while 
 awaiting an opportunity, gypsies, name 
 less men, highway vagabonds, the men who 
 sleep o nights in a desert of houses with 
 no other roof but the cold clouds of heaven, 
 those who daily ask their bread of chance, 
 and not of toil ; the unknown men of 
 wretchedness and nothingness, with bare 
 arms and bare feet, belong to the riot. 
 Every man who has in his soul a secret re 
 volt against any act of the state, of life, or 
 of destiny, is on the border line of riot, and 
 so soon as it appears, he begins to quiver 
 
 Lifted by the and to feel himself lifted by the whirlwind." 
 " Few terrestrial appearances," says Car- 
 
In a Club Corner 175 
 
 lyle, "are better worth considering than 
 mobs. Your mob is a genuine outburst 
 
 outburst of 
 
 of nature, issuing from, or communicating nature. 
 with, the deepest deeps of nature. When 
 so much goes grinning and grimacing as a 
 lifeless formality, and under the stiff buck 
 ram no heart can be felt beating, here 
 once more, if nowhere else, is a sincerity 
 and reality. Shudder at it ; or even shriek shudder at 
 
 . it ; consider 
 
 over it, if thou must ; nevertheless con- it. 
 sider it." " The world," said Goethe, "is 
 not so framed that it can keep quiet ; the 
 great are not so that they will not permit 
 misuse of power ; the masses not so that, 
 in hope of a gradual amelioration, they 
 will keep tranquil in an inferior condition. 
 Could we perfect human nature, we might 
 expect perfection everywhere ; but as it is, 
 there will always be this wavering hither 
 and thither ; one part must suffer while 
 the other is at ease." "It is with human with human 
 things," says Froude, "as it is with the is with ice- 
 
 bergs. 
 
 great icebergs which drift southward out 
 of the frozen seas. They swim two thirds 
 under water, and one third above ; and so 
 long as the equilibrium is sustained you 
 would think that they were as stable as the 
 rocks. But the sea water is warmer than 
 the air. Hundreds of fathoms down, the 
 
776 In a Club Corner 
 
 tepid current washes the base of the berg. 
 The centre Silently, in those far deeps the centre of 
 
 of gravity J 
 
 changed. gravity is changed ; and then, in a mo 
 ment, with one vast roll, the enormous 
 mass heaves over, and the crystal peaks 
 which had been glancing so proudly in the 
 sunlight are buried in the ocean forever." 
 "The secret which you would fain keep, 
 as soon as you go abroad, lo ! there is one 
 standing on the door-step to tell you the 
 same." The revolution is all at once ripe, 
 
 The bottom and the bottom is at the top again. No- 
 body and everybody is responsible. " It 
 is seldom," says John Gait, in his life of 
 Wolsey, " that any man can sway the cur 
 rent of national affairs ; but a wide and 
 earnest system of action never fails to pro 
 duce results which resemble the pree x- 
 pected effects of particular designs." At 
 the gorgeous coronation of Napoleon, some 
 one asked the republican general Auge- 
 reau whether anything was wanting to the 
 splendor of the scene. "Nothing," re 
 plied Augereau, " but the presence of the 
 million of men who have died to do away 
 with all this." 
 
 ?HROUG H G 
 
 Tne making of the buffalo of the Cam- 
 P a S na > outside of the city of Rome, is done 
 
In a Club Corner /77 
 
 in the dark by a person who glides under 
 the cow, covered with a- buffalo skin. Car- 
 lyle, in his Cromwell, asks, "Did the 
 reader ever see, or fancy in his mind, a 
 tulchan ? Tulchan is, or rather was, for 
 the thing is long since obsolete, a calfskin 
 stuffed into the rude similitude of a calf, 
 similar enough to deceive the imperfect 
 perceptive organs of a cow. At milking- 
 time the tulchan, with head duly bent, 
 was set as if to suck ; the fond cow look 
 ing round fancied that her calf was busy, 
 and that all was right, and so gave her 
 milk freely, which the cunning maid was 
 straining in white abundance into her pail 
 all the while." Deceiving through the 
 affections has ever been in practice, and 
 ever will be. Could the world speak as to 
 effects of it, what lamentations we should 
 hear. 
 
 There is a pretty legend of Jesus and A PRETTY 
 
 , f , . , . . , LEGEND. 
 
 two or three of his disciples going down, 
 one summer day, from Jerusalem to Jeri 
 cho. Peter the ardent and eager Peter 
 was as usual by the Teacher s side. On 
 the road on Olivet lay a horseshoe, which 
 the Teacher desired Peter to pick up, but 
 which Peter let lie, as he did not think it 
 
178 
 
 In a Club Corner 
 
 stooped. 
 
 SELECTING 
 
 MEMORIES. 
 
 worth the trouble of stooping for. The 
 Teacher stooped for it, and exchanged it 
 
 r & 
 
 in the village for a measure of cherries. 
 These cherries he carried (as men there 
 now carry such things) in the bosom folds of 
 his dress. When they had to ascend the 
 ridge, and the road lay between heated 
 rocks, and over rugged stones and glaring 
 white dust, Peter became tormented with 
 heat and thirst, and fell behind. Then the 
 Teacher dropped a ripe cherry at every 
 few footsteps ; and Peter eagerly stooped 
 for them. When they were all gone, Jesus 
 turned to him, and said with a smile, " He 
 who is above stooping to a small thing, 
 will have to bend his back to many lesser 
 things." 
 
 It has been observed that "the bad 
 
 . r 
 
 memories are often the best, as they are 
 almost sure to be the selecting memories. 
 They seldom win distinction in examina 
 tions, except in literature and art. They 
 are incomparably superior to the miscella 
 neous memories that receive only as boxes 
 and drawers receive what is put into them. 
 A good literary or artistic memory is not 
 like a post-office that takes in everything, 
 but like a very well edited periodical which 
 
In a Club Corner 
 
 prints nothing that does not harmonize 
 
 with its intellectual life." Scott used to scotes ///* 
 
 r> c i tratian. 
 
 illustrate the capricious affinity of his own 
 memory for what suited it, and its com 
 plete rejection of what did not, by old 
 Beattie of Meikledale s answer to a Scotch 
 divine who complimented him on the 
 strength of his memory. " No, sir," said 
 the old Borderer ; " I have no command 
 of my memory. It only retains what 
 hits my fancy ; and, probably, sir, if you 
 were to preach to me for two hours, I 
 would not be able, when you finished, to 
 remember a word you had been saying." 
 Henry Clay told Mrs. Mowatt, the actress, 
 that he could not by any effort retain verse 
 in his memory. Locke had no correct 
 knowledge of fiction ; and as to poetry he 
 thought Blackmore as great a genius as 
 Homer. Newton considered poetry as on Newtm?* 
 
 . . . . . . estimate of 
 
 a par with "ingenious nonsense ; but poetry. 
 when the name of the Deity was men 
 tioned, he took off his hat. " Buffon," said 
 Madame de Stae l, "knows not the world, 
 but he knows the universe." Sydney 
 Smith advised ignorance of a great number 
 of things, in order to avoid the calamity of 
 being ignorant of everything. " I remem 
 ber," said Mr. Hookam Frere, "one clay 
 
i8o 
 
 In a Club Corner 
 
 ignorance 
 as to tad 
 poles. 
 
 going to consult Canning on a matter of 
 great importance to me, when he was stop 
 ping at Enfield. We walked into the 
 woods to have a quiet talk, and as we 
 passed some ponds I was surprised to find 
 canning s that it was a new light to him that tadpoles 
 turned into frogs. Now, don t you, he 
 added, go and tell that story to the next 
 fool you meet. Canning could rule, and 
 did rule, a great and civilized nation, but 
 people are apt to fancy that a man who 
 does not know the natural history of frogs 
 must be an imbecile in the treatment of 
 men." Memory, to be of great value, it 
 would appear, must be limited, ready, and 
 at absolute command. A really valuable 
 memory is impatient of diversion from ac 
 customed employment, and when diverted, 
 returns to it, naturally, and in the shortest 
 manner. Leslie once found Coleridge 
 driving the balls on a bagatelle board, for 
 a kitten to run after them. He noticed 
 that as soon as the little thing turned its 
 back to the balls it seemed to forget all 
 about them, and played with its tail its 
 favorite occupation. " I am amused," he 
 said, "with the limits of their little mem 
 ories." There is a terrible story in illus 
 tration of a confused memory, of a man 
 
 Coleridge 
 amusing 
 himself. 
 
In a Club Corner 18 1 
 
 who made an abstruse conundrum and for 
 got the answer. After groping about his 
 uncertain mind for several days, he gave 
 it up in despair and cut his throat. De 
 
 Qi 1 , . r _ , . . in pecuniary 
 
 umcey, though nothing of a Skimpole, in matters. 
 
 pecuniary matters, was, we are told, help 
 less beyond the traditional helplessness of 
 literary characters beyond even Gold 
 smith and Steele. Burton tells of his 
 knocking a friend up late at night to raise 
 a loan of a few shillings, offering to de 
 posit as security a ten pound note which 
 he had in his pocket, and which seems to 
 have occurred to him rather as a negoti 
 able instrument of some kind than as cur 
 rent money of the realm. This in spite of 
 the fact that he wrote a work on political 
 economy which Mill mentions with respect. 
 There is an amusing story told of Lord Lord Cam- 
 Camden, when a barrister, having been 
 fastened in stocks on top of a hill in order 
 to gratify an idle curiosity on the subject. 
 Being left there by the absent-minded 
 friend who had locked him in, he found it 
 impossible to procure his liberation for the 
 greater part of the day. On his entreating 
 a chance traveler to release him, the man 
 shook his head and passed on, remarking 
 that of course he was not there for noth- 
 
182 
 
 In a Club Corner 
 
 Beaumont 
 and Fletcher. 
 
 Peter Bur- 
 
 rowes. 
 
 La, Fon~ 
 taine. 
 
 Coleridge. 
 
 the Helles- 
 
 tent. 
 
 ing. There is a very curious incident of 
 Beaumont and Fletcher, who were brought 
 under suspicion of treason, because, while 
 concerting the plan of a tragedy when sit 
 ting together at a tavern, one of them was 
 overheard saying to the other, " I 11 kill the 
 king ! " It is recorded of Peter Burrowes, 
 the friend of Grattan, that, on circuit, a 
 brother barrister found him at breakfast- 
 time standing by the fire with an egg in 
 his hand and his watch in the saucepan. 
 La Fontaine, having attended the funeral 
 of a friend, was so absent-minded as to 
 call upon him a short time afterward. Be 
 ing reminded of the fact, he was at first 
 greatly surprised, but recollecting himself, 
 said : " It is true enough, for I was there." 
 When Coleridge, it is related, was a poor 
 boy, and a charity scholar in London, he 
 was one day walking along the Strand at 
 an hour when the place was crowded, 
 and was throwing out his arms vigorously 
 toward the right and the left. One of his 
 hands came into contact with a gentle 
 man s waistcoat pocket, and the man im 
 mediately accused the boy of thieving in 
 tentions. " No," said Coleridge, "I am not 
 intending to pick your pocket. I am swim 
 ming the Hellespont. This morning in 
 
In a Club Corner 18} 
 
 school I read the story of Hero and Le- 
 ander, and I am now imitating the latter 
 as he swims from Asia to Europe." The 
 gentleman was so much impressed by the 
 vividness of the imagination of the lad that 
 he subscribed for Coleridge s admission to 
 a public library, which began the poet s edu 
 cation. It is very true, as said by a writer in 
 an old number of the London Quarterly, 
 that an interest attaches with every person 
 of education to the name of Simson, from 
 his admirable edition of the Elements of 
 Euclid, a work which cost him nine years 
 of labor. His long, tranquil, and amiable 
 life appears to have been governed by the 
 rigid rules of mathematics, which was the 
 business and solace of his existence. He 
 regulated his exercise by the number of 
 paces, and after exchanging greetings with 
 any acquaintance whom he met in his 
 walks, he might be heard continuing the 
 enumeration as he moved away. His ab 
 sence of mind would have kept Ampere 
 in countenance, and satisfied the skeptics 
 of the reality of the propensity, though he 
 differed from the Frenchman in being par 
 ticularly methodical in his transaction of Methodical 
 business. He was noted for his absent- * 
 mindedness. He used to sit at his open 
 
184 In a Club Corner 
 
 window on the ground floor, deep in ge 
 ometry, and when accosted by a beggar 
 would rouse himself, hear a few words of 
 the story, make his donation, and dive 
 
 A practical again into his geometry. Some wags one 
 day stopped a mendicant on his way to the 
 window with " Now, do as we tell you, 
 and you will get something from that gen 
 tleman, and a shilling from us besides. He 
 will ask who you are, and you will say, 
 Robert Simson, son of John Simson of 
 Kirktonhill." The man did as he was 
 told ; Simson gave him a coin and dropped 
 off ; but soon roused himself and said : 
 " Robert Simson, son of John Simson of 
 Kirktonhill ! why, that is myself ! That 
 man must be an impostor ! " The anec 
 dotes which Lord Brougham has recovered 
 
 Adam of Adam Smith show that he too was liable 
 to fits of abstraction which rendered him 
 insensible to everything around him. At 
 a dinner at Dalkeith he was animadverting 
 upon the character of a statesman of the 
 day, when observing his nearest relative 
 at the table, he suddenly stopped. He 
 speedily passed from open conversation 
 into a fit of musing, and was heard mutter 
 ing to himself, "De ilcare, de il care, it s 
 all true." In walking through the streets 
 
In a Club Corner 185 
 
 of Edinburgh, his hands behind him and 
 his head in the air, he knocked against 
 the passengers, and on one occasion over 
 turned a stall, without the slightest con 
 sciousness of what he had done. " Heigh, 
 sirs," said a female worthy in the Fish- 
 market, who took him for an absolute luna 
 tic, " to let the like of him be about ! And 
 yet he s weel eneugh put on " (dressed). 
 Ampere s solitary musings for many years 
 of his life, we are told, had made abstrac- 
 tion habitual to him, and he naturally fell 
 into it without regard to time or place. 
 Hence he was extremely absent, and was 
 guilty of a thousand unconscious eccentri 
 cities. He mistook the cloth for cleaning 
 the blackboard, and which was always cov 
 ered with chalk, for his pocket handker 
 chief. He carried away from a party the 
 three-cornered chapeau of an ecclesiastic, 
 and as the owner was a desirable acquaint 
 ance, it was asserted by the enemies of 
 the philosopher that he designedly took 
 the wrong hat (his own was a common 
 round one) that he might have an excuse 
 for calling next day to return it. Arago 
 
 TII . , 
 
 repudiates the paltry construction, and 
 meets the imputation with a counter anec 
 dote, in which Ampere s infirmity was not 
 
 counter an- 
 
i86 In a Club Corner 
 
 calculated to recommend him. Invited to 
 the table of a person whom it was of im 
 portance to conciliate, he suddenly ex 
 claimed, " Really this dinner is detestable. 
 My sister ought not to engage cooks with 
 out having personally satisfied herself of 
 Lord Dud- their capabilities." "Lord Dudley," said 
 
 ley one of J 
 
 the ab^nt Sydney Smith, "was one of the most ab- 
 
 men. J 
 
 sent men I think I ever met in society. 
 One day he met me in the street, and in 
 vited me to meet myself. Dine with me 
 to-day ; dine with me, and I will get Syd 
 ney Smith to meet you. I admitted the 
 temptation he held out to me, but said 
 I was engaged to meet him elsewhere." 
 Lessing, the German philosopher, being 
 remarkably absent, knocked at his own 
 door one evening, when the servant, look 
 ing out of an upper window and not recog 
 nizing him, said, "The professor is not at 
 home." " Oh, very well," replied Lessing, 
 composedly walking away ; " I shall call 
 another time." Dr. Campbell, the author 
 of The Survey of Great Britain, was so ab 
 sent-minded that, looking into a pamphlet 
 at a bookseller s, he liked it so well that 
 he purchased it, and it was not until he 
 had read it half through that he discov 
 ered it to be his own composition. On a 
 
In a Club Corner 187 
 
 trial for murder, it was important to the 
 prisoner that the bullet found in the wound 
 should be produced. It was handed to 
 Burrowes, who was occasionally taking a 
 lozenge for hoarseness. In the middle of 
 his speech he paused, and suddenly ex 
 claimed, " Oh Lord, I have swallowed the 
 bullet ! " Plunket said of him : " He has 
 spent his life in doing acts of kindness to 
 every human being but himself. He has 
 been prodigal of his time, of his trouble, of 
 his talents, of his money, to every human 
 being who had or had not a claim, and this 
 to the serious neglect of his own interests. 
 In short, I can only account for such an 
 anomaly as this, by supposing him utterly 
 destitute of the instinct of selfishness." 
 Barry Cornwall relates that George Dyer Geor 
 
 . , Dyer. 
 
 invited some one he thinks it was 
 Llanos, the author of Esteban and Sando- 
 val to breakfast with him one day in 
 Clifford s Inn. Dyer of course forgot all 
 about the matter very speedily after giving 
 the invitation ; and when Llanos went at 
 the appointed hour, he found nothing but 
 little Dyer, and his books and his dust 
 the work of years at home. George, 
 however, was anything but inhospitable, 
 as far as his means or ideas went ; and on 
 
1 88 
 
 In a Club Corner 
 
 A t break 
 fast. 
 
 Forgot the 
 tea. 
 
 It -was gin 
 ger ! 
 
 being told that Llanos had come to break 
 fast, proceeded to investigate his cup 
 board. He found the remnant of a three 
 penny loaf, two cups and saucers, a little 
 glazed teapot, and a spoonful of milk. 
 They sat down, and (Dyer putting the hot 
 water into the teapot) commenced break 
 fast. Llanos attacked the stale crust, and 
 waited with much good humor and pa 
 tience for his tea. At last, out it came. 
 Dyer, who was half blind, kept pouring 
 out nothing but hot water from the tea 
 pot, until Llanos, who thought a man might 
 be guilty of too much abstinence, inquired 
 if D. had not forgot the tea. " God 
 bless me!" replied D., "and so I have." 
 He began immediately to remedy his error, 
 and emptied the contents of a piece of 
 brown paper into the teapot, deluged it 
 with water, and sat down with a look of 
 complete satisfaction. " How very odd it 
 was that I should make such a mistake ! " 
 said Dyer. However, he now determined 
 to make amends, and filled Llanos cup 
 again. Llanos thought the tea had a 
 strange odor, but not having dread of aqua 
 tofana before his eyes, he thrust his spoon 
 in and tasted. It was ginger ! Seeing 
 that it was in vain to expect common- 
 
In a Club Corner 
 
 places from the little absentee, Llanos con 
 tinued cutting and crumbling a little bread 
 into his plate for a short time and then de 
 parted. He went straight to a coffee-house 
 in the neighborhood, and was just finish- Finishing a t 
 ing a capital breakfast when Dyer came in, */." 
 to read the paper, or to inquire after some 
 one who frequented the coffee-house. He 
 recognized Llanos, and asked how he did ; 
 but felt no surprise at seeing him devour 
 ing a second breakfast. He had totally 
 forgotten all the occurrences of the morn 
 ing. Crabb Robinson wrote in his Diary : 
 " After going to University College Com 
 mittee, I went to J. Taylor s to exchange 
 hats, having taken his last night ; but he 
 had not mine there. I took an omnibus to 
 Addison Road, drank tea with Paynter, 
 and then went to Taylor s to restore his 
 hat ; and then I found that I had a second 
 time blundered by bringing Paynter s old 
 hat ; and I lost an hour in going to and 
 from Addison Road, and from and to 
 Sheffield House. Is this infirmity incur- cbb Rob- 
 
 insoti s in- 
 
 able ? I fear it is ; though I record it firmity. 
 here to assist me in becoming more on 
 my guard. It is a wise saying of Horace 
 Walpole s, There is no use in warning a 
 man of his folly, if you do not cure him of 
 
7pO 
 
 In a Club Corner 
 
 Emerson s 
 forgetful- 
 
 Garrick s 
 third mas 
 ter. 
 
 being foolish. " One of Emerson s friends 
 relates a little incident of his late years, 
 illustrating his forgetfulness and simplicity. 
 His daughter used to collect and keep the 
 leaves of his lecture manuscripts, putting 
 them in his hands before he began, and 
 taking care of them when he had done. 
 On one occasion he was lecturing in Bos 
 ton, when suddenly, in the midst of an in 
 teresting branch of his theme, he sat down. 
 Supposing he did so to rest, the people 
 waited : but soon they saw he had no more 
 to say, and withdrew. Afterward some one 
 said to him, that he had closed rather ab 
 ruptly. " It seemed so to me/ he replied, 
 " but that was all that Ellen gave me ! " 
 Garrick s third master, according to Fitz 
 gerald, was a Mr. Colson, a clergyman, and 
 a dreamy scholar, very absent, and almost 
 totally indifferent to his family concerns, 
 from delight in his scientific studies. This 
 philosopher lived entirely in an upper 
 room of his house, where none of his 
 family dared intrude. When he came down, 
 he seemed to be walking about like a total 
 stranger. Not without humor, and most 
 probably founded in truth, is the descrip 
 tion of two instances of utter indifference 
 to the mere social events of the world that 
 
In a Club Corner 191 
 
 were unconnected with science. He re 
 ceives a letter, and having given it to his 
 servant to read, it was found to bring news 
 of his brother s shipwreck, and of his being News of hi 
 left naked and destitute in a foreign coun- 
 try. " Naked and destitute ! " exclaimed 
 he abstractedly ; " reach me down the last 
 volume of meteorological observations ! " 
 When they came to tell him of a fire that 
 was advancing so rapidly on all sides that 
 the inhabitants were only thinking of their 
 lives, he said with interest, "What you 
 tell me is very probable, for fire naturally 
 moves in a circle." Such a character, it is 
 remarked, would have been a subject for 
 the gay mimicry of his pupil, who may 
 have described it to his friend Dr. John 
 son : it certainly answers to the delineation 
 (Gelidus) in the Rambler, No. 24. The 
 distinguished Lessing, before referred to 
 sometimes called the Luther of German 
 Literature having missed money at dif 
 ferent times without being able to discover 
 who took it, determined to put the hon 
 esty of his servant to the test, and left a 
 handful of gold on the table. " Of course 
 you counted it," said one of his friends. 
 " Counted it ! " said Lessing, rather em 
 barrassed, " no ; I forgot that." A story 
 
192 In a Club Corner 
 
 chief jus. is told of Chief Justice Marshall, that, on 
 Jw/. af returning once from North Carolina, in 
 tent on some knotty point of law, he found 
 himself suddenly brought to a halt by a 
 small tree. Seeing a servant near by, he 
 asked him to bring an axe and cut down 
 the tree. The servant told the judge that 
 there was no necessity for cutting down 
 the sapling, but just to back his buggy. 
 Pleased at the good sense of the fellow, he 
 told him that he would leave him some 
 thing at the inn hard by, where he intended 
 stopping, having then no small change. In 
 due time the servant applied, and a dollar 
 was handed him. Being asked if he knew 
 who it was that gave him the money, he 
 replied, " No, sir ; I knew he was a gentle 
 man by his leaving the dollar, but I think 
 he is the biggest fool I ever saw." 
 
 MANNERS. " When I arrived at Buckingham House/ 
 says Mrs. Siddons, in her autobiograph 
 ical Memoranda, " I was conducted into an 
 antechamber, where I found some ladies 
 of my acquaintance ; and, in a short time, 
 the king entered from the drawing-room, 
 in the amiable occupation of drawing the 
 princess Amelia, then scarce three years 
 old, in a little cane-chair. He graciously 
 
In a Club Corner 
 
 said something to one of the ladies, and 
 left the lovely baby to run about the room. 
 She happened to be much pleased with 
 some flowers in my bosom, and, as I stooped 
 down that she might take them, if so dis 
 posed, I could not help exclaiming to a 
 lady near me, What a beautiful child ! 
 how I long to kiss her ! when she in 
 stantly held her little hand to my mouth to 
 be kissed : so early had she learned this 
 lesson of royalty." The easy way of Arch- 
 bishop Whately has been described : " He 
 was of a gigantic size and a gaunt as 
 pect, with a strange unconsciousness of 
 the body ; and what is perhaps the next 
 best thing to manner, he had no manner. 
 What his legs and arms were about was 
 best known to themselves. His rank 
 placed him by the side of the lord lieu 
 tenant s wife when dining at the castle, and 
 the wife of one of the lord lieutenants has 
 said that she had occasionally to remove 
 the archbishop s foot out of her lap." 
 There is the terrible gift of familiarity, as The terrible 
 Pope Gregory called it, which the Marquis /amiLrity. 
 of Mirabeau applied to his son the Count. 
 " He turns the great people here round his 
 finger." Says Carlyle : " He has opened 
 his far-sounding voice, the depths of his 
 
194 I H a Club Corner 
 
 far-sounding soul ; he can quell (such virtue 
 is in a spoken word) the pride-tumults of 
 the rich, the hunger-tumults of the poor; 
 and wild multitudes move under him, as 
 under the moon do billows of the sea ; he 
 has become a world-compeller, and ruler 
 Prince Bis- over men." Prince Bismarck, when he 
 went into Paris with the troops, was recog 
 nized by the people, but no demonstration 
 against him followed. There was one man, 
 however, who scowled at him in a very 
 noticeable manner. The prince at once 
 rode up to him and begged a light for his 
 cigar, and the ugly scowl instantly dis- 
 AH incident appeared. At the beginning of the Rev- 
 iuti e nary~ olutionary War, a large party of Virginia 
 riflemen, who had recently arrived in camp, 
 were strolling about Cambridge, and view 
 ing the collegiate buildings, now turned 
 into barracks. Their half-Indian equip 
 ments, and fringed and ruffled hunting 
 garbs, provoked the merriment of some 
 troops from Marblehead, chiefly fishermen 
 and sailors, who thought nothing equal to 
 the round jacket and trowsers. A banter 
 ing ensued between them. There was 
 snow upon the ground, and snowballs be 
 gan to fly when jokes were wanting. The 
 parties waxed warm with the contest. They 
 
In a Club Corner 195 
 
 closed, and came to blows ; both sides were 
 reinforced, and in a little while at least a 
 thousand were at fisticuffs, and there was 
 a tumult in the camp worthy of the days 
 of Homer. "At this juncture," wrote an 
 
 made his 
 
 informant, " Washington made his appear- appearance 
 ance, whether by accident or design, I 
 never knew. I saw none of his aides with 
 him ; his black servant was just behind 
 him mounted. He threw the bridle of his 
 horse into his servant s hands, sprang from 
 his seat, rushed into the thickest of the 
 melee, seized two tall brawny riflemen by 
 the throat, keeping them at arm s length, 
 talking to and shaking them. His appear 
 ance and strong -handed rebuke put an 
 instant end to the tumult. The combatants 
 dispersed in all directions, and in less than 
 three minutes more there remained on the 
 ground but the two he had collared." " Self- 
 respect," in the judgment of Emerson, " is 
 the early form in which greatness appears. The early 
 
 -r-.i form in 
 
 You say of some new person, That man which 
 
 . r r , . greatness 
 
 will go far, for you see in his manners appears. 
 that the recognition of him by others is 
 not necessary to him. And what a bitter 
 sweet sensation when we have gone to pour 
 out our acknowledgment of a man s noble 
 ness, and found him quite indifferent to 
 
i 96 In a Club Corner 
 
 our good opinion." "Too much, I have 
 perceived," remarks De Quincey, "in men 
 that pass for good men, a disposition to 
 
 tion to de- 
 
 grade. degrade (and if possible to degrade through 
 self-degradation) those in whom unwillingly 
 they feel any weight of oppression to them 
 selves, by commanding qualities of intellect 
 or character. They respect you : they are 
 compelled to do so, and they hate to do 
 so." They lie in wait to humiliate or over 
 power you, encouraged by occasional 
 successful instances of combined weakness 
 over individual strength, as in the famous 
 triumph of the Lilliputians over Gulliver. 
 " Do you think to distinguish yourself with 
 
 Northcoteto impunity ?" said Northcote to Hazlitt. 
 
 Hazlitt. ;f . 
 
 " Do you imagine that your superiority will 
 be delightful to others, or that they will not 
 strive all that they can, and to the last 
 moment, to pull you down ? I remember 
 myself once saying to Opie, how hard it 
 was upon the poor author or player to be 
 hunted down for not succeeding in an in 
 nocent and laudable attempt, just as if they 
 had committed some heinous crime ; and 
 he answered, They have committed the 
 greatest crime in the eyes of mankind 
 that of pretending to a superiority over 
 them. " 
 
In a Club Corner 
 Artists are fond of painting their own SELF-POR- 
 
 . TRAITURE. 
 
 portraits. In Florence there is a gallery 
 of hundreds of them, including the most 
 illustrious, in all of which there are, as 
 Hawthorne remarks, autobiographical char 
 acteristics, so to speak ; traits, expressions, 
 loftinesses, and amenities, which would have 
 been invisible had they not been painted 
 from within. Yet their reality and truth 
 are none the less. There is no more re 
 markable bit of self-portraiture than that 
 by Saint Evremond : " He is a philosopher saint 
 who keeps aloof alike from superstition 
 and from impiety ; an epicurean, whose 
 distaste for debauchery is as strong as his 
 appetite for pleasure ; a man who has never 
 known want, but at the same time has 
 never enjoyed affluence. He lives in a 
 manner which is despised by those who 
 have everything, envied by those who have 
 nothing, appreciated by those who make 
 their happiness and their reason agree. In Happiness 
 his youth he hated waste, being persuaded " 
 that property was necessary to make a 
 long life comfortable. In his age he cares 
 not for economy, feeling that want is little 
 to be feared when one has but a little time 
 to want in. He is grateful for the gifts 
 of nature, and finds no fault with those of 
 
ig8 In a Club Corner 
 
 fortune ; he hates crime, endures error, 
 and pities misfortune. He does not try to 
 find out the bad points of men in order to 
 decry them, but he looks for their foibles 
 in order to give himself amusement ; is 
 secretly rejoiced at the knowledge of these 
 foibles, and would be still more pleased to 
 make them known to others, did not his 
 Life too discretion forbid. Life is to his mind too 
 
 short to read 
 
 aii sorts of short to read all sorts of books, and to load 
 one s memory with all sorts of things at 
 the risk of one s judgment. He devotes 
 himself not to the most learned writings, 
 so as to acquire knowledge, but to the most 
 sensible, so as to strengthen his under 
 standing. At one time he seeks the most 
 elegant to refine his taste, at another the 
 most amusing to refresh his spirits. As 
 for friendship, he has more constancy than 
 might be expected from a philosopher, and 
 more heartiness than could be looked for 
 even in a younger and less experienced 
 man. As for religion, he thinks justice, 
 charity, and trust in the goodness of God 
 of more importance than sorrow for past 
 offenses." 
 
 THE PHI- Douglas Jerrold expresses the opinion 
 STO O N P H HER that the true philosopher s stone is only 
 
In a Club Corner 799 
 
 intense impudence. Perhaps, we should 
 say, but with a generous tempering of 
 self-possession and readiness. So qualified 
 and fortified, to the common eye, it has 
 the look of omnipotence. At the point of The look of 
 
 ,,..., , ,. , omnipotence. 
 
 sublimity it dazzles, and is superhuman to 
 the multitude. Only intelligence can pen 
 etrate it, and know its true character. One 
 night at the theatre of San Carlo, Naples, 
 Dumas the elder found himself chatting 
 familiarly with a stranger who, when the 
 play was over, said to him patronizingly : 
 " I have greatly enjoyed your conversation, 
 sir, and hope to see more of you. If ever 
 you visit Paris call on me, I am Alexandra 
 Dumas." "The devil you are! So am 
 I ! " replied the novelist, with a burst of 
 laughter. Such impudent audacity, with a 
 due admixture of self-possession and facil 
 ity, seldom fails of its purpose. " Behold 
 me now," says Rousseau, in his Confessions, Roseau. 
 " a teacher of singing, without knowing 
 how to decipher an air. Without the least 
 knowledge of composition, I boasted of my 
 skill in it before all the world ; and with 
 out ability to score the slenderest vaude 
 ville, I gave myself out for a composer. 
 Having been presented to M. de Trey- 
 torens, a professor of law, who loved music 
 
2OO In a Club Corner 
 
 and gave concerts at his house, I insisted 
 on giving him a specimen of my talent, and 
 I set to work to compose a piece for his 
 concert with as much effrontery as if I 
 knew all about it." The performance came 
 off duly, and the strange impostor con 
 ducted it with as much gravity as the 
 profoundest master. Never since the be 
 ginning of opera had the like charivari 
 
 John Law. greeted the ears of men. A friend of John 
 Law asked him one day, whether it was true 
 that he was going to war with England. 
 "I should think," added he, "that a min 
 ister like yourself, whose interest it is to 
 make the State flourish by commerce, and 
 by establishments that require peace, would 
 never think of going to war." Law replied, 
 with the utmost calmness, " I do not desire 
 
 Frederic the war, but am not afraid of it." Frederic 
 the Great once saw a crowd staring at 
 something on a wall. He rode up, and 
 found that the object of curiosity was a 
 scurrilous placard against himself. The 
 placard had been posted up so high that it 
 was not easy to read it. Frederic ordered 
 his attendants to take it down and put it 
 lower. " My people and I," he said, " have 
 come to an agreement which satisfies us 
 both. They are to say what they please, 
 
In a Club Corner 201 
 
 and I am to do what I please." At the 
 time of the Gordon riots, in June, 1780, 
 Grimaldi resided in a front room on the 
 second floor in Holborn, on the same side 
 of the way near to Red Lion Square, when 
 the mob passing by the house, and Gri 
 maldi being a foreigner, they thought he 
 must be a Papist. On hearing he lived 
 there, they all stopped, and there was a 
 general shouting ; a cry of " No Popery " 
 was raised, and they were about to assail 
 the house, when Grimaldi put his head out 
 of the window from the second floor, and, 
 making comical grimaces, called out, " Gen 
 tlemen, in dis house dare be no religion 
 at all." Laughing at their mistake, the 
 mob proceeded on, first giving him three 
 huzzas, though his house, unlike all the 
 others, had not written on the door, " No 
 Popery." A marauder, arrested for a high- A 
 way robbery, on being brought before a 
 magistrate, asserted that he was more 
 entitled to be pitied than to be punished. 
 " Pitied ! " exclaimed the justice, whilst his 
 eyebrows arched with more than ordinary 
 wonder and contempt; "and on what ac 
 count, pray ? " " Sure on account of my 
 misfortune." "Your misfortune, indeed! 
 What, that we have caught you, I sup- 
 
 marau- 
 der to be 
 
2O2 In a Club Corner 
 
 pose ? " " Oh, the jintleman that s brought 
 The mi- me here knows my misfortune well enough." 
 
 prifs mis- 
 
 fortune. But the gentleman was as astonished as 
 the magistrate himself, and as incapable of 
 guessing the culprit s meaning. " You will 
 own, I suppose," said his worship, " that 
 you stopped this gentleman on the high 
 way ?" " Oh, yes. I did that same." "And 
 that you took from him fifty pounds in 
 Bank of Wexford bills?" "And there 
 your honor s right again." "Well, then, 
 you perplexing vagabond, what do you 
 mean by your misfortune ? " " Sure, I mean 
 that the money wasn t in my pocket above 
 a week, when the dirty bank stopped pay 
 ment, and I was robbed of every shillin !" 
 
 READING Draper, I think, somewhere in his His 
 tory of the Intellectual Development of 
 Europe, observes, that if there are dis 
 advantages in the method of acquiring 
 knowledge by reading, there are also signal 
 advantages ; for, though upon the printed 
 page the silent letters are mute and un- 
 sustained by any scenic help, yet often 
 a wonderful contradiction they pour forth 
 emphatic eloquence, that can make the 
 heart leap with emotion, or kindle on the 
 cheek the blush of shame. The might of 
 
In a Club Corner 203 
 
 persuasiveness does not always lie in ar 
 ticulate speech. The strong are of the The strong 
 
 are of the 
 
 silent. God never speaks. We are as &*. 
 elastic, says Emerson, as the gas of gun 
 powder, and a sentence in a book sets free 
 our fancy, and instantly our heads are 
 bathed with galaxies, and our feet tread the 
 floor of the Pit. Yet on the other hand 
 there are readers so careless, so indifferent, 
 so insensate, as to appear to be proof 
 against emotion to say nothing of in 
 tellectual exaltation. Don Abbondio, the 
 cowardly priest in Manzoni s story, may be 
 cited as an instance ; he was very fond of 
 reading a little every day ; and a neighbor 
 ing curate, who possessed something of a 
 library, lent him one book after another, 
 always taking the first that came to hand. 
 All printed matter was alike to him. 
 
 Reading aloud, as a mere physical exer- Reading 
 
 *? . .. aloud as a 
 
 cise, is of great importance and efficacy, physical ex- 
 Cicero, in some one of his letters, speaks 
 of curing himself of troublesome and alarm 
 ing weakness by reading aloud for some 
 hours every day. Certain temperaments 
 are influenced by it as actors are affected 
 by their own playing. It is said of Madame 
 Pasta that she would come home from the 
 opera, and sit in a passion of tears at the 
 
204 In a Club Corner 
 
 recollection of what she had been acting. 
 It was entirely unaffected. She would say 
 she knew it to be idle, but that she " could 
 not get the thing out of her head." 
 
 Cross, in his Life of George Eliot, ex 
 presses the belief that reading requires for 
 its perfection a rare union of intellectual, 
 moral, and physical qualities. It cannot 
 be imitated. It is an art, like singing a 
 personal possession that dies with the pos 
 sessor, and leaves nothing behind except 
 a memory. Immediately before his wife s 
 George EH- last illness, they read together the first part 
 of Faust. Reading the poem in the origi 
 nal with such an interpreter was the open 
 ing of a new world to him. Nothing in all 
 literature moved her more, he tells us, than 
 the pathetic situation and the whole char 
 acter of Gretchen. It touched her more 
 than anything in Shakespeare. 
 
 In one of Sir Henry Taylor s published 
 letters he speaks of reading Shakespeare 
 to his children, and adds : " Reading of 
 Shakespeare to boys and girls (if it be well 
 read, and if they be apt), I regard as carry 
 ing with it a deeper cultivation than any 
 thing else that can be done to cultivate 
 them ; and I often think how strange it is 
 that amongst all the efforts which are 
 
In a Club Corner 205 
 
 made in these times to teach young people 
 everything that is to be known, from the 
 cedar of Lebanon to the hyssop on the 
 wall, the one thing omitted is teaching 
 them to read." 
 
 In the book of Nehemiah is given, in a 
 few words, the true standard of reading The true 
 how Ezra, the learned and pious priest, readies- 
 and the Levites, read to the people the law 
 of Moses : " They read in the book, in the 
 law of God, distinctly, and gave the sense, 
 and caused the people to understand the 
 reading." They "gave the sense," be it 
 observed, and the people understood it. 
 The Persian poet Saadi tells that a person 
 with a disagreeable voice was reading the 
 Koran aloud, when a holy man, passing 
 by, asked what was his monthly stipend. 
 He answered, "Nothing at all." "But 
 why then do you take so much trouble ? " 
 He replied, " I read for the sake of God." 
 The other rejoined, "For God s sake do 
 not read ; for if you read the Koran in this 
 manner you will destroy the splendor of rkespien- 
 
 T , . , , dor of Is- 
 
 ISlamiSm. lamismin 
 
 How strange, that of the multitudes of 
 readers, so few comparatively should be 
 able to read aloud agreeably and intelli 
 gibly. Is reading aloud such a difficult 
 
206 In a Club Corner 
 
 art? or is all the world indifferent about 
 acquiring it ? It cannot be that of the 
 many branches of education, the most im 
 portant should be the most neglected. A 
 thing so preposterous is incredible. There 
 causes in- must be causes inscrutable to account for 
 
 scrutable. . 
 
 a fact so extraordinary. Considering the 
 pleasure to others derived from agreeable 
 and intelligible oral reading, to say noth 
 ing of its economy, one would think that, 
 of all things, it would be most anxiously 
 studied and most diligently practiced. Can 
 it be indeed that good readers are born, 
 and not made ? Can it be that the infinite 
 many are wanting in the faculties and 
 qualities necessary to attain the art ? 
 Theessen- Would some one could tell the essential- 
 
 tialities so . . _,. - - 
 
 rare. ities so rare ! The best vocal readers, we 
 
 know, are not always the best intellects. 
 Apparently, they only possess a certain 
 ken, which is characteristic, but undefina- 
 ble. They perceptibly penetrate the words, 
 perceive the sense, and participate the feel 
 ing, which they are able unconsciously to 
 interpret, reveal, and enkindle in the read 
 ing. If you undertake to analyze the 
 achievement to talk of manner, voice, 
 pronunciation, intonation, inflection, or 
 anything incident to it you are in a 
 
In a Club Corner 207 
 
 labyrinth without a clue. There is not 
 anything, you may say, which is more 
 simple and at the same time more inexpli 
 cable than good oral reading. The author 
 of the composition, being present at the 
 reading of it by a good reader, is more as 
 tonished than any other hearer. Beauty, Beauty, etc., 
 
 , , , . not dreamed 
 
 or strength, or feeling, is revealed to him of. 
 he had not dreamed of. An apple falls, on 
 its way to the centre of the earth : a good 
 reader penetrates intuitively the marrow 
 of the printed page, and plucks its sub 
 stance and flavor. A name is given by 
 philosophy to the former gravitation ; 
 but there is no word in the language for 
 the latter. An excellence so superior and 
 so exceptional as reading aloud agreeably, 
 intelligibly, and impressively, one would 
 think, should have a name to distinguish it 
 from ordinary reading, as oratory is dis 
 tinguished from ordinary speaking. The 
 rules and laws and machinery of what is 
 called elocution have little or nothing to 
 do with good reading but to make it im 
 possible. I once went in upon a class in A ludicrous 
 elocution, and found the teacher soberly in- K 
 structing his pupils by the use of the black 
 board lines being drawn thereon, and 
 notes written within, as in music the 
 
scousness 
 
 2o8 In a Club Corner 
 
 words to be pitched and accented and in 
 toned accordingly ! The worst effect of 
 all the bad effects of professional elocution 
 is to create and foster excessive self-con- 
 
 . . i 11 
 
 inimical, sciousness a condition wholly inconsist 
 ent with intelligent and satisfactory read 
 ing, if not absolutely inimical to it. Go 
 into a school-room, filled with big pupils. 
 Say to the teacher interrogatively that you 
 hope he has some good readers, and he 
 does not understand you. Go into the 
 churches, and hear how the Scriptures, as 
 a rule, are read. I do not remember to 
 have heard the Bible perfectly read but 
 once, and that was by an African bishop, 
 not distinguished for his erudition. Even 
 the child with me was interested in the 
 reading she understood it. 
 
 " In company with a friend to whom 
 Garrick had promised some instructions in 
 the character of Macbeth, I waited on him 
 (says Cooke) at his house in the Adelphi 
 about eleven o clock on a Sunday morning. 
 After some preliminary conversation, Gar- 
 rick took up the play, and read several pas 
 sages with a taste, feeling, and discrimina 
 tion, new even to me, who had seen him so 
 often in this character on the stage. But 
 when he came to the dagger scene, I ob- 
 
In a Club Corner 2og 
 
 served his face instantly assume a mixture 
 of horror, perplexity, and guilt, which I 
 thought it impossible for human nature to 
 affect : the glare of his eye was conform 
 able to the range of his features, and he 
 went through the passage in a style totally 
 indescribable. I then saw the amazing its amazing 
 effect of his art ; in which, like a great orig- 
 ma] in painting, the nearer it was viewed, 
 the more the delicate and master touches 
 of the pencil were discernible. The event 
 happened about thirty years ago ; and I 
 now remember it with a sensibility which, 
 while it affords me the most lively impres 
 sions, leads me to despair of ever seeing 
 its like again. 
 
 In his Memoirs, he also makes reference 
 to Dr. Johnson s remarkable reading. The Johnson s 
 
 i t -i-ii* remarkable 
 
 doctor read serious and sublime poetry reading. 
 with very great gravity and feeling. In 
 the recital of prayers and religious poems 
 he was awfully impressive, and his memory 
 served him upon these occasions with great 
 readiness. One night at the club a person 
 quoting the nineteenth psalm, the doctor 
 caught fire ; and, instantly taking off his 
 hat, began with great solemnity, 
 
 " The spacious firmament on high," etc., 
 
 and went through that beautiful hymn. 
 
2i o In a Club Corner 
 
 Those who were acquainted with the doc 
 tor, knew how harsh and repulsive his 
 features in general were ; but on this occa 
 sion, to use the language of Scripture, " his 
 face was almost as if it had been the face 
 of an angel." 
 
 THE OB- It was the opinion of Lord Lytton ex- 
 DENCY. r pressed in his little story of Money that 
 the vices and the virtues are written in a 
 language the world cannot construe it 
 reads them in a vile translation, and the 
 translators are Failure and Success. Car- 
 lyle was very angry with Emerson for not 
 believing in a devil, and to convert him 
 took him amongst all the horrors of Lon 
 don the gin-shops, etc. and finally to 
 the House of Commons, plying him at 
 every turn with the question, " Do you 
 believe in a devil noo ? " A young tra- 
 voitaire gedienne could not satisfy Voltaire in a 
 "yotn^tra- passage in one of his tragedies, and he 
 gave the passage himself as he thought it 
 ought to be delivered. " Why," said she, 
 " I should have to have the devil in me to 
 reach the tone you wish ! " " Exactly so, 
 mademoiselle ! " cried the author. " It is the 
 devil you must have in you, to excel in any 
 of the arts." Crebillon wrote effective trag- 
 
In a Club Corner 211 
 
 edies, chiefly remarkable for their power 
 to excite terror. Being questioned, after 
 the successful production of one of his ter 
 rific plays, as to his reason for choosing 
 that line, he answered, " Corneille has ap- !$?*. 
 propriated heaven, and Racine the earth. 
 Nothing remained for me but the domain 
 of his Satanic majesty, and I threw myself 
 into it headlong." Washington Irving, in 
 his journal of a trip to Montreal in 1808, 
 speaks of an Irish fellow-passenger, who 
 took a fancy to him and his party, and was 
 a great resource to them in the tedium of 
 the passage, by his stories of fun and frolic. 
 In Montreal the jolly fellow called to beg 
 them not to whisper a word of his capers 
 on the journey, "for I m a praist, you see, 
 and in this country a praist is the devil." 
 There is a curious legend, current in the 
 neighborhood of Moscow, that when the 
 devil once tried to creep into Paradise, he 
 took the form of a mouse ; the dog and cat 
 were on guard at the gates, and the dog 
 allowed the evil one to pass, but the cat 
 pounced on him, and so defeated another 
 treacherous attempt against human felicity. 
 To those who would kill him outright, a Asto killing 
 lesson of interest and of profit may be thedevil - 
 found in Rabelais. "Gymnast asked Gar- 
 
212 In a Club Corner 
 
 gantua if they should pursue the enemy ? 
 To whom Gargantua answered, By no 
 means ; for according to right military dis- 
 drive cipHne, you must never drive your enemy 
 
 your enemy , " . 
 
 into despair, into despair, for that such a strait doth 
 multiply his force, and increase his courage, 
 which was before broken and cast down ; 
 neither is there any better help, or outgate 
 of relief for men that are amazed, out of 
 heart, toiled, and spent, than to hope for 
 no favor at all. How many victories have 
 been taken out of the hands of the victors by 
 the vanquished, when they would not rest 
 satisfied with reason, but attempt to put 
 all to the sword, and totally to destroy their 
 enemies, without leaving so many as one 
 to carry home news of the defeat of his 
 fellows. Open, therefore, unto your ene 
 mies all the gates and ways, and make to 
 them a bridge of silver rather than fail, 
 that you may be rid of them." Goethe s 
 conception of the character and reasoning 
 of Mephistopheles, the tempting spirit in 
 the play of Faust, appeared to Scott, in 
 Quentin Durward, more happy than that 
 which has been formed by Byron, and even 
 
 The Satan by the Satan of Milton. " These last great 
 authors have given to the Evil Principle 
 something which elevates and dignifies his 
 
In a Club Corner 213 
 
 wickedness ; a sustained and unconquer 
 able resistance against Omnipotence itself 
 a lofty scorn of suffering compared with 
 submission, and all those points of attrac 
 tion in the Author of Evil, which have in 
 duced Burns and others to consider him as 
 the Hero of the Paradise Lost. The great 
 German poet has, on the contrary, rendered 
 his seducing spirit a being who, otherwise 
 totally unimpassioned, seems only to have * 
 existed for the purpose of increasing, by 
 his persuasions and temptations, the mass 
 of moral evil, and who calls forth by his 
 seductions those slumbering passions which 
 otherwise might have allowed the human 
 being who was the object of the Evil 
 Spirit s operations to pass the tenor of his 
 life in tranquillity. For this purpose Meph- 
 istopheles is, like Louis XL, endowed Like Louis 
 with an acute and depreciating spirit of 
 caustic wit which is employed incessantly 
 in undervaluing and vilifying all actions, 
 the consequences of which do not lead cer 
 tainly and directly to self-gratification." 
 Miss Martineau says of her early life : " I 
 did not at any time, I think, believe in 
 the devil, but understood the Scriptures to 
 speak of sin under that name, and of eter 
 nal detriment under the name of eternal 
 
214 In a Club Corner 
 
 punishment. I believed in inestimable and 
 eternal rewards of holiness ; but I am con 
 fident that I never in my life did a right 
 thing or abstained from a wrong one from 
 any consideration of reward or punish- 
 
 A writer in The Gentleman s Magazine, 
 on the authority of Captain Burton, tells 
 us how the Arabs dislike whistling. Some 
 maintain that the whistler s mouth is not 
 to be purified for forty days, while, ac 
 cording to the explanation of others, 
 Satan touching a man s body causes 
 him to produce what they consider an 
 offensive sound. The natives of the Tonga 
 Islands, Polynesia, hold it to be wrong to 
 whistle, as this act is thought to be dis 
 respectful to God. In Iceland the villagers 
 have the same objection to whistling, and 
 so far do they carry their superstitious 
 dread of it that " if one swings about him 
 a stick, whip, wand, or aught that makes a 
 whistling sound, he scares from him the 
 Holy Ghost," while other Icelanders who 
 consider themselves free from superstitions 
 a not. cautiously give the advice: "Do it not; 
 for who knoweth what is in the air ? " A 
 correspondent of Notes and Queries re- 
 
In a Club Corner 2/5 
 
 lates how one day, after attempting in vain 
 to get his dog to obey orders to come into 
 the house, his wife tried to coax it by 
 whistling, when she was suddenly inter 
 rupted by a servant, a Roman Catholic, 
 who exclaimed in the most piteous accents^ 
 "If you please, ma am, don t whistle 
 every time a woman whistles the heart of The heart 
 the blessed Virgin bleeds." In some dis- 
 tricts of North Germany the villagers say 
 that if one whistles in the evening it makes 
 the angels weep. It is a widespread super 
 stition that it is at all times unlucky for 
 women to whistle, which, according to one 
 legend, originated in the circumstance that 
 while the nails for our Lord s cross were 
 being forged, a woman stood by and whis 
 tled. " Do it not ; for who knoweth what 
 is in the air ? " 
 
 Morley tells us that when Rousseau and 
 
 . . . 
 
 his music-teacher were in Lyons together, 
 the latter fell into an epileptic fit in the 
 street. Rousseau called for help, informed 
 the crowd of the poor man s hotel, and 
 then seizing a moment when no one was 
 thinking about him, turned the street cor 
 ner, and finally disappeared, the musician 
 being thus abandoned by the only friend 
 
216 In a Club Corner 
 
 on whom he had a right to count. It thus 
 appears that a man may be exquisitely 
 moved by the sound of bells, the song of 
 birds, the fairness of smiling gardens, and 
 yet be capable all the time, without a qualm 
 of misgiving, of leaving a friend senseless 
 in the road in a strange place. Barry Corn 
 wall states that some years ago Mr. Charles 
 Kemble on entering Brussels found that 
 Preparing there was preparation making for an exe- 
 
 for an exe- . L 
 
 cution that occupied a good deal of atten 
 tion. Three men were to be executed ; 
 but one man was remarkable for having 
 committed almost twenty assassinations 
 having broken prison, etc., and for being a 
 person of remarkable talent. Mr. Kemble 
 determined to witness the spectacle. Now 
 it is to be remembered that at Brussels 
 they do not (or did not) execute any crim 
 inals after a certain hour in the day ; and 
 in order not to run too near this hour, 
 the culprits are taken to the block some 
 considerable time beforehand. The two 
 undistinguished rogues were melancholy 
 enough ; but the notorious one was anything 
 but chap fallen. He was well-dressed, had 
 a good carriage, hummed a popular air, and 
 in all other things exhibited the extreme 
 of self-possession. On his way to the 
 
In a Club Corner 2/7 
 
 guillotine (or when he arrived there) he 
 
 said, "Now don t mix my head with those Heads not 
 
 r , . , , . to be mixed. 
 
 fellows ; keep it apart. I would not have 
 it supposed that I had such a rascally look 
 as either of these vagabonds for the world." 
 The Marechale de Luxembourg was the 
 oracle of fashion, and her decisions on 
 everything in high life were without ap 
 peal. " One Sunday morning (says Ma 
 dame de Genlis) we waited only for the 
 Prince of Conti s arrival to celebrate mass ; 
 we were all seated round a table in the 
 drawing-room, on which lay our prayer- 
 books, which the marechale amused herself 
 by turning over. All at once she stopped 
 at two or three prayers, which seemed to 
 her to be in the worst possible taste, and A question 
 
 . . . . . of taste. 
 
 of which, m fact, the expressions were 
 somewhat singular. She made some very 
 bitter remarks on these prayers ; upon 
 which I suggested to her, that it was 
 enough if they were repeated with sincere 
 piety, and that God certainly paid no atten 
 tion to what we call good or bad taste. 
 * Oh Madame, cried the marechale very 
 gravely, don t take such a notion as that 
 into your head ! Barham tells of an old 
 woman on board a vessel who told some of 
 her friends that, while she was at Margate 
 
218 In a Club Corner 
 
 in the course of the summer, the friend at 
 whose house she had been staying had 
 gone into the market for the purpose of 
 purchasing a goose. There were but two 
 in the whole place offered for sale, by a girl 
 Not to be of fourteen, who refused to part with one 
 without the other, assigning no other rea 
 son for her obstinacy than that it was her 
 mother s order. Not wishing for two geese, 
 the lady at first declined to purchase, but 
 at last finding there was no other to be 
 had, and recollecting that a neighbor might 
 be prevailed upon to take one off her 
 hands, she concluded the bargain. Having 
 paid for and secured the pair, she asked the 
 girl at parting if she knew her mother s 
 reason for the directions she had given. 
 " Oh, yes, mistress," answered the young 
 poultry - merchant readily, " mother said 
 that they had lived together for eleven 
 years, and it would be a sin and a shame 
 to part them now." Mile. Flachsland, 
 who married Herder, writes to her be 
 trothed that one night in the depth of the 
 woods, she fell on her knees as she looked 
 at the moon, and that having found some 
 glow-worms she put them into her hair, 
 being careful to arrange them in couples 
 that she might not disturb their loves ! 
 
In a Club Corner 2/9 
 
 "Nothing," in the judgment of Sir COST OF EX- 
 
 Joshua Reynolds, " is denied to well-di 
 rected labor ; nothing is to be attained 
 without it." " Excellence in any depart 
 ment," said Johnson, " can be attained 
 only by the labor of a lifetime ; it is not to 
 be purchased at a lesser price." Carlyle 
 wrote to a literary aspirant : " My dear 
 young friend, you must learn the indispen 
 sable significance of hard, stern, long-con 
 tinued labor. Grudge not labor, grudge 
 not pain, disappointment, sorrow, or dis 
 tress of any kind all is for your good, if 
 you can endeavor and endure. If you can 
 not, why then all is hopeless. No man 
 ever grew to anything who durst not look 
 death itself in the face, and say to all kinds 
 of martyrdom, Ye shall not subdue me ! 
 Be of courage ; a man lies in you ; but a 
 man is not born the second time, any more 
 than the first, without travail." Lamb re 
 lated that when at Oxford he saw Milton s 
 MS. of L Allegro, etc., and was grieved 
 to find from the corrections and erasures 
 how the poet had labored upon them. He 
 had fancied that they had come from his 
 mind almost spontaneously. He said that 
 to be a true poet a man must serve a long 
 and rigorous apprenticeship. He must, 
 
 CELLENCK. 
 
22o In a Club Corner 
 
 like the mathematician, sit with a wet 
 
 towel about his head if he wished to excel. 
 
 Caleb Godwin wrote his Caleb Williams back- 
 
 Williams. , ... . . , 
 
 wards beginning, that is to say, with the 
 last chapter, and working on to the first. 
 Richardson produced his novels by pain 
 fully elaborating different portions at dif 
 ferent times. Burton, Butler, Locke, 
 Fuller, Warburton, and many others, labo 
 riously kept commonplace books. Before 
 
 The specta- Addison commenced his Spectator he had 
 amassed three folio volumes of materials. 
 Sheridan and Hook, it is well known, were 
 always on the alert for brilliant bits of con 
 versation and stray jokes, which they took 
 good care to jot down in their pocket- 
 books for future use. Pope, we are in 
 formed, scribbled down stray thoughts 
 whenever they struck him at a dinner- 
 table, in an open carriage, at his toilet, 
 
 Hogarth^ and in bed. Hogarth would sketch on his 
 finger-nail any face that struck him, hence 
 the marvelous diversity of feature in his 
 infinite galleries of portraits. Swift would 
 lie ir bed in the morning, " thinking of wit 
 for the day," as Hook made up his im 
 promptus the night before. Washington 
 Irving was fond of taking his portfolio out 
 into the fields, and laboriously manipulating 
 
In a Club Corner 221 
 
 his graceful periods while swinging on a 
 stile. Lord Truro, like Demosthenes, had 
 an impediment in his speech, but he over- overcomin 
 
 .,/-. , . c an impedi- 
 
 came it by forming a list of synonyms, me nt. 
 which he substituted for the words he 
 could not pronounce. " Every bon mot 
 that I utter," said Goethe, " costs me a 
 purseful of money ; half a million of my 
 private fortune has passed through my 
 hands that I might learn what I know 
 now ; not only the whole of my father s 
 fortune, but my salary, and my large liter 
 ary income for more than fifty years." To 
 Helvetius, a young writer, Voltaire wrote : voitatreto 
 
 _ , . , , Helvetius. 
 
 " It costs you nothing to think, but it costs 
 infinitely to write. I therefore preach to 
 you eternally that art of writing which 
 Boileau has so well known and so well 
 taught : that respect for the language, that 
 connection and sequence of ideas, that air 
 of ease with which he conducts his read 
 ers, that naturalness which is the fruit of 
 art, and that appearance of facility which 
 is due to toil alone. A word out of place 
 spoils the most beautiful thought." Boi- Boiieaits 
 leau counseled writers to remand their ai 
 works twenty times to the anvil, and he 
 advised Racine to compose laboriously easy 
 verses. Garrick told Henderson he was 
 
222 In a Club Corner 
 
 two months rehearsing Benedict before he 
 could satisfy himself that he had modeled 
 his action and recital to his idea of the 
 
 wards- part Wordsworth said that sometimes 
 whole weeks were employed in shaping 
 two or three lines, before he could satisfy 
 himself with their structure. Thomson 
 was fourteen or fifteen years writing the 
 
 Lincoln. Castle of Indolence. It is told of Lin 
 coln s boyhood that of the books he did 
 not own he took voluminous notes, filling 
 his copy-book with choice extracts, and 
 poring over them until they were fixed in 
 his memory. He could not afford to waste 
 paper upon his own original compositions. 
 He would sit by the fire at night and cover 
 the wooden shovel with essays and arith 
 metical exercises, which he would shave 
 off, and begin again. Agassiz began his 
 studies in natural history by copying hun 
 dreds of pages from a Lamarck which some 
 one had lent him. Madame de Genlis 
 said to Moore that she had lost thirty or 
 forty volumes of extracts which she had 
 made during a most voluminous course of 
 English reading. She deposited them for 
 safe-keeping, and never recovered them. 
 Richter, before his seventeenth year, had 
 made many thick volumes, each of them of 
 
In a Club Corner 223 
 
 more than three hundred quarto pages. 
 One reason for it, he read books that were 
 not always his own. Bentley is said by 
 Monk, his biographer, to have practiced 
 throughout life the precaution of noting in 
 the margins of his books the suggestions 
 and conjectures which rushed into his 
 mind during their perusal. To this habit 
 of laying up materials in store may be 
 partly attributed the surprising rapidity 
 with which some of his most important 
 works were completed. Irving relates that 
 he was once riding with Moore in Paris, Anecdote of 
 when the hackney-coach went suddenly Moore 
 into a rut, out of which it came with such 
 a jolt as to send their heads bumping 
 against the roof. " By Jove, I Ve got it ! " 
 cried Moore, clapping his hands with great 
 glee. "Got what?" said Irving. "Why," 
 said the poet, "that word which I have 
 been hunting for six weeks to complete my 
 last song. That beneficent driver has 
 jolted it out of me." " That is a picture of 
 Hawthorne," said Longfellow to a visitor, Hawthorne. 
 " as he looked when he was about twenty. 
 He was a shy man, and exceedingly re 
 fined. If any one thought he wrote with 
 ease, he should have seen him as I have, 
 seated at a table with pen and paper before 
 
224 I }1 a Club Corner 
 
 him, perfectly still, not writing a word. On 
 one occasion he told me he had been sit 
 ting so for hours, waiting for an inspiration 
 to write, meanwhile filled with gloom and 
 an almost apathetic despair." De Tocque- 
 DeTocqiie- villc, at the end of his preface to The Old 
 Regime and the Revolution, says : " I 
 may say, I think, without undue self-lau 
 dation, that this book is the fruit of great 
 labor. I could point to more than one 
 short chapter that has cost me more than 
 a year s work." As a commentary on all 
 this, it may be stated that a daughter of 
 Emerson once received a letter from a 
 school-girl, asking for what price her father 
 would write a valedictory address she had 
 to deliver at college ! Lamb mentions in 
 one of his Essays having once complained 
 to a schoolmaster that his little sketches 
 were anything but methodical, and that he 
 was unable to make them otherwise, when 
 the wise professor kindly offered to in 
 struct him in the method by which young 
 gentlemen in his seminary were taught to 
 compose English themes ! The sister of 
 Hannah More relates that Sterne s dauh 
 
 ter Mrs. Medalle sent to all the cor 
 respondents of her deceased father, beg 
 ging the letters which he had written to 
 
In a Club Corner 225 
 
 them ; among other wits, she sent to 
 Wilkes with the same request. He sent 
 for answer, that as there happened to be 
 nothing extraordinary in those he had re 
 ceived, he had burnt or lost them. On 
 which the faithful editor of her father s 
 works sent back to say, that if Mr. Wilkes A remark- 
 
 . , , r , able request 
 
 would be so good as to write a few letters 
 in imitation of her father s style, it would 
 do just as well, and she would insert them ! 
 Donald MacLeod, in his Life of Sir Wal 
 ter Scott, relates that one morning, before 
 breakfast was over (on the occasion of a 
 visit of a distinguished gentleman at Ab- 
 botsford), there arrived so mighty a post- 
 bag that the guests in astonishment asked 
 the reason. Scott answered that it was 
 always so, and that although large frank 
 ing privileges were at his service, his post 
 age bill still amounted to one hundred and 
 fifty pounds annually. He was deluged 
 with all manner of letters. On one occa 
 sion, a young lady of New York sent him a 
 manuscript play, called The Cherokee Lov- TheChero- 
 
 : J \ . kee Lovers. 
 
 ers, requesting him to read and correct it, 
 equip it with prologue and epilogue, bring 
 it out at Drury Lane, and get a handsome 
 price for it from Murray or Constable. 
 Postage, five pounds. In about a fort- 
 
226 In a Club Corner 
 
 night, another package arrived, out of 
 which, on being opened, popped another 
 copy of The Cherokees, with another letter, 
 saying that as the winds had been boister 
 ous, she thought that the vessel containing 
 the tragedy might possibly have been foun 
 dered, and therefore took the precaution of 
 sending another copy. Postage, five pounds 
 more. 
 
 YOUTH AND Death is as great a wonder to Youth as 
 life is to Age. Youth is ever growing 
 and realizing. His look into the sunless 
 grave is blank and bewildered. His round 
 eyes and radiant face are set upon an up 
 ward, sunny path. No blow of disappoint 
 ment has staggered his expectation, and 
 left an indelible mark upon him. He em 
 ploys no spies, and advances without scouts. 
 He has not learned the uses of suspicion 
 Effect of and caution. Easy advancement has made 
 him bold and confident He believes the 
 
 future is in his fist. He does not know 
 that so far all helps have been supplied 
 him, and will continue to be supplied, till 
 he fails. The fledgeling, left to flutter alone, 
 is hopefully and trustingly observed by 
 those who know forces and currents. Hu 
 manity has generously opened a way and 
 
In a Club Corner 227 
 
 given him a start. His sails belly with all 
 
 good wishes. The world would not have The world 
 
 i r M TA. MI j. A.* "^ would not 
 
 him fail. It will not give up its faith in its have him 
 best ideal. Individuals acknowledge they fau 
 have failed, but they do not quite get their 
 consent to believe that an individual may 
 not exist who cannot fail. If the one well- 
 remembered fatal thing done or omitted 
 had been omitted or done, they might have 
 been such themselves. The possible man 
 who cannot err nor blunder, and who can 
 not be deceived nor baffled, is the univer- The univer. 
 sal Messiah. Wisdom, dumb and grave, * 
 and Experience, with doubt and distrust in 
 every wrinkle, forget truth and life, lose 
 themselves in the contemplation of his 
 beautiful vigor and fleetness, and believe 
 him invincible. They look through the 
 past, and see themselves in the fascinating 
 being. Prodigy and miracle. Figure erect, 
 limbs round, veins full and hot, skin glis 
 tening, hair shaking out the sunshine. So 
 full of bounding life that his sleep must be 
 disturbed by rapturous dreams of to-mor 
 row. Suggestion of danger in his way 
 would be insufficient to put him on his 
 guard, if time were allowed to hear it. He Learns ob- 
 must learn obstacles by confronting them, 5 
 and encountering them one at a time, his them * 
 
228 In a Club Corner 
 
 strong right arm is strengthened by strik 
 ing them down. But, one day, Fraud or 
 New eyes Conspiracy strikes, and new eyes are sud- 
 
 suddenly i i i vv i 
 
 given him. denly given him. He sees so many doubts 
 and difficulties in his way, that he can 
 hardly determine to move at all. He learns 
 a new language, and applies new names. 
 He discovers motives, and grows dizzy try 
 ing to sound them. His anxieties and dis 
 appointments are hooks in his side, which 
 turn him over and over in his bed. Ab 
 straction puzzles him. He will be seeing 
 things without their disguises, and the 
 habit affects his character. Dealing so 
 much with shams and devices, he comes to 
 suspect even the genuine and real, and 
 feels daily the gradual decay and death of 
 the ardor, ingenuousness, and confidence 
 which ennobled and inspired the best part 
 of his life. His penetration and sagacious 
 second -sight make him acquainted with 
 the little arts and artifices of his fellows, 
 and he acquires a certain strength and 
 mastery by practicing them. But such a 
 
 A bundle of bundle of weaknesses he feels must fall 
 
 weaknesses. , , r r 
 
 apart. Such an embodiment of frailties, 
 instincts, little qualities, little faculties, and 
 distrust, cannot last. Made up in such 
 great part of what is worn out and worth- 
 
In a Club Corner 
 
 less, the most natural thing, he thinks, is 
 that it should be transformed into some 
 thing better, and transported to a condi 
 tion more favorable to right growth and 
 development. 
 
 It is not improbable, if the disposition SCHOOLS o* 
 
 - - . MORALS. 
 
 of a great part of the clergy continues, to 
 give less and less attention to what the 
 world esteems as morals, apart from what 
 they esteem religion, that a system of 
 schools will arise, in which radical morals, 
 as an essential part of religion, will be 
 taught to the people. Attempts to divorce 
 them only tend to weaken and confuse the 
 public conscience, and diminish the in 
 fluence of spiritual leaders. 
 
 The time may come when chairs of com- CHAIRS OF 
 mon sense will be set up in the universities. 
 The trouble may be to fill them ; but suit 
 able men, when wanted, will be found. 
 The distinction between scholarship and 
 usefulness will be better defined. Boys 
 will more and more be educated for the 
 uses of education ; and so much that must 
 be unlearned will give place to what may 
 be applied. 
 
2 jo In a Club Corner 
 
 SMALL Southey mentions that Dr. Shaw, the 
 
 naturalist, was one day showing to a friend 
 two volumes written by a Dutchman upon 
 the wings of a butterfly, in the British 
 Museum. "The dissertation is rather 
 voluminous, perhaps you will think," said 
 the enthusiastic naturalist, gravely, "but 
 it is immensely important." "The pur 
 suit of the greatest trifles," said Dr. Cocchi 
 to Spence, "may sometimes have a very 
 good effect: the search after the philoso 
 pher s stone has preserved chemistry ; and 
 the following astrology so much in former 
 ages, has been the cause of astronomy s 
 being so much advanced in ours. Sir Isaac 
 Newton himself has owned that he began 
 with studying judicial astrology, and that 
 it was his pursuit of that idte and vain 
 study which led him into the beauties of, 
 and love for, astronomy." It has been 
 pronounced a great characteristic of genius 
 to do great things with little means. Pax- 
 ton could see that so small a matter as a 
 greenhouse could be dilated into a crystal 
 palace, and with two common materials 
 glass and iron he raised the palace of 
 the genii ; the brightest idea and the 
 noblest ornament added to Europe in this 
 century the Koh-i-noor of the west. 
 
 n- 
 
In a Club Corner 231 
 
 Livy s definition of Archimedes goes on 
 the same ground. James Watt, when sit- 
 
 . turedforkis 
 
 ting one evening with his aunt, Mrs. Muir- idleness. 
 head, at the tea-table, was lectured by her 
 for his idleness. " Take a book," she said, 
 "or do something useful, you have done 
 nothing for the last hour but to take off 
 the lid of that kettle and put it on again ; 
 are you not ashamed of spending your time 
 in this way ? " The poor boy had been 
 making experiments on the condensation 
 of steam, now holding a cup, and now a 
 silver spoon over the issuing vapor, and 
 catching and collecting the drops into 
 which it fell. He had at this time ob 
 tained the first glimpses of that bright idea 
 which, after making his own fortune, has 
 made the fortunes of thousands the con 
 densation of steam in a separate vessel. 
 Little creatures, of no real importance but 
 to themselves, get to be sometimes of con 
 sideration by what they attach themselves 
 to. " Nature," says Sydney Smith, " de 
 scends down to infinite smallness. A great 
 man has his parasites ; and if you take a Parasites. 
 large buzzing blue-bottle fly, and look at it 
 in a microscope, you may see twenty or 
 thirty little ugly insects crawling about it, 
 which, doubtless, think their fly to be the 
 
2^2 In a Club Corner 
 
 bluest, grandest, merriest, most important 
 animal in the universe ; and are convinced 
 the world would be at an end if it ceased 
 to buzz." It has been calculated that the 
 insect life upon our globe, if piled in one 
 mass, would exceed in magnitude the heap 
 which would be made by bringing together 
 all the beasts and birds. There is a class 
 
 infusoria. o f animalcules called Infusoria, because 
 they can be obtained by infusing any vege 
 table or animal substance in water, which, 
 says Professor Owen, "are the most mi 
 nute, and apparently the most insignificant 
 of created beings. Many of them are so 
 diminutive that a single drop of water may 
 contain five hundred millions of individu 
 als, a number nearly equaling that of one 
 half of the whole human species now exist 
 ing upon the surface of the globe." Never 
 theless the varieties in size are such that 
 the difference between the smallest and 
 the largest "is greater than that between 
 a mouse and an elephant," though even 
 the elephant of the race is altogether in 
 visible to the naked eye. As to those 
 
 Earth- remarkable sub-soilers, the common earth 
 worms, the ground is almost alive with 
 them. Wherever mould is turned up, it is 
 truly said, there these sappers and miners 
 
 worms. 
 
In a Club Corner 233 
 
 are turned up with it. They are nature s 
 
 plowmen. 
 
 plowmen. They bore the stubborn soil in 
 every direction, and render it pervious to 
 air, rain, and the fibres of plants. With 
 out these auxiliaries, "the farmer," says 
 Gilbert White, "would find that his land 
 would become cold, hard-bound, and ster 
 ile." The green mantle of vegetation which 
 covers the earth is dependent upon the 
 worms which burrow in the bowels of it. 
 What conveys a more definite idea of the 
 magnitude of their operations, they are 
 perpetually replenishing the upper soil, <#*- 
 and covering with soft and fine material a upper so ;i. 
 crust which before was close and ungenial. 
 They swallow a quantity of earth with their 
 food, and having extracted the nutriment 
 they eject the remainder at the outlet of 
 their holes. This refuse forms the worm- 
 casts which are the annoyance of the gar 
 dener, who might be reconciled to them 
 if he were aware that the depositors save 
 him a hundred times more labor than they 
 cause. Mr. Charles Darwin has shown statement 
 that in thirteen years a field of pasture 
 was covered to a depth of three inches and 
 a half with the mould discharged from 
 their intestines, and in another case the 
 layer they had accumulated in eighty years 
 
In a Club Corner 
 
 was from twelve to fourteen inches thick. 
 They therefore play a most important part 
 in the economy of vegetation, and we see 
 why they teem throughout the surface of 
 the globe. "I was told," says Lady Mary 
 Wortley Montagu, " by a very good author, 
 who is deep in the secret, that at this very 
 minute there is a bill cooking up at a hunt- 
 The little ing-seat in Norfolk, to have not taken out 
 
 word" not" & 
 
 of the Commandments, and clapped into 
 the Creed, the ensuing season of Parlia 
 ment. This bold attempt for the liberty 
 of the subject is wholly projected by Mr. 
 Walpole, who proposed it to the secret 
 committee in his parlor. William Young 
 seconded it, and answered for all his ac 
 quaintances voting right to a man. Dod- 
 dington very gravely objected that the 
 obstinacy of human nature was such that 
 he feared when they had positive com 
 mands to do so perhaps people would not 
 commit adultery and bear false witness 
 against their neighbors with the readiness 
 and cheerfulness they do at present. This 
 nodding- objection seemed to sink deep into the 
 tion. minds of the great politicians at the boards, 
 and I don t know whether the bill won t be 
 dropped." Goethe s connection with the 
 Weimar theatre, it is said, was finally and 
 
In a Club Corner 235 
 
 wholly broken off by means of a dog and a A dog and 
 
 a mistress. 
 
 mistress. One Karsten possessed a per 
 forming poodle, and traveled about with 
 this intelligent animal, representing a cer 
 tain melodrama. The pampered and petted 
 Von Heygendorff bore a spite against the 
 inflexible director, and, with feminine mal 
 ice, she, in order to annoy Goethe, induced 
 her lover, the duke, to consent to an en 
 gagement of Karsten and his dog. Goethe 
 at once resigned, and the duke accepted 
 the resignation. He afterwards withdrew 
 his acceptance, but Goethe remained 
 proudly inflexible ; and the classic epoch 
 of the Weimar theatre was terminated by 
 a clever and unconscious poodle, who emu- Goethe in- 
 lated the mischief produced by Newton s ^ 
 dog Diamond. It is related that when 
 Layard, the discoverer of Nineveh, was 
 twenty years old and lounging through 
 Mesopotamia he was captured by an Arab 
 tribe and made the chiefs cook, in which 
 position he was greatly admired, and called 
 by the women of the tribe "the blue-eyed." 
 He did not enjoy his slavery, and after a 
 while managed to communicate with his 
 friends, and at the end of a good deal of 
 talk the Arab chief consented to exchange 
 his prisoner for a greyhound, celebrated in 
 
236 In a Club Corner 
 
 the country for hunting gazelles. His first 
 halt on his return to civilization was at the 
 encampment of Botta, who had been mak 
 ing longitudinal excavations, and to his 
 despair without result. Layard was struck 
 by a clever idea to cut transversely. 
 
 Nineveh This was done, and Nineveh was discovered. 
 That happy thought decided his vocation 
 he became an archaeologist. " The only 
 memory I don t like," said Layard, gayly, 
 " is that I was exchanged for a dog. My 
 only consolation is in the fact that a Se- 
 longui greyhound is considered by Mussul 
 mans as an especially noble animal." The 
 foolish ballad of Lilli Burlero, treating the 
 Papists, and chiefly the Irish, in a very 
 ridiculous manner, slight and insignificant 
 as it now seems, had once a more powerful 
 
 Effect of a effect than the Philippics of either Demos 
 thenes or Cicero ; it contributed not a little 
 toward the great revolution in 1688 ; the 
 whole army and the people in country and 
 city caught it up, and "sang a deluded 
 prince out of three kingdoms." The air 
 is gay and beautiful ; it is one of the mas 
 terpieces of Purcell, and lingers in the ear 
 of every person who has once heard it. 
 No wonder My Uncle Toby adopted it as 
 a favorite and resource. Strahan, the 
 
In a Club Corner 237 
 
 printer, and friend of Johnson, once ob 
 served that many men were kept back from 
 trying their fortunes in London because 
 they were born to a competency, and said, 
 " Small certainties are the bane of men smaiicer- 
 of talents." "Small debts," said John 
 son, " are like small shot ; they are rat 
 tling on every side, and can scarcely be 
 escaped without a wound : great debts are 
 like cannon ; of loud noise, but little 
 danger. You must, therefore, be enabled 
 to discharge petty debts, that you may have 
 leisure, with security, to struggle with the 
 rest." A gentleman visited Gibson, the 
 sculptor, not long before his death, when 
 he found him busy with his beautiful Pan 
 dora finished, as it seemed, but still "in 
 the clay." There she stood a model of 
 refined grace her box in her hand. The 
 old man sat before it, talking and philoso 
 phizing. As he talked, he would gaze at 
 his figure and, wetting his finger, would Figure of 
 
 , , , ... Pandora- 
 
 now and again pass it down the surface of a 
 limb, giving a faint depression, or scraping 
 off a film as faint. "Bless you," he said, 
 " there s a month s work on it yet ! " Re 
 minding one of the saying of the old 
 Greek sculptor, answering his objector that 
 these were trifles. " Trifles make per- 
 
238 In a Club Corner 
 
 fection, and perfection is no trifle." Ah ! 
 trifles ! " How much wiser," exclaimed 
 Lady Mary Montagu, "are all those women 
 I have despised than myself ! In placing 
 their happiness in trifles, they have placed 
 it in what is attainable." 
 
 SECTS AND 
 CREEDS. 
 
 Bayle in his Dictionary tells us that the 
 sect which pleased Milton most in his 
 youth was that of the Puritans ; but in his 
 middle age he was best pleased with the 
 Independents and Anabaptists, because 
 they allowed more liberty to every private 
 person, and in his opinion seemed to come 
 nearest to the primitive Christians : but in 
 the latter part of his life he separated him 
 self from all communions, and did not fre 
 quent any Christian assembly, nor made 
 use of their peculiar rites in his family. 
 As for the rest, he expressed the profound- 
 est reverence to God as well in deeds as 
 words. It has been very justly said that 
 the whole tangle of authoritative creeds 
 is, at the best, embarrassing. They lead a 
 man, from their nature, to try to continue 
 in a belief which he once thought he had. 
 They give a fossil form to what should be 
 pliant, elastic, and alive. I believe, said 
 Dean Swift, that thousands of men would 
 
In a Club Corner 239 
 
 be orthodox enough in certain points, if 
 divines had not been too curious, or too Divines too 
 
 , , . .... curious, or 
 
 narrow, in reducing orthodoxy within the too narrow. 
 compass of subtleties, niceties, and dis 
 tinctions, with little warrant from Scrip 
 ture, and less from reason or good policy. 
 When Theodore Hook, in the old days of 
 the English test oath, was asked if he 
 could swear to the XXXIX articles, he re 
 plied, " Certainly, with all my heart ; I am 
 only sorry there are not more of them." 
 Love, in the judgment of Hunt, is the The creed 
 
 J . destined to 
 
 only creed destined to survive all others, survive. 
 "They who think that no church can exist 
 without a strong spice of terror, should 
 watch the growth of education, and see 
 which system of it is most beloved. They 
 should see, also, which system in the very 
 nursery is growing the most ridiculous." 
 
 A late commentator upon Goethe s GOOD OUT 
 Faust is free to express the opinion that 0! 
 " evil, as a stimulant to deed, to creative 
 activity, is an element of progress ; as 
 selfish indulgence, producing indolence and 
 intellectual inactivity, tends downward, 
 and causes cessation of spiritual life. It 
 is in this respect comparable to poisons 
 which in certain solutions stimulate the 
 
240 
 
 In a Club Cornet 
 
 Material 
 things and 
 moral 
 agenfiet 
 
 The Dra- 
 gonnadet. 
 
 vital forces of the human system and are 
 useful as medicines, while in their undiluted 
 state they have the directly opposite effect, 
 causing instant cessation of the animal 
 life. If there are material things which 
 have this double action upon the physical 
 system, may there not be moral agencies, 
 too, that have analogous effects upon the 
 moral system?" Southey, in one of his 
 attractive biographies, tells us how Louis 
 XIV. "by one wicked edict revoked the 
 privileges of the French Protestants, and 
 by another of the same day prohibited 
 their public worship, banished their min 
 isters, and decreed that their children 
 should be educated by Roman Catholic 
 priests in the Roman Catholic faith ; the 
 better to insure obedience he quartered 
 dragoons upon them, and left them to the 
 mercy of his military missionaries. The 
 Dragonnades, as they were called, were a 
 fit afterpiece to the tragedy of St. Bartholo 
 mew s day. The number of persons who 
 emigrated in consequence of this execrable 
 persecution has been variously computed 
 from fifty to five hundred thousand ; more 
 meritorious men were never driven from 
 their native country, and every country 
 which afforded them refuge was amply re- 
 
/;/ a Club Corner 241 
 
 warded by their talents, their arts, and their 
 industry. Prussia received a large and most 
 beneficial increase of useful subjects ; they 
 multiplied the looms of England, and gave Effect of 
 new activity to the trade of Holland. 
 Some of these refugees converted rocks 
 into vineyards on the shores of the Leman 
 Lake ; and British Africa is indebted to 
 others for wines which will one day rival 
 those of the Rhine and the Garonne." 
 Few men were more bigoted or cruel than equity and 
 Archbishop Laud. He sharpened the L g ^d. 0j 
 spiritual sword, and drew it against all sorts 
 of offenders, intending that the discipline 
 of the church should be felt as well as 
 spoken of. There had not been such a 
 crowd of business in the High Commission 
 Court since the Reformation, nor so many 
 large fines imposed, as under the prelate s 
 administration. The fines, we are told, 
 were assigned to the repairs of St. Paul s, 
 which gave rise to the proverb, that "the 
 church was repaired with the sins of the 
 people." 
 
 John Wesley, according to his best bi- THE FAITH 
 ographer, related remarkable cures wrought 
 by his faith and his prayers, which he 
 considered, and represented, as positively 
 
242 In a Club Corner 
 
 miraculous. By thinking strongly on a 
 text of Scripture which promised that these 
 signs should follow those that believe, and 
 by calling on Christ to increase his faith 
 and confirm the word of his grace, he shook 
 off instantaneously, he says, a fever which 
 had hung upon him for some days, and was 
 in a mo- in a. moment freed from all pain, and re- 
 
 ment freed , r 
 
 from aii stored to his former strength. He visited 
 
 P&in. 
 
 a believer at night who was not expected 
 to live till the morning : the man was 
 speechless and senseless, and his pulse 
 gone. " A few of us," says Wesley, " im 
 mediately joined in prayers. I relate the 
 naked fact. Before we had done, his senses 
 and his speech returned. Now, he that will 
 account for this by natural causes has my 
 free leave. But I choose to say this is the 
 power of God." So, too, when his own 
 teeth ached, he prayed, and the pain left 
 him. And this faith was so strong, that it 
 cured his sufficed to cure, not only himself, but his 
 
 horse also. , , // -n /r i i * 
 
 horse also. " My horse, he says, " was so 
 exceedingly lame, that I was afraid I must 
 have lain by. We could not discern what 
 it was that was amiss, and yet he could 
 scarce set his foot to the ground. By riding 
 thus seven miles I was thoroughly tired, 
 and my head ached more than it had done 
 
In a Club Corner 
 
 for some months. What I here aver is the 
 naked fact : let every man account for it 
 as he sees good. I then thought, Cannot 
 God heal either man or beast, by any 
 means, or without any ? Immediately my 
 weariness and headache ceased, and my 
 horse s lameness in the same instant. Nor 
 did he halt any more either that day or the 
 next." 
 
 It is related that Scott, while attending POVERTY. 
 Dugald Stewart s lectures on moral philos 
 ophy, sat often beside a person consider 
 ably older than himself of a very humble 
 rank, apparently, but of great diligence in 
 his studies. Scott paid him some atten 
 tion, and they contracted quite an inti 
 macy, and used to take walks together ; 
 but the young man never spoke of his 
 parentage or residence. One day Scott 
 stopped to relieve a bluegown, or licensed A biue- 
 beggar, who stood hat in hand, silently g> 
 leaning on his staff. This happened three 
 or four times, and Scott was beginning to 
 get acquainted with the old man, when, one 
 day, he met him in company with his fel 
 low-student, who showed some confusion. 
 " Do you know anything to the old man s 
 discredit ? " asked Walter. " Oh, no, sir ; 
 
244 
 
 In a Club Corner 
 
 A n excla 
 mation of 
 Dickens 1 . 
 
 Faustine s 
 moment of 
 joy. 
 
 God forbid ! " cried the poor fellow, burst 
 ing into tears ; " but I am a poor wretch 
 to be ashamed to speak to him. He is my 
 own father ! He has enough laid by to 
 serve him in his old age ; but he stands 
 there, bleaching his head in the wind, that 
 he may get the means of paying for my 
 education ! " True enough is the excla 
 mation of Dickens, in Bleak House, 
 "What the poor are to the poor, is little 
 known, excepting to themselves and God." 
 "Poverty," says Plutarch, "is not dishon 
 orable in itself, but only when it arises 
 from idleness, intemperance, extravagance, 
 and folly." " An avowal of poverty is a 
 disgrace to no man ; to make no effort to 
 escape from it is indeed disgraceful," is a 
 saying of Thucydides. When Faustine, in 
 Hugo s masterpiece, saw that she could 
 live by her small wages, she had a moment 
 of joy. To live honestly by her own toil, 
 what a favor of Heaven ! There is a pas 
 sage of vivid description in one of Dick 
 ens stories who could forget it ? " In 
 a small English country town, the inhabit 
 ants of which supported themselves by the 
 labor of their hands in plaiting and pre 
 paring straw for those who made bonnets 
 and other articles of dress and ornament 
 
In a Club Corner 245 
 
 from that material concealed under an 
 assumed name, and living in a quiet pov- 
 .erty which knew no change, no pleasures, 
 and few cares but that of struggling on 
 from day to day in the one great toil for 
 bread dwelt Barnaby and his mother." Barnaby 
 
 . . . , . and his 
 
 Johnson, giving expression to his own mother. 
 wretched experience, wrote from time to 
 time to Boswell, " Poverty, my dear friend, 
 is so great an evil, and pregnant with so 
 much temptation, and so much misery, that 
 I cannot but earnestly enjoin you to avoid 
 it. Live on what you have ; live if you 
 can on less ; do not borrow either for van 
 ity or pleasure ; the vanity will end in 
 shame, and the pleasure in regret ; stay 
 therefore at home, till you have saved 
 money for your journey hither. Do not 
 accustom yourself to consider debt only as 
 an inconvenience ; you will find it a ca 
 lamity. Poverty takes away so many means 
 of doing good, and produces so much ina 
 bility to resist evil, both natural and moral, 
 that it is by all virtuous means to be By all virtu* 
 avoided. Consider a man whose fortune *** 
 is very narrow ; whatever his rank by " 
 birth, or whatever his reputation by intel 
 lectual excellence, what can he do ? or 
 what evil can he prevent ? That he cannot 
 
246 In a Club Corner 
 
 help the needy, is evident ; he has nothing 
 to spare. But, perhaps, his advice or ad 
 monition may be useful. His poverty will^ 
 destroy his influence ; many more can find 
 that he is poor, than that he is wise ; and 
 few will reverence the understanding that 
 is of so little advantage to its owner. Re- 
 solve not to be poor ; whatever you have, 
 
 you have, . 
 
 spend less, spend less. Poverty is a great enemy to 
 human happiness ; it certainly destroys 
 liberty, and it makes some virtues imprac 
 ticable, and others extremely difficult. No 
 man can help others that wants help him 
 self ; we must have enough before we have 
 to spare. I remember, and entreat you to 
 remember, that the first approach to riches 
 is security from poverty." The saying of 
 Socrates, that " he who wants least is 
 most like the gods, who want nothing," 
 was a favorite sentence with Johnson. 
 Fortunately, the necessaries of life do not 
 cost much, or the poor could not live. 
 
 Nature "The laws of nature teach us exactly what 
 at we need," says Montaigne. "After the 
 sages have told us that according to nature 
 no one is indigent, and that every one is 
 so according to opinion, they very subtly 
 distinguish between the desires that pro 
 ceed from her and those that proceed from 
 
In a Club Corner 
 
 the disorder of our own fancy ; those of 
 which we can see the end are hers ; those 
 that fly from us, and of which we can see 
 no end, are our own. Want of goods is 
 easily repaired ; poverty of soul is irrepara 
 ble." Adversity has been called the trial Adversity 
 of principle. Without it a man hardly principle. 
 knows whether he is an honest man. 
 " However mean your life is, meet it and 
 live it," says Thoreau ; "do not shun it 
 and call it hard names. It is not as bad 
 as you are. It looks poorest when you are 
 richest. The fault-finder will find faults 
 even in paradise. Love your life, poor as 
 it is. You may perhaps have some pleas 
 ant, thrilling, glorious hours, even in a 
 poor-house. The setting sun is reflected 
 from the windows of the almshouse as 
 brightly as from the rich man s abode ; the 
 snow melts before its door as early in the 
 spring. I do not see but a quiet mind may 
 live as contentedly there, and have as 
 cheering thoughts, as in a palace. The rhetors 
 town s poor seem to me often to live the 
 most independent lives of any. May be 
 they are simply great enough to receive 
 without misgiving. Most think that they 
 are above being supported by the town ; 
 but it often happens that they are not 
 
248 In a Club Corner 
 
 above supporting themselves by dishonest 
 means, which should be more disreputable. 
 Cultivate poverty like a garden herb, like 
 sage. Do not trouble yourselves much to 
 get new things, whether clothes or friends. 
 Turn the old ; return to them. Things do 
 not change ; we change. Sell your clothes 
 and keep your thoughts. God will see that 
 you do not want society." "O, beloved 
 a- and gentle Poverty ! " exclaims Souves- 
 . tre s philosopher in his attic; "pardon me 
 for having for a moment wished to fly 
 from thee, as I would from Want ; stay 
 here forever with thy charming sisters, 
 Pity, Patience, Sobriety, and Solitude ; be 
 ye my queens and my instructors ; teach 
 me the stern duties of life ; remove far 
 from my abode the weakness of heart, 
 .and giddiness of head which follow pros 
 perity. Holy Poverty ! teach me to en 
 dure without complaining, to impart with 
 out grudging, to seek the end of life higher 
 than in pleasure, farther off than in power. 
 Thou givest the body strength, thou mak- 
 est the mind more firm ; and, thanks to 
 thee, this life, to which the rich attach 
 themselves as to a rock, becomes a bark of 
 which death may cut the cable without 
 awakening all our fears. Continue to sus- 
 
In a Club Corner 249 
 
 tain me, O thou whom Christ hath called 
 Blessed." "O hunger, hunger, immor- Hunger 
 tal hunger ! " apostrophizes John Buncle. 
 " Thou art the blessing of the poor, the 
 regale of the temperate rich, and the deli 
 cious gust of the plainest morsel. Cursed 
 is the man that has turned thee out-of- 
 doors, and at whose table thou art a 
 stranger ! Yea, thrice cursed is he, who 
 always thirsts, and hungers no more ! " 
 Poverty, or rather indifference to worldly 
 wealth, is that which Renan claims to have 
 most faithfully practiced. " My dream," 
 he says, " would be to be lodged, fed, 
 clothed, and warmed, without having to be 
 stow a thought about it, by somebody who 
 would take me by contract and leave me 
 to do what I pleased." Phaedrus relates, in 
 one of his fables, that when Hercules was 
 received into heaven, and was saluting the 
 gods who thronged around with their con 
 gratulations, he turned away his look when 
 Plutus drew near, assigning as a reason for 
 this to Jupiter, who inquired the cause of 
 his strange conduct, that he hated Plutus He ^" 
 
 and Plutus 
 
 because he was a friend to the bad ; and, 
 besides, corrupted both good and bad with 
 his gifts. As to low living and high think 
 ing, so often extolled by the philosophers 
 
250 In a Club Corner 
 
 a careless concern for the things of this 
 world and a pitch of excellence sublimely 
 superhuman they are not without their 
 provoking inconveniences and melancholy 
 effects, as examples prove. Cardell Good- 
 man and Benjamin Griffin, both good ac 
 tors long after Shakespeare, shared, we are 
 told, the same bed in their modest lodging, 
 and having but one shirt between them, 
 wore it each in his turn. The only dis 
 sension which ever occurred between them 
 was caused by Goodman, who, having to 
 pay a visit to a lady, clapped on the shirt 
 when it was clean, and Griffin s day for 
 wearing it ! " Edgar A. Poe I remember 
 seeing on a single occasion," writes the 
 author of Memories of Many Men and Some 
 Women. " He announced a lecture to be 
 delivered at the Society Library building 
 on Broadway, under the title of The Uni- 
 verse. It was a stormy night, and there 
 were not more than sixty persons present 
 in the lecture-room. I have seen no por 
 trait of Poe that does justice to his pale, 
 delicate, intellectual face and magnificent 
 eyes. His lecture was a rhapsody of the 
 most intense brilliancy. He appeared in 
 spired, and his inspiration affected the 
 scant audience almost painfully. He wore 
 
In a Club Corner 251 
 
 his coat tightly buttoned across his slender 
 chest; his eyes seemed to glow like those His eyes 
 
 r , . iit -i glowed like 
 
 of his own raven, and he kept us entranced his own. 
 for two hours and a half. The late Mr. 
 Putnam, the publisher, told me that the 
 next day the wayward, luckless poet pre 
 sented himself to him with the manuscript 
 of The Universe. He told Putnam that 
 in it he solved the whole problem of life ; 
 that it would immortalize its publisher as 
 well as its author ; and, what was of less 
 consequence, that it would bring to him the 
 fortune which he had so long and so vainly 
 been seeking. Mr. Putnam, while an ad 
 mirer of genius, was also a cool, calculat 
 ing man of business. As such, he could 
 not see the matter in exactly the same 
 light as the poet did, and the only result of 
 the interview was that he lent Poe a shil 
 ling to take him home to Fordham, where 
 he then resided." 
 
 Readers of Dickens will remember DIGESTION. 
 Georgiana Pocket a cousin of Miss 
 Havisham s >an indigestive single woman, 
 who called her rigidity religion, and her 
 liver love. It is Emerson, I believe, who 
 speaks of brains paralyzed by stomach. 
 He says also that he knew a witty phy- 
 
In a Club Corner 
 
 sician who found the creed in the biliary 
 duct, and used to affirm that if there was 
 The liver, disease in the liver, the man became a 
 Calvinist, and if that organ was sound, he 
 became a Unitarian. " Much wisdom in 
 olives," said Sancho Panza. " Soup and 
 fish," in the judgment of Sydney Smith, 
 " explain half of the emotions of life." You 
 remember the account Swedenborg has left 
 us of his first vision : " I had eaten a 
 hearty supper, perhaps too hearty : and I 
 was sitting alone in my chair, when a 
 A bright bright being suddenly appeared to me, and 
 appLred said, Swedenborg, why hast thou eaten 
 borg. too much ? Voltaire was ashamed of 
 
 his indigestion. He wrote to Madame de 
 Bernieres, " I am ashamed to present my 
 self to my friends with a weak digestion 
 and a downcast mind. I wish to give you 
 only my beautiful days, and to suffer in 
 cognito." Rumford, it is said, proposed to 
 RnmfortTs the elector of Bavaria a scheme for feeding 
 
 scheme. - .... 
 
 his soldiers at a much cheaper rate than 
 formerly. His plan was simply to compel 
 them to masticate their food thoroughly. 
 A small quantity, thus eaten, would, ac 
 cording to that famous projector, afford 
 more sustenance than a large meal hastily 
 devoured. " I do not know," remarks Ma- 
 
In a Club Corner 253 
 
 caulay, " how Rumford s proposition was 
 received ; but to the mind, I believe, it 
 will be found more nutritious to digest a 
 page than to devour a volume." 
 
 Montenegro has hardly any plains. The HEROISM 
 limestone ridges of the Dinaric Alps which 
 traverse it, occasionally diversified by lofty 
 peaks, are so rugged and rocky that the 
 people have the common saying : " When 
 God was in the act of distributing stones 
 over the earth, the bag that held them 
 burst, and let them all fall upon Monte 
 negro." Death in battle is regarded by 
 them as natural death, but death in bed as 
 something apart from nature. The women, 
 we are told, have the same passionate at 
 tachment with the men to family and coun 
 try, and display much of the same valor. 
 Gladstone has given two most remarkable 
 examples, supplied by Goptchevitch. A Example 
 sister and four brothers, the four of course J 
 all armed, are making a pilgrimage or 
 excursion to a church. The state of war 
 with the Turk being normal, we need not 
 wonder when we learn that they are at 
 tacked unawares on their way, in a pass 
 where they proceed in single file, by seven 
 armed Turks ; who announce themselves 
 
254 
 
 In a Club Corner 
 
 fight pro 
 ceeds. 
 
 A not her 
 
 remarkable 
 
 example 
 
 challenge. 
 
 by shooting dead the first of the brothers, 
 and dangerously wounding the second. 
 The odds are fearful, but the fight proceeds. 
 The wounded man leans against the rock, 
 and though he receives another and fatal 
 shot, kills two of the Turks before he dies. 
 The sister presses forward, and grasps his 
 rifle and his dagger. At last all are killed 
 on both sides, excepting herself and a 
 single Turk. She asks for mercy ; and he 
 promises it, but names her maidenly honor 
 as the price. Indignant, and perceiving 
 that now he is off his guard, she stabs him 
 with the dagger. He tears it from her 
 hand, they close, and she dashes the wretch 
 over the precipice into the yawning depth 
 below. The second instance is quite as 
 remarkable. Tidings reach a Montenegrin 
 wife that her husband has just been slain 
 by a party under the command of a certain 
 Turkish officer. Knowing the road by 
 which they are traveling, she seizes a rifle, 
 chooses her position, and shoots the officer 
 dead. The rest of the party take to flight. 
 The wife of the dead Turk sends the Mon 
 tenegrin widow an epistle. "Thou hast 
 robbed me of both my eyes. Thou art a 
 genuine daughter of Tscernagora. Come 
 to-morrow alone to the border-line, and 
 
In a Club Corner 255 
 
 we will prove by trial which was the bet 
 ter wife." The Tscernagorine appeared, 
 equipped with the arms of the dead Turkish 
 officer, and alone, as she was invited. But 
 the Turkish woman had thought prudence 
 the better part of valor, and brought an 
 armed champion with her, who charged 
 her on horseback. She shot him dead as 
 he advanced, and seizing her faithless an 
 tagonist, bound her and took her home, 
 kept her as a nurse-maid for fourteen years, 
 and then let her go back to her place and 
 people. 
 
 It is a maxim, that character and destiny CHARAC- 
 are the same thing. " Be what you were 
 meant to be," said one of the Concord phi 
 losophers. " You may go through the 
 world an oddity, to your own merriment at 
 least, if not that of your contemporaries. 
 Character is a fact, and that is much in a 
 world of pretense and concession. Char 
 acter, not accomplishments, but character 
 personally controlling these, does the work. 
 Manners carry the world for the moment, Manners/or 
 character for all times. Your real influence character 
 is measured by your treatment of yourself, times. 
 First find the man in yourself if you will 
 inspire manliness in others. Like begets 
 
256 In a Club Corner 
 
 like the world over." "Take the place 
 and attitude," says Emerson, " which be 
 long to you, and all men acquiesce. The 
 The world world must be just. It leaves every man 
 J with profound unconcern, to set his own 
 rate." Schiller, in Wallenstein, affirms 
 that " Every man stamps his value on him 
 self. The price we challenge for ourselves 
 is given us. There does not live on earth 
 the man, be his station what it may, that 
 I despise myself compared with him. Man 
 is made great or little by his own will." 
 Thoreau insists, in his vigorous way, that 
 " Every man should stand for a force which 
 is perfectly irresistible. How can any man 
 be weak who dares to be at all ? Even the 
 tenderest plants force their way up through 
 the hardest earth, and the crevices of rocks ; 
 but a man no material power can resist. 
 What a wedge, what a beetle, what a cata 
 pult, is an earnest man ! What can resist 
 Yet we war him ? " Yet, says Mill, " It is individuality 
 a /ividua l iit y . that we war against : we should think we 
 had done wonders if we had made ourselves 
 all alike ; forgetting that the unlikeness of 
 one person to another is generally the first 
 thing which draws the attention of either 
 to the imperfection of his own type, and 
 the superiority of another, or the possi- 
 
In a Club Corner 257 
 
 bility, by combining the advantages of 
 both, of producing something better than 
 either." " Common natures," said Lamb, 
 "do not suffice me. Good people, as they 
 are called, won t serve me. I want indi 
 viduals. I am made up of queer points, 
 and I want so many answering needles." 
 Of self-development, Maudsley says, there 
 
 . / opment. 
 
 is hardly any one who sets it before him 
 self as an aim in life. " The question to 
 be entertained and decided at the outset 
 will be, whether this aim shall be internal 
 or external whether the individual shall 
 seek first the completest development of 
 which his nature is capable, other gains, 
 such as riches, reputation, power, being 
 allowed to fall to him by the way ; or 
 whether he shall seek worldly success, 
 the formation of character being allowed 
 to be a secondary and incidental matter? 
 The formation of character in which the Formation 
 
 . , r , . , -, of character. 
 
 thoughts, feelings, and actions are under 
 the habitual guidance of a well fashioned 
 will, is perhaps the hardest task in the 
 world, being, when accomplished, the high 
 est effort of self-development. It repre 
 sents the attainment by conscious method 
 of a harmony of the individual nature in 
 itself, and of the completest harmony be- 
 
258 In a Club Corner 
 
 tween man and nature ; a condition in 
 which the individual has succeeded in 
 making the best of himself, of the human 
 nature with which he has to do, and of the 
 world in which he moves and has his 
 being." Froude says, writing of Cicero, 
 
 Manner and "A man s own manner and character is 
 what best becomes him." " In Carlyle as 
 in Byron," said Emerson, " one is more 
 struck with the rhetoric than with the 
 matter. He has manly superiority rather 
 than intellectuality, and so makes good hits 
 all the time. There is more character 
 than intellect in every sentence, herein 
 strongly resembling Samuel Johnson." 
 George Eliot wrote in her Diary, " I have 
 seen Emerson I have seen a man." 
 When Jenny Lind was in Boston, Mr. 
 Webster called upon her. When he was 
 gone, she jumped up, walked the floor ex 
 citedly, clasped her hands, and with inde 
 scribable earnestness exclaimed, " Oh, that 
 is a man ! that is a man ! I never saw a 
 man before ! I never saw a man before ! " 
 
 Tranquil- Madame de Maintenon pronounced tran 
 quillity the supreme power. When Nelson 
 had finished his famous dispatch to the 
 Crown Prince of Denmark, at the battle of 
 Copenhagen, a wafer was given him to seal 
 
In a Club Corner 259 
 
 it with ; but he ordered a candle to be 
 brought from the cock-pit, and sealed the 
 letter with wax, affixing a larger seal than 
 he ordinarily used. "This," remarked he, 
 "is no time to appear hurried or informal." 
 "I remember a small Mussulman boy," The Muss 
 says an officer, in his published Recollec- ndth? 
 tions of Military Service in India, " one of " 
 our servants, lying on the veranda, appar 
 ently asleep, when, to our horror, we saw 
 a cobra creep out of a lot of boots, lying 
 near, which the boy had been cleaning. 
 The cobra passed over his face, and actu 
 ally darted his tongue in and out of his 
 open mouth. The boy never stirred, and 
 we remarked how providential it was that 
 he was fast asleep. The snake after a 
 time glided off, when the boy jumped up, 
 and seized a stick, and killed it. He had 
 been awake all the time." Thoreau asks, Hadbeen 
 " Which would have advanced the most at tk*ti*u. 
 the end of a month, the boy who had 
 made his own jackknife from the ore which 
 he had dug and smelted, reading as much 
 as would be necessary for this, or the 
 boy who had attended the lectures on 
 metallurgy at the Institute in the mean 
 while, and had received a Rogers penknife 
 from his father ? Which would be most 
 
260 In a Club Corner 
 
 likely to cut his fingers ? " Character and 
 powers, early and late, do not much vary. 
 The inspiration of purpose, and work, very 
 
 Personality, soon establish personality. Can any man 
 remember when the radically distinguish 
 ing things he stands for first took root 
 within him ? Nathaniel Hawthorne, when 
 he was sixteen years old, sent forth, we 
 are told, the first number of The Spectator, 
 a small but neatly printed and well edited 
 paper. A prospectus had been issued only 
 the week before, setting forth that The 
 Spectator would be issued on Wednesdays, 
 " price twelve cents per annum, payment 
 to be made at the end of the year." 
 Among the advertisements on the last 
 page was this : " Nathaniel Hawthorne 
 proposes to publish, by subscription, a neat 
 edition of The Miseries of Authors, to 
 which will be added a sequel containing 
 facts and remarks drawn from his own ex 
 perience." The Hawthorne of The Scarlet 
 
 An oration Letter already existed. An oration de- 
 livered by Daniel Webster July 4, 1802, 
 then twenty years old, and principal of 
 Fryeburg Academy, was recently dis 
 covered in a mass of the author s private 
 papers which had found their way into a 
 junk shop. The last speech made by Mr. 
 
In a Club Corner 261 
 
 Webster in the Senate of the United 
 States, July 17, 1850, concluded with the 
 same peroration with which he closed the 
 Fryeburg oration, forty-eight years before ! 
 I like to repeat the words that young 
 Thomas Carlyle wrote to his brother, nine 
 years after he had left the University of 
 Edinburgh as a student, forty-three years 
 before he returned as its rector. " I say, 
 Jack, thou and I must never falter. Work, 
 my boy, work unweariedly. I swear that 
 all the thousand miseries of this hard fight, 
 and ill-health, the most terrific of them all, 
 shall never chain us down. By the river 
 Styx it shall not. Two fellows from a 
 nameless spot in Annandale shall yet show 
 the world the pluck that is in the Carlyles." 
 That mighty hater and smiter of cant and 
 shams was of good Scotch stock, and had 
 been generously brought up on good air, 
 simple food, and sound instruction. The 
 qualities that he had inherited and scrupu 
 lously cultivated were genuine, and of the 
 highest manhood. The "pith o sense," 
 and " pride o worth," and books, made him 
 so much a man, and so different from other 
 men, that independence was necessary to 
 him. If he was to be a man, and fight the t*yu him. 
 battle of life on his own ground, it must 
 
 
262 In a Club Corner 
 
 be his, without any question of title. Be 
 lieving that in the hour in which a man 
 "mortgages himself to two, or ten, or 
 twenty, he dwarfs himself below the stat 
 ure of one ; " and being determined that 
 he would not be " cramped and diminished 
 rke desire of his proportions," the desire, not for 
 Zoot within riches, but for independence, took deep 
 root within him. He felt that he had 
 much to say in this world, and would say 
 it, without favor or fear. It is true, as a 
 quaint old writer puts it, that the greatest 
 part of our felicity is to be well-born of 
 parents, in other words, of sound bodies, 
 sound minds, and correct principles, and 
 to inherit the same. Especially, if it be 
 true, as Hazlitt asserts, that "no one ever 
 changes his character from the time he is 
 two years old ; nay, from the time he is 
 two hours old. We may, with instruction 
 and opportunity, mend our manners, or 
 else alter them for the worse, as the flesh 
 or fortune shall serve ; but the character, 
 Themternai the internal original bias remains always 
 "bias the same, true to itself to the very last 
 and feels the ruling passion strong in 
 death. The color of our lives is woven 
 into the fatal thread at our births ; our 
 original sins and our redeeming graces 
 
In a Club Corner 263 
 
 are infused into us ; nor is the bond, that 
 confirms our destiny, ever canceled." In- inheritance 
 heritance is fate. The stuff of manhood ls/a 
 in Daniel Webster, when he was briefless 
 and penniless, led him to decline a clerk 
 ship of two thousand a year feeling it 
 to be his mission " to make opinions for 
 other men to record, and not to be the 
 clerk to record the opinions of courts." It 
 is related that when he, in attacking a legal 
 proposition of an opponent at the bar, was 
 reminded that he was assailing a dictum 
 of Lord Camden, he turned to the court, 
 and after paying a tribute to Camden s 
 greatness, as a jurist, simply added, " But, 
 may it please your Honor, I differ from 
 Lord Camden." It is evident that such 
 self-assertion would have been ridiculous 
 had not the character of the man relieved 
 it from all essential pretension. Judge 
 Story, on the evening previous to the de 
 livery of the great speech in reply to Hayne, R e pt y to 
 called on Mr. Webster, and, after expressing Hayne 
 some anxiety as to the result of the debate, 
 offered to aid him in looking up materials. 
 Mr. Webster thanked him, and said, " Give 
 yourself no uneasiness, Judge Story ; I will 
 grind him as fine as a pinch of snuff." It 
 is said that when Thorwaldsen, the Danish 
 
264 In a Club Corner 
 
 sculptor, saw Webster s head in Powers 
 A design studio in Rome, he exclaimed, " Ah ! a de 
 sign for Jupiter, I see!" He would not 
 believe that it was a living American. 
 Theodore Parker describes him as " a man 
 of large mould, a great body and a great 
 brain. Since Socrates there has seldom 
 been a head so massive, so huge. Its 
 cubic capacity surpassed all former meas 
 urements of mind. A large man, decorous 
 in dress, dignified in deportment, he walked 
 as if he felt himself a king. Men from the 
 country, who knew him not, stared at him 
 as he passed through Boston streets. The 
 coal-heavers and porters of London looked 
 on him as one of the great forces of the 
 A native globe. They recognized in him a native 
 king." Carlyle, in a letter to Emerson, 
 called him a magnificent specimen; "as 
 a logic-fencer, advocate, or parliamentary 
 Hercules, one would incline to back him 
 at first sight against all the extant world." 
 Sydney Smith pronounced him "a living 
 lie ; because no man on earth could be as 
 great as he looked." An eminent contem 
 porary has written : " There was a certain 
 grandeur in Webster s look which was in 
 comparable. His Olympian presence gave 
 an air of significance and dignity to what- 
 
In a Club Corner 265 
 
 ever he said. I have heard him deliver the 
 most astonishing commonplaces in such a Effect of 
 way that the audience seemed to be listen- Olympian 
 ing to a new revelation of great truths." 
 Hawthorne, after viewing Powers colossal 
 statue of Webster, wrote in his Note-Book : 
 " There is an expression of quiet, solid, 
 massive strength in the whole figure; a 
 deep pervading energy, in which any ex 
 aggeration of gesture would lessen and 
 lower the effect. He looks really like a 
 pillar of the state. The face is very grand, 
 very Webster ; stern and awful, because 
 he is in the act of meeting a great crisis, 
 and yet with the warmth of a great heart 
 glowing through it. Happy is Webster to 
 have been so truly and adequately sculp 
 tured ; happy the sculptor in such a subject, 
 which no idealization of a demigod could 
 have supplied him with. Perhaps the 
 statue at the bottom of the sea will be cast 
 up in some future age, when the present 
 race of man is forgotten, and if so, that far 
 posterity will look up to us as a grander 
 race than we find ourselves to be." What what a 
 a thing to be a man! Who, worth his 2f/" 
 bread, has not aspired to recognized man 
 hood and absolute personal freedom ? " I 
 would not," said Othello, "my unhoused, 
 
266 In a Club Corner 
 
 free condition put into circumspection and 
 confine for the sea s worth." He has been 
 decided a lucky fox that left his tail in the 
 trap. The muskrat, observed Thoreau, 
 would gnaw his third leg off to be free. 
 The human race, its whole history proves, 
 struggle prefers struggle to dependence, as horses 
 prefer the wild plain to the stall. There 
 is a remarkable bird called the Quetzal 
 a native of Guatemala a curious creature 
 resembling a parrot, and is so constituted 
 that if but one of its feathers is plucked it 
 instantly dies. If an attempt is made to 
 cage this strange feathered visitant, it de 
 liberately attempts suicide by pulling out 
 its own feathers, preferring death to cap 
 tivity. One of these birds was shown at the 
 New Orleans Exhibition in the winter of 
 1884-5. Fenelon wrote, in a letter to one 
 of his friends, " It is only upon a very small 
 number of true friends that I count, and I 
 do it not from motives of interest, but from 
 pure esteem ; not from a desire to derive 
 any advantage from them, but to do them 
 justice in not distrusting their affection. 
 I would like to oblige the whole human 
 race, especially virtuous people ; but there 
 is scarcely anybody to whom I would like 
 to be under obligation. Is it through 
 
In a Club Corner 267 
 
 haughtiness and pride that I think thus? 
 Nothing could be more foolish and more 
 unbecoming ; but I have learned to know 
 men as I have grown old, and believe that 
 it is the best way to do without them, 
 without pretending to superior wisdom." 
 Pope Clement the Sixth offered to Petrarch 
 not only the office of Apostolic Secretary, 
 but many considerable bishoprics. Petrarch 
 constantly refused them. " You will not 
 accept of anything I offer you ! " said the 
 Holy Father: "Ask of me what you 
 please." Two months afterwards Petrarch Petrarch. 
 wrote to one of his friends : " Every degree 
 of elevation creates new suspicions in my 
 mind, because I perceive the misfortunes 
 that attend them. Would they but grant 
 me that happy mediocrity so preferable to preferred 
 
 11 11-111 i T niediocruy 
 
 gold, and which they have promised me, I to gold. 
 should accept the gift with gratitude and 
 cordiality ; but if they only intend to invest 
 me with some important employment, I 
 should refuse it. I will shake off the yoke ; 
 for I had much rather live poor than be 
 come a slave." 
 
 " Uncle," said Walter Gay to Captain THE HOPE 
 Cuttle, gayly, laying his hand upon the old 
 man s shoulder, " what shall I send you 
 
268 In (i Club Corner 
 
 home from Barbados ? " " Hope, my dear 
 Wally. Hope . . . Send me as much of 
 that as you can." How short would life 
 be if hope did not prolong it, is an Arabic 
 maxim. Alas, in the Tamil language (it 
 
 NO word is said) there is no word for it. " Hast 
 thou hope ? " they asked of John Knox 
 when dying. He said nothing, but raised 
 his finger and pointed upwards. Lamar- 
 tine, in Raphael, says of one of his char 
 acters : "There was but. one thing grieved 
 me as I looked at him it was, to see him 
 advancing towards death without believing 
 in immortality. The natural sciences that 
 he had so deeply studied had accustomed 
 his mind to trust exclusively to the evi 
 dence of his senses. Nothing existed for 
 him that was not palpable ; what could not 
 be calculated contained no element of cer 
 titude in his eyes ; matter and figures com 
 posed his universe ; numbers were his god ; 
 the phenomena of nature were his revela 
 tions ; nature being his Bible and his gos 
 pel ; his virtue was instinct not seeing 
 that numbers, phenomena, nature, and vir- 
 
 Hiero- tue are but hieroglyphs inscribed on the 
 veil of the temple, whose unanimous mean 
 ing is Deity. Sublime but stubborn 
 minds, who wonderfully ascend the steps 
 
In a Club Corner 269 
 
 of science, one by one, but will never 
 pass the last, which leads to God." It is 
 now a good many years since I found my 
 self walking on a solitary country road 
 
 . . f .,11 v solitary 
 
 with a scientist of considerable distinction, country 
 It was, I think, late in December. The 
 mercury was many degrees below freezing. 
 It was with the utmost difficulty that we 
 escaped suffering by rapid walking. A 
 deep snow covered everything. The road, 
 even, was white like the fields, and the 
 crushed crystals under our feet gave the 
 accustomed resentful complaint The 
 cloudless expanse of heaven seemed colder 
 than the earth beneath a very firmament 
 of pellucid ice. Some winter birds, we ob 
 served, had bunched themselves on twigs, 
 and were as motionless and still as if they 
 had grown there. The only creature on 
 the wing was a lustrous great crow, which 
 flew uncertainly, as if lost or bewildered. 
 Its plumage had a supernatural icy glitter. 
 No sound was distinctly audible but of our 
 own voices, and of the snow under our feet, 
 except the pitiful wail of an infant, as it 
 came to us appealingly over the frozen 
 fields. Arctic as could be was everything Arctic was 
 
 everything. 
 
 above, below, on every side and the 
 scene infixed itself ineffaceably in my mem- 
 
In a Club Corner 
 
 ory. The conversation had become grave, 
 
 and the tendency to despairing views was 
 
 The dead momentarily increasing. The dead season 
 
 season in its . , , ,-, . . 
 
 shroud. was in its shroud. The bitter experiences 
 and pitiful limitations of life were re 
 marked upon, and the infinite discourage 
 ments to effort. The little that we achieved 
 seemed the least that was possible. The 
 inevitable difficulties of the human lot were 
 so discouraging and obstructive, if not 
 overwhelming. So much of the little that 
 we know is acquired only by suffering and 
 blundering. Our passions so often commit 
 us to a blind undertaking of the impos 
 sible. In certain moods, it seemed the 
 most natural thing in the world that we 
 should view it all as an inexplicable enigma, 
 and ourselves as an insignificant part of it. 
 The hope of a better condition seemed to 
 me the only inspiration to carry us through 
 this. In the logic of things, to say nothing 
 of Scripture, there must be something 
 better. It is not natural to die in infancy ; 
 and what could be much more immature 
 
 This but a than the wisest human being? This must 
 
 beginning. 
 
 we only begin to be what we are to be. 
 Would a wise man, as we understand wis 
 dom, arrange a vast scheme of difficulty 
 
In a Club Corner 277 
 
 and suffering, with nothing worthily com 
 pensating to come of it ? A brighter day A brighter 
 
 day to 
 
 will succeed the darkness, and a better succeed the 
 
 darkness. 
 
 and perpetual growth have a beginning, as 
 the bursting and rejoicing spring with its 
 revivifying sunshine, its green mantle, its 
 roses, its song, will follow the dishearten 
 ing winter, to bloom in the never-end 
 ing procession the everlasting progress 
 of nature. Simonides was right, I think, 
 in calling the human skull the shell of the 
 flown bird. " Infatuation ! credulity ! Par 
 don me ! " exclaimed the scientist, as we 
 turned about, stopped, and faced each other 
 on the bleak road. " Your view is the 
 popular one, I admit, and I do not antag 
 onize it ; but mine is the opposite a con 
 clusion founded in reason, and I can see TJusden- 
 no other which is scientific, logical, or ten 
 able." "What!" said I, in -astonishment. 
 " You do not believe in a perpetuity of 
 existence ? " " I do not, most assuredly." 
 "That death ends all ?" repeating the 
 phrase interrogatively, and looking him 
 doubtingly in the face. " Not the shadow 
 of a doubt of it." " Nothing to survive 
 this poor human body ? " " Nothing ! " 
 was the deliberate reply, with a coldness 
 and hopelessness more chilling than the 
 
 tufsconch{ - 
 
272 In a Club Corner 
 
 frigid atmosphere about us, and my inmost 
 soul the immortal thinking and hoping 
 part of me in every faculty and quality 
 of it shivered at the bold scientist s con 
 clusion. The little unmistakable, almost 
 inaudible cough that the doomed man had 
 been fighting on the way, with drops and 
 lozenges, seemed feebly to echo or mock 
 the irreversible dictum, and kept me la 
 menting the inconceivable desolation of a 
 human heart without a hope of a future 
 Everything existence. " Everything is prospective," 
 
 prospective. ^ .. . . , 
 
 wrote .hmerson, and man is to live here 
 after. That the world is for his education 
 is the only sane solution of the enigma. 
 We must infer our destiny from the prepa 
 ration. We are driven by instinct to hive 
 innumerable experiences which are of no 
 visible value, and we may revolve through 
 many lives before we shall assimilate or 
 exhaust them. Shall I hold on with both 
 hands to every paltry possession ? All I 
 have seen teaches me to trust the Creator 
 for all I have not seen. Whatever it be 
 which the great Providence prepares for 
 something us, it must be something large and gener- 
 geSrous. ous, and in the great style of his works. 
 The future must be up to the style of our 
 faculties, of memory, of hope, of imagi- 
 
In a Club Corner 273 
 
 nation, of reason." " Certainly," quaintly 
 reasons Lord Herbert of Cherbury, " since Reasonin 
 
 . . of Lord 
 
 in my mother s womb this plastica, or for- Herbert. 
 matrix, which formed my eyes, ears, and 
 other senses, did not intend them for that 
 place, but as being conscious of a better 
 life, made them as fitting organs to ap 
 prehend and perceive those things which 
 should occur in this world ; so I believe, 
 since my coming into this world my soul 
 hath formed or produced certain faculties 
 which are almost as useless for this life as 
 the above-named senses were for the pre 
 existing state: and these faculties are 
 faith, hope, love, and joy, since they never 
 rest or fix upon any transitory or perishing 
 object in this world, as extending them 
 selves to something further than can be 
 here given, and indeed, acquiesce only in 
 the perfect, eternal, and infinite." " We 
 forget nothing," uttered Thackeray. "The 
 memory sleeps, but wakens again ; I often 
 think how it shall be, when, after the last 
 sleep of death, the reveille shall arouse us 
 
 r n i r i r after the Mst 
 
 forever, and the past in one flash of self- sleep. 
 consciousness rush back, like the soul, 
 revivified." " God himself," thought Haw 
 thorne, " cannot compensate us for being 
 born for any period short of eternity. All 
 
I H a Club Corner 
 
 the misery endured here constitutes a 
 claim for another life, and still more, all 
 the happiness ; because all true happiness 
 involves something more than the earth 
 owns, and needs something more than a 
 mortal capacity for the enjoyment of it." 
 Eternity ! The pendulum of it ! which 
 eternity. " beats epochs as ours do seconds." The 
 magnificence of the professor s conception, 
 that if the fixed stars were annihilated 
 we should not be conscious of it for many 
 years, spite of the rapidity with which 
 light travels, gives little idea of duration 
 without end or beginning. "What have 
 we to do with old age ? " asks Emerson of 
 Carlyle in one of his letters. "Our exist 
 ence looks to me more than ever initial. 
 We have come to see the ground and look 
 up materials and tools. The men who have 
 any positive quality are a flying advance 
 party for reconnoitring. We shall yet have 
 a right work, and kings for competitors." 
 
 INTUITION " The impossibility I find myself under 
 WORSHIP, of proving there is no God, is a demonstra 
 tion to me that there is one," is a sentence 
 of La Bruyere. " Consult Zoroaster and 
 Minos and Solon, and the sage Socrates, 
 and the great Cicero ; they have all (says 
 
In a Club Corner 275 
 
 Voltaire) adored a master, a judge, a father : 
 this sublime system is necessary to man ; 
 it is the sacred bond of society, the first 
 foundation of holy equity, the curb of the 
 wicked, the hope of the just. If the heav 
 ens, despoiled of their augustness, ceased 
 to manifest him ; if God did not exist, it 
 would be necessary to invent him. King ! 
 if you oppress me, if your majesty disdains 
 the tears of the innocent, my avenger is in 
 the sky : learn to tremble ! " Flacourt, in 
 in his History of the Island of Madagas 
 car, gives a sublime prayer, used by the A sublime 
 people we call savages : " O Eternal ! have * r " 
 mercy upon me, because I am passing 
 away : O Infinite ! because I am but a 
 speck : O Most Mighty ! because I am 
 weak : O Source of Light ! because I draw 
 nigh to the grave : O Omniscient ! be 
 cause I am in darkness : O All-bounteous ! 
 because I am poor : O All-sufficient ! be 
 cause I am nothing." Arbousset, a French 
 missionary to South Africa, recounts an 
 extraordinary interview with a Kaffir chief, interview 
 to whom he was imparting the message Kaffir chief. 
 of Christianity. " Your tidings," said the 
 wild black man, " are what I want, and I 
 was seeking before I knew you, as you 
 shall hear and judge for yourself. Twelve 
 
2j6 In a Club Corner 
 
 years ago I went to feed my flock. The 
 
 weather was hazy. I sat down upon a rock 
 
 Asked and asked myself sorrowful questions ; yes, 
 
 himself r i i 
 
 sorrowful sorrowful, because I was unable to answer 
 them. Who has touched the stars with his 
 hands ? The waters are never weary ; they 
 flow from morning till night, from night 
 till morning. Who makes them flow thus ? 
 I cannot see the wind. Who brings it ? 
 Who makes it blow and roar and terrify 
 me ? Do I know how the corn sprouts ? 
 Yesterday there was not a blade in my 
 field ; to-day I returned to the field and 
 found some. Then I buried my face in 
 both my hands." A French scientist 
 passed his childhood in that period of the 
 French Revolution in which religion was 
 proscribed, the churches of his province 
 shut, and sacred words forbidden to be 
 used. " Nevertheless," he says, " I remem 
 ber that the aspect of the sky made me 
 dream. I always saw in it something that 
 was not of the world. I searched there 
 above for something I did not see, but 
 
 Theintui- whose existence I divined. Yes, the intu 
 ition of God was within me." " Posterity 
 will perhaps with truth assert," thought 
 Draper, " that Paradise Lost has wrought 
 more intellectual evil than even its base 
 
In a Club Corner 277 
 
 contemporaries [the indecent plays of the 
 time], since it has familiarized educated 
 minds with images which, though in one 
 sense sublime, in another are most un 
 worthy, and has taught the public a dread 
 ful materialization of the great and invis 
 ible God. A Manichean composition in A Mam- 
 reality, it was mistaken for a Christian 
 poem." " People treat the divine name," 
 said Goethe, " as if that incomprehensible 
 and most high Being, who is even beyond 
 the reach of thought, were only their equal. 
 If they were impressed by His greatness 
 they would be dumb, and through vener 
 ation unwilling to name Him." In the 
 opinion of a great writer, " The time will 
 come when we will not speak of God need 
 lessly but as seldom as possible. We shall 
 not teach dogmatically of his attributes, or 
 dispute concerning his nature. We shall 
 not impose on any one the obligation of 
 prayer, but allow each to worship in the 
 sanctuary of his own conscience. And 
 this will happen when we are truly reli- 
 gious. Then we shall all be so ; and the 
 attempt to establish a prescribed religion 
 will be regarded as blasphemy. The love 
 which we bear him will be of an awful 
 nature : prayer will become mysterious, 
 
278 In a Club Corner 
 
 and the fear of being unworthy will silence 
 the pen of the theologian and the preacher." 
 
 Friendship is defined by Thoreau as the 
 unspeakable joy and blessing that result to 
 two or more individuals who from consti 
 tution sympathize. Such natures are liable 
 to no mistakes, but will know each other 
 through thick and thin. Between two by 
 nature alike and fitted to sympathize there 
 is no veil, and there can be no obstacle. 
 Who are the estranged ? Two friends 
 explaining. It is a saying of Apollodorus 
 that when you go to visit a friend at his 
 house, you can perceive his friendliness 
 the moment you enter the door, for first 
 the servant who opens the door looks 
 pleased, then the dog wags its tail and 
 comes up to you, and the first person you 
 meet hands you a chair, before a word has 
 been said. Rowland Hill, on one occasion 
 (preaching to a large congregation on men s 
 trust in the friendship of the world) ob 
 served, that his own acquaintances would 
 probably fill the church ; and he was quite 
 certain that his friends would only fill the 
 Born pulpit. Born friends, said Richter, only 
 find each other a second time, and bring to 
 each other not only a future, but a past also. 
 
In a Club Corner 279 
 
 In our purblind and crippled state, our IGNORANCE. 
 superstitions and prejudices are our most 
 convenient crutches. The more ignorant 
 we are, the more necessary they seem to 
 us. Poor auxiliaries, we may say, but bet 
 ter than nothing in our many extremities. 
 Something we must have to hold to, as we 
 feel our way in the obscurity of our intel 
 ligence and reason ; and these poor aids 
 come down to us as a part of the general 
 inheritance of ignorance from the genera 
 tions that groped before us. Our trans 
 gressions are as often blunders as sins. 
 The Japanese do not swear at one another ; 
 they say " Fool ! " Cave, who was jailer 
 during the two years Hunt was a prisoner, 
 had become a philosopher by the force of 
 his situation. He said to the poet one 
 day, when a new batch of criminals came 
 in, " Poor ignorant wretches, sir ! " It is 
 a profound saying of the Chinese, that he 
 who finds pleasure in vice and pain in vir 
 tue is a novice in both. 
 
 " There s no art to find the mind s con- FACES. 
 struction in the face," though we assume 
 to read it as a book, and to determine from 
 it even the motives of the heart. Quin 
 presumed to say of Macklin s face, painted 
 
280 In a Club Corner 
 
 by Opie, " If God writes a legible hand, 
 that fellow is a villain." Daniel Webster, 
 once when traveling alone in a stage-coach, 
 was in terror of the driver, judging him, 
 from his face, to be a murderer ; the driver 
 at the same time was in like dread of the 
 senator, believing him, from his counte 
 nance, to be a highwayman. Luttrell said 
 to Moore that often, in speculating on the 
 future fortunes of the young men with 
 whom he lived, he has said to himself, in 
 looking at Wellesley s (Wellington s) va- 
 
 ton s vacant 
 
 f^e. cant face, " Well, let who will get on in 
 this world, you certainly will not." Sir 
 Thomas Lawrence told Barry Cornwall of 
 his having been taken once to visit a 
 female of extreme beauty. A friend of 
 his wished him as an artist to see, and if 
 possible take a study of, this woman. He 
 went accordingly and saw her. She was, 
 he said, most exquisitely beautiful, perhaps 
 more so than any person he had ever seen : 
 but the eye of an artist is quick at detect 
 ing faults, and he saw lurking, among her 
 perfections, or rather peeping out from 
 
 A diabolical among them occasionally, an expression 
 which was diabolical. He did not like her. 
 Whether he took any sketch or not he did 
 not say ; but, he added, that he learned 
 
In a Club Corner 281 
 
 afterwards that "the lady" went to live 
 with a young man, whom she entirely 
 ruined. When in great distress, from her 
 extravagance, she induced him to commit 
 forgery ; and when he was taken up for 
 the crime, she appeared and volunteered 
 her evidence against him ; and upon her 
 evidence he was hanged. " Portraits of Portraits 
 
 of Er astn-us. 
 
 Erasmus are not uncommon ; every scholar 
 would know him (says Holmes) in the other 
 world, with the look he wore on earth. 
 All the etchings and their copies give a 
 characteristic presentation of the spiritual 
 precursor of Luther, who pricked the false 
 image with his rapier which the sturdy 
 monk slashed with his broadsword. What 
 a face it is which Hans Holbein has handed 
 down to us in this wonderful portrait at 
 Longford Castle ! How dry it is with 
 scholastic labor, how keen with shrewd 
 skepticism, how worldly-wise, how con 
 scious of its owner s wide-awake sagacity ! 
 Erasmus and Rabelais, Nature used up 
 all her arrows for their quivers, and had to 
 wait a hundred years more before she could 
 find shafts enough for the outfit of Vol- Voltaire. 
 taire, leaner and keener than Erasmus, and 
 almost as free in his language as the auda 
 cious creator of Gargantua and Panta- 
 
282 In a Club Corner 
 
 gruel." It has been said that had we no 
 rite Roma* other histories of the Roman emperors but 
 those we find on their money, we should 
 take them for the most virtuous race of 
 princes that mankind were ever blessed 
 with: whereas, if we look into their lives, 
 they appear many of them such monsters 
 of lust and cruelty as are almost a reproach 
 to human nature. Claudius appears as 
 great a conqueror as Julius Caesar, and 
 Domitian a wiser prince than his brother 
 Titus. Tiberius on his coins is all mercy 
 and moderation, Caligula and Nero are 
 fathers of their country, Galba the pattern 
 of public liberty, and Vitellius the restorer 
 of the city of Rome. In short, if you have 
 a mind to see the religious Commodus, 
 the pious Caracalla, and the devout Helio- 
 gabalus, you may find them either in the 
 inscription or device of their medals. One 
 of the poets made a study of the busts of 
 the Roman emperors, and found them, on 
 the whole, interesting. Julius Caesar heads 
 . e> them, with a face traversed in all directions 
 with wrinkles. He thought he had never 
 beheld such a careworn countenance. Such 
 was the price he paid for ruling his hap 
 pier fellow-creatures. Nero s face it was 
 sad to contemplate. There is a series of 
 
In a Club Corner 283 
 
 busts of him at different periods of his life : 
 one, that of a charming happy little boy ; 
 another, that of a young man, growing 
 uneasy ; and a third, that of the miserable Bust of 
 tyrant. You fancy that he was thinking tyrant. 
 of having killed his mother, and was trying 
 to bully his conscience into no care about 
 it. Hogg described Shelley, from appear 
 ance, as "a sum of many contradictions." 
 The Duke of Wellington must have found 
 something very interesting in Van Am- 
 burgh s face, for he had Landseer paint a 
 picture of the lion-tamer for him. Upon 
 the artist s saying, in reply to the Duke s 
 inquiry, that the price would be six hun 
 dred guineas, the Duke wrote out a check 
 for twelve hundred. Lavater says that the Lavater s 
 
 . dictum. 
 
 character is to be judged not by the ex 
 pression, which is variable, but by the firm 
 parts and the bony conformation of the 
 countenance. A friend of Emerson s once 
 came upon him while he was sleeping, and 
 was startled at the stern character of a 
 face which he had known only as radiant 
 and inviting. It was a new lesson of the 
 man, which somewhat modified his previ 
 ous impression. Mr. T. A. Trollope saw 
 much of George Eliot, and was apparently 
 intimate with her, for she once said to him 
 
284 In a Club Corner 
 
 in Florence that " she regretted she had 
 been born," an utterance which he attrib 
 utes entirely to ill-health. His descrip 
 tion of her is interesting : " She was not, 
 as the world in general is aware, a hand 
 some, or even a personable woman. Her 
 George face was long ; the eyes not large nor 
 face. beautiful in color they were, I think, of 
 
 a grayish blue the hair, which she wore 
 in old-fashioned braids coming low down 
 on either side of her face, of a rather light 
 brown. It was streaked with gray when 
 last I saw her. Her figure was of middle 
 height, large-boned and powerful. It was 
 often said that she inherited from her 
 peasant ancestors a frame and constitution 
 very robust. Her head was finely formed, 
 with a noble and well-balanced arch from 
 brow to crown. The lips and mouth pos 
 sessed a power of infinitely varied expres 
 sion. George Lewes once said to me when 
 I made some observation to the effect that 
 she had a sweet face (I meant that the face 
 expressed great sweetness), You might 
 say what a sweet hundred faces ! I look 
 at her sometimes in amazement. Her 
 constantly countenance is constantly changing. The 
 said lips and mouth were distinctly sensu 
 ous in form and fullness. She has been 
 
In a Club Corner 285 
 
 compared to the portraits of Savonarola 
 (who was frightful) and of Dante (who, 
 though stern and bitter-looking, was hand 
 some). Something there was of both faces 
 in George Eliot s physiognomy. Lewes 
 told us, in her presence, of the exclamation 
 uttered suddenly by some one to whom she 
 was pointed out at a place of public en 
 tertainment. That, said a bystander, is 
 George Eliot. The gentleman to whom 
 she was thus indicated gave one swift, 
 searching look, and exclaimed, sotto voce, 
 Dante s aunt! When Hunt came to "Dant 
 England, after an absence of four years 
 abroad, he was grieved at the succession 
 of fair sulky faces which he met in the 
 streets of London. They all appeared to 
 come out of unhappy homes. " Talk of 
 Venus rising from the sea ! " exclaimed 
 Douglas Jerrold. " Were I to paint a 
 Venus she should be escaping from a cot- jerroi 
 
 i i -i r Venus. 
 
 tage window to join her lover, with a face 
 now white, now red, as the roses nodding 
 about it ; an eye like her own star ; lips 
 sweetening the jasmine, as it clings to hold 
 them ; a face and form in which harmoni 
 ous thoughts seem as vital breath ! Noth 
 ing but should speak ; her little hand 
 should tell a love-tale ; nay, her very foot 
 
286 In a Club Corner 
 
 planted on the ladder, should utter elo 
 quence enough to stop a hermit at his 
 beads, and make him watchman while the 
 lady fled." The pen-and-ink sketch of 
 Hogarth s which was the only guide of 
 Miss Thomas in modeling the bust of 
 Fielding, not long ago unveiled at Taun- 
 ton, is the subject of a curious story. 
 Hogarth and Garrick, sitting together in a 
 tavern one day, were lamenting the fact 
 that Fielding had died without a single 
 portrait of him having been taken. " I 
 think," said Garrick, "that I could make 
 his face ; " and at once used all his skill as 
 a contortionist to that end. " For Heav 
 en s sake, hold, David ! " cried Hogarth ; 
 "remain as you are for a few minutes." 
 Garrick did so, and Hogarth sketched the 
 outlines of his face. The portrait was 
 afterward finished according to their mu 
 tual recollection, and was the original not 
 only of Miss Thomas s bust, but of every 
 portrait of Fielding now extant. On the 
 wall upstairs, in the private part of a book 
 seller s establishment in Old Boston, Eng 
 land, there hung (described by Hawthorne) 
 
 A ortr y ait of a cra y on -p ortra ^ f Sterne, never engraved, 
 
 sterne. representing him as a rather young man, 
 
 blooming, and not uncomely ; it was the 
 
In a Club Corner 28 j 
 
 worldly face of a man fond of pleasure, but 
 without that ugly, keen, sarcastic, odd ex 
 pression that we see in his only engraved 
 portrait. The picture is an original, and 
 must needs be very valuable ; and we wish 
 it might be prefixed to some new and wor 
 thier biography of a writer whose character 
 the world has always treated with singular 
 harshness, considering how much it was to 
 him. There was likewise a crayon-portrait Portrait O j 
 of Sterne s wife, looking so haughty and wife. 
 unamiable, that the wonder is, not that he 
 ultimately left her, but that he ever con 
 trived to live a week with such an awful 
 woman. George Eliot, in Romola, delin 
 eates the face of a traitor. "A perfect 
 traitor," she says, " should have a face 
 which vice can write no marks on lips 
 that will lie with a dimpled smile eyes 
 of such agate-like brightness and depth 
 that no infamy can dull them cheeks that 
 will rise from a murder and not look hag 
 gard." It is said that Lamb had a head Lamps 
 worthy of Aristotle, with as fine a heart as 
 ever beat in a human bosom, and limbs 
 very fragile to sustain it. There was a 
 caricature of him sold in the shops, which 
 pretended to be a likeness. Procter went 
 into the shop in a passion, and asked the 
 
288 In a Club Corner 
 
 man what he meant by putting forth such 
 a libel. The man apologized, and said that 
 NO true the artist meant no offense. There never 
 Lamb l was a true portrait of Lamb. In that won 
 derful picture of Leonardo, The Last Sup 
 per, it is fancied that the heads of the 
 Apostles are from the men of his own time, 
 but the face of the Lord, by a perfect study 
 of chiaroscuro, radiates the light upon the 
 groups, and claims the principal admiration 
 of the beholder. There is a story that the 
 artist, having finished the rest, could not 
 paint this ; he found it one morning mirac 
 ulously finished. 
 
 HEREDITY. The law of heredity is more and more 
 being recognized, investigated, and re 
 garded. The body, more and more, is 
 being esteemed the tabernacle of a soul, 
 and an added sacredness attached to it 
 accordingly. " There is but one temple in 
 the world," says Novalis, "and that temple 
 is the body of man. Nothing is holier than 
 this high form. Bending before men is a 
 reverence done to this revelation in the 
 flesh. We touch Heaven, when we lay our 
 hands on a human body." There is a song 
 made in honor of Allan, the famous captain 
 of Clanranald, who fell at Sherrif-muir. 
 
In a Club Corner 289 
 
 His servant, who lay on the field watching 
 his master s dead body, being asked next 
 * day, who that was, answered, " He was a 
 man yesterday." The grandson of Ma- The grand- 
 hornet was slain with three and thirty s jaLut. 
 strokes of lances and swords. After they 
 had trampled on his body, they carried his 
 head to the castle of Cufa, and the inhuman 
 governor struck him on the mouth with a 
 cane. " Alas ! " exclaimed an aged Mussul 
 man, "on these lips have I seen the lips 
 of the apostle of God ! " Johnson asked 
 one of his executors, a few days before his 
 death, " Where do you intend to bury me ?" 
 He answered, "In Westminster Abbey." 
 "Then," continued Johnson, "if my friends J 
 think it worth while to give me a stone, let re 
 it be placed over me so as to protect me." 
 " Bless not thyself only," says the great 
 Sir Thomas Browne, in Religio Medici, 
 " that thou wast born in Athens ; but, 
 among thy multiplied acknowledgments, 
 lift up one hand to heaven, that thou wert 
 born of honest parents, that modesty, hu 
 mility, and veracity, lay in the same egg, 
 and came into the world with thee. From 
 such foundations thou mayest be happy in 
 a virtuous precocity, and make an early and 
 long walk in goodness ; so mayest thou 
 
290 In a Club Corner 
 
 more naturally feel the contrariety of vice 
 unto nature, and resist some by the anti- ^ 
 dote of thy temper." Dr. Young writes of 
 
 A hideous " That hideous sight, a naked human 
 heart." "I saw," says Leigh Hunt, "a 
 worse sight than the heart, in a journey 
 which I took in a neighboring county. It 
 was an infant, all over sores, and cased in 
 steel ; the result of the irregularities of its 
 father ; and I confess that I would rather 
 have seen the heart of the very father of 
 that child, than I would the child himself. 
 I am sure it must have bled at the sight. 
 I am sure there would have been a feeling 
 of some sort to vindicate nature, granting 
 that up to that moment the man had been 
 a fool or even a scoundrel." An eminent 
 writer upon Responsibility in Mental Dis 
 ease remarks, "When one considers the 
 
 Reckless reckless way in which persons, whatever 
 riage the defects of their mental and bodily con 
 stitution, often get married, without sense 
 of responsibility for the miseries which 
 they entail upon those who will be the 
 heirs of their infirmities, without regard, in 
 fact, to anything but their own present 
 gratification, one is driven to think either 
 that man is not the preeminently reason 
 ing and moral animal which he claims to 
 
In a Club Corner 291 
 
 be, or that there is in him an instinct which 
 is deeper than knowledge. He has per 
 suaded himself, rightly or wrongly, that in 
 this case there is in the feeling of love 
 between the sexes something of so sacred 
 and mysterious a character as to justify 
 disregard to consequences in marriage, 
 We have only to look at the large part ** 
 which love fills in novels, poetry, and paint 
 ing ; and to consider what a justification 
 of unreason in life it is held to be, to real 
 ize what a hold it has on him in his present 
 state of development, and what a repug 
 nance there would be to quench its glow 
 by cold words of reason. At bottom, how 
 ever, there is nothing particularly holy 
 about it ; on the contrary, it is a passion 
 which man shares with other animals ; and 
 when its essential nature and function are 
 regarded, we shall nowhere find stronger 
 evidence of a community of nature between 
 man and animals. It would not be a very 
 absurd thing if an ingenious person, con 
 sidering curiously what a solemn under- A solemn 
 
 . . . - . undertak- 
 
 taking marriage is, and what serious re- ing. 
 sponsibilities it entails, were to maintain 
 that men and women should enter into it 
 soberly and rather sadly, under a grave 
 sense of responsibility, as upon an un- 
 
292 In a Club Corner 
 
 certain voyage, and should reserve their 
 Rejoicings rejoicings for the journey s end, when, 
 Reserved, having acted well their parts, they might 
 fairly claim a nunc plaudite." "If you 
 have seen the picture-gallery of any one 
 old family," says Dickens in The Old Cu 
 riosity Shop, "you will remember how the 
 same face and figure often the fairest 
 and slightest of them all come upon you 
 in different generations ; and how you trace 
 the same sweet girl through a long line of 
 portraits never growing old or changing 
 the Good Angel of the race abiding 
 by them in all reverses redeeming all 
 Education their sins." Education, in the opinion of 
 Ribot, is a sum of habits. " Compare," he 
 says, " the savage with the accomplished 
 gentleman, and how great is the difference. 
 The fact is that six thousand years and 
 more stand between the two. Many of the 
 habits which we contract through education 
 have cost the race centuries of effort. Ed 
 ucation has to fix in us the results achieved 
 by hundreds of generations. Millions of 
 men have been needed to invent and bring 
 to perfection those methods which develop 
 the body, cultivate the mind, and fashion 
 the manners. We are sometimes amazed 
 at seeing nations highly civilized, gentle, 
 
In a Club Corner 293 
 
 humane, charitable in time of peace, giving 
 themselves up to every excess as soon as 
 war has broken out. The reason of this 
 is that war, being a return to the savage what wa 
 
 awakens. 
 
 state, awakens the primitive nature of man, 
 as it subsisted prior to culture, and brings 
 it back with all its heroic daring, its wor 
 ship of force, and its boundless lusts. In 
 China, when a man has committed a capital 
 crime, a minute inquiry is first made into 
 his physical condition, his temperament, 
 his mental complexion, his prior acts; nor 
 does the investigation stop at the individual 
 it is concerned with the most incon 
 siderable antecedents of the members of 
 his family, and is even carried back to his 
 ancestry. In the case of high treason, or 
 when a prince is assassinated, the Chinese 
 prescribe that the culprit shall be cut up 
 into ten thousand pieces, and that his sons sons and 
 and grandsons shall be put to death. " In 
 Darwin s Expression of the Emotions in 
 Man and Animals, there is an authentic 
 account of a habit occurring in individuals 
 of three consecutive generations. It was, 
 when each lay fast asleep on his back in 
 bed, of raising his right arm slowly in front 
 of his face, up to his forehead, and then 
 dropping it with a jerk, so that the wrist 
 
In a Club Corner 
 
 fell heavily on the bridge of his nose. The 
 trick did not occur every night, but occa 
 sionally, and was independent of any ascer- 
 RaMntf tained cause. Rabelais felt sure that he 
 indications, must have been the son of a king, because 
 nobody had more princely inclinations. 
 " We incline in the same manner," says 
 the author of Wishing-Cap Papers, " to be 
 so young in our feelings, and to desire such 
 a good long life before us to do a world 
 of things in, that it seems as if we had a 
 right to it. Mortality is a good provision, 
 considering that the world has not come 
 to its state of enjoyment, and that people 
 in general, by the time they are forty, 
 hardly know what to do with their Sun 
 days ; but an exception might be made, 
 we think, in favor of those who could 
 occupy all their hours some way or other a 
 hundred years to come, and who have not 
 yet got over their love even of ginger 
 bread." " If by the visitation of God," 
 writes Holmes in his remarkable Elsie 
 Venner, "a person receives any injury 
 impaired which impairs the intellect or the moral 
 
 intellect or ... , 
 
 MO! perceptions, is it not monstrous to judge 
 
 perceptions. . . . 
 
 such a person by our common working 
 standards of right and wrong ? Certainly, 
 everybody will answer, in cases where there 
 
hi a Club Corner 
 
 is a palpable organic change brought about, 
 as when a blow on the head produces in 
 sanity. Fools ! How long will it be before 
 \\c shall learn that for every wound which 
 betrays itself to the sight by a scar, there 
 are a thousand unseen mutilations that A th**s<i*id 
 
 f wnsccn 
 
 cripple, each ot them, some one or more of mutilations. 
 our highest faculties." The same author 
 in his Mechanism in Thought and Morals, 
 expresses the view that " \Vhcn we can 
 take the dimensions of virtue by triangula- 
 tion ; when we can literally weigh Justice 
 in her own scales ; when we can speak of 
 the specific gravity of truth, or the square 
 root of honesty ; when we can send a states 
 man his integrity in a package to \Yash- 
 ington, if he happen to have left it behind 
 then we may begin to speak of the moral Moral 
 character of inherited tendencies, which > 
 belong to the machinery on which the Sov 
 ereign Tower alone is responsible. The 
 misfortune of perverse instincts, which 
 adhere to us as congenital inheritances, 
 should go to our side of the account, if the 
 books of heaven are to be kept as the great 
 Church of Christendom maintains they are, 
 by double entry." 
 
In a Club Corner 
 
 THE 
 
 LACONIC. 
 
 La Fon 
 taine. 
 
 Joubert had a habit, from his twentieth 
 year to his seventieth, of jotting down with 
 a pencil the best issues of his meditation 
 as they arose, and out of this chaos of 
 notes was shaped, many years after his 
 death, a full volume of Thoughts. " If 
 there be a man," he said, " plagued with 
 the accursed ambition of putting a whole 
 volume into a page, a whole page into a 
 sentence, and that sentence into a word, it 
 is I." When Farquhar was near the end 
 of his gay yet checkered career, death, the 
 glory of his last success, and the thought 
 of his children, pressing hard upon him, he 
 wrote this laconic, but perfectly intelligible, 
 note to Wilks : " Dear Bob, I have not 
 anything to leave thee, to perpetuate my 
 memory, but two helpless girls ; look upon 
 them sometimes, and think of him that 
 was, to the last moment of his life, 
 George Farquhar." Farquhar s confidence 
 in his friend was like that of La Fontaine, 
 who, having lost a home, was met in the 
 street by a friend who invited him to his. 
 "I was going there," said the simple- 
 minded poet. Wilks did not disappoint 
 Farquhar s expectations. Quin had with 
 drawn to Bath. Garrick s triumphs had 
 soured him. He desired to be asked back 
 
In a Club Corner 297 
 
 to Covent Garden, but Rich would not 
 humor him. The one wrote, " I am at 
 Bath ; yours, James Quin " : and the other 
 
 answered, " Stay there, and be d ; yours, 
 
 John Rich." W. H. Crawford, Secretary 
 of the Treasury, wrote to S. Dinsmore, col 
 lector at the port of Mobile : " Treasury official. 
 Department, Washington, Jan. 15, 1822. 
 Sir : This Department is desirous of know 
 ing how far the Tombigbee river runs up. 
 You will please communicate the infor 
 mation. Respectfully. W. H. Crawford. 
 S. Dinsmore, Esq., collector, Mobile." " Mo 
 bile, Feb y 7th, 1822. Sir: I have the 
 honor to acknowledge the receipt of your 
 letter of the I5th ult, and of informing 
 you, in reply, that the Tombigbee does not 
 run up at all. S. Dinsmore. Hon. W. H. 
 Crawford, Secretary of the Treasury." 
 "Treasury Department, Washington, March 
 ist, 1822. Sir: I have the honor to inform 
 you that this Department has no further 
 services for you as Collector of Mobile. 
 Respectfully. W. H. Crawford. S. Dins- 
 more, Mobile." Dr. Franklin wrote to Frankiin 
 Strahan : "Philadelphia, July 5, 1775. Mr. 
 Strahan : You are a member of that par 
 liament, and have formed a part of that 
 majority, which has condemned my native 
 
2C)8 In a Club Corner 
 
 country to destruction. You have begun 
 to burn our towns, and to destroy their 
 inhabitants. Look at your hands, they 
 are stained with the blood of your rela 
 tions and your acquaintances. You and 
 I were long friends ; you are at present my 
 enemy, and I am, Yours, B. Franklin." 
 
 countess of The Countess of Dorset replied to Sir 
 Joseph Williamson, secretary of state to 
 Charles II., nominating to her a member 
 for the borough of Appleby : " I have been 
 bullied by an usurper, I have been neglected 
 by a court, but I will not be dictated to by 
 
 sir Phiup a subject your man shan t stand." Sir 
 p^p Sidney wrote to the secretary of his 
 father as lord deputy : " Mr. Molineaux : 
 Few words are best. My letters to my 
 father have come to the eyes of some. 
 Neither can I condemn any but you for 
 it. If it be so, you have played the very 
 knave with me ; and so I will make you 
 know, if I have good proof of it. But 
 that for so much as is past. For that is to 
 come, I assure you before God, that if I 
 ever know you to do so much as read any 
 letter I write to my father, without his 
 commandment, or my consent, I will thrust 
 my dagger into you. And trust to it, for 
 I speak it in earnest. In the mean time 
 
In a Club Corner 299 
 
 farewell. From Court, this last of May, 
 1578. By me, Philip Sidney." Rufus 
 Choate and Daniel Webster were once choateand 
 
 . . . Webster. 
 
 opposed to each other as lawyers in a suit 
 which turned on the size of certain wheels. 
 Mr. Choate filled the air with the rockets 
 of rhetoric, and dazzled the jury, but Mr. 
 Webster caused the wheels to be brought 
 into court and put behind a screen. When 
 he rose to speak the screen was removed, 
 and his only reply to Choate s eloquence 
 was, " Gentlemen ! there are the wheels ! " 
 A spy named Palmer, sent by Sir Henry 
 Clinton, the British commander, had been 
 detected furtively collecting information of 
 the force and condition of the post at Peeks- 
 kill, and had undergone a military trial. 
 A vessel of war came up the Hudson in all 
 haste, and landed a flag of truce at Ver- 
 planck s Point, by which a message was 
 transmitted to Putnam from Clinton claim 
 ing the said Palmer as a lieutenant in the 
 British service. Putnam replied: " Head- Putnam to 
 Quarters, 7th August, 1777. Edward Pal 
 mer, an officer in the enemy s service, was 
 taken as a spy lurking within our lines ; he 
 has been tried as a spy, and shall be ex 
 ecuted as a spy ; and the flag is ordered 
 to depart immediately. Israel Putnam. 
 
}00 
 
 In a Club Corner 
 
 tantpost- 
 
 his mother. 
 
 Voltaire 
 and Piron. 
 
 P. S. He has, accordingly, been executed." 
 A young lady having gone out to India, and 
 writing home to her friends, concluded : 
 " P. S. You will see by my signature that I 
 
 . , -M- i r 
 
 am married. An answer to the Bishop of 
 Norwich, in acknowledgment of an invita 
 tion, is reported : " Mr. O/s private affairs 
 turn out so sadly that he cannot have the 
 pleasure of waiting upon his lordship at his 
 agreeable home on Monday next. N. B. 
 His wife is dead." Foote s mother had 
 been heiress to a large fortune, spent it all, 
 and was at length imprisoned for debt. In 
 this condition she wrote to Sam, who had 
 
 . 
 
 been allowing her a hundred a year out or 
 the proceeds of his acting, " Dear Sam, I 
 am in prison for debt ; come and assist 
 your loving mother, E. Foote." Sam re 
 plied, " Dear Mother, so am I, which pre 
 vents his duty being paid to his loving 
 mother by her affectionate son, Sam Foote." 
 ." Eo rus," wrote Voltaire one day, to notify 
 Piron that he was "going into the coun 
 try " ; Piron, to surpass this epistle in 
 brevity, replied by one letter, " I," which 
 is Latin for "go." "Will you breakfast 
 with me to-morrow ? S. R.," was Rogers 
 invitation to a celebrated wit and beauty. 
 "Won t I? H. D.," was the response. 
 
In a Club Corner 301 
 
 " My Dear Dorset, I have just been mar 
 ried, and am the happiest dog alive. 
 (Signed) Berkeley." Answer : " My Dear 
 Berkeley, Every dog has his day. (Signed) 
 Dorset." A young man at college ad 
 dressed his uncle: "My Dear Uncle 
 Ready for the needful. Your affectionate undeand 
 Nephew." To which the uncle replied: 
 "My Dear Nephew The needful is not 
 ready. Your affectionate Uncle." John 
 Randolph sometimes met his match, as in 
 a contest on one occasion on the floor of 
 the House of Representatives with Daniel 
 Sheffey, a Virginian, who had risen by the 
 force of his talents from the humble posi 
 tion of shoemaker. " Let the cobbler stick 
 to his last," said Randolph, in scornful Randolph. 
 allusion to Sheffey s former occupation. 
 " If the gentleman had been raised a cob 
 bler he would be a cobbler now," was the 
 splendid retort. It was, we believe, the 
 eminent Tristam Burges, of Rhode Island, surges. 
 who made even a better reply to the caustic 
 Virginian. They were standing together 
 on the steps of the Capitol when a drove 
 of mules passed by. " Some of your con 
 stituents," said Randolph, pointing to the 
 long line of long-eared quadrupeds. " Yes," 
 responded Burges ; " going South to teach 
 school." 
 
In a Club Corner 
 MONOTONY " The monotonous don t interest me any 
 
 AND FAMIL- , 
 
 longer, said a pretty young woman who 
 
 waited upon Dr. Bellows and his party at 
 the Schangli, the most commanding pros 
 pect of the Bernese Alps, as she witnessed 
 their enthusiasm when the setting sun had 
 set the whole chain into a flame of beauty. 
 She had seen too much of them. "All 
 the world comes here to see these moun 
 tains," said an interesting peasant girl at 
 the opening of the valley of Chamouni, 
 "and I wish they would carry Mont Blanc 
 away with them a great snow-bank, 
 spoiling our harvests in autumn, and carry 
 ing away our bridges in spring, and killing 
 our husbands and brothers who have to 
 climb it for you strangers, so curious about 
 such a common thing. Everybody wants 
 to come here, and I only want to get away. 
 I am saving all the money I can get to 
 go to Geneva, and perhaps to Paris." The 
 agents of the Hudson Bay Company are 
 Barrack described as leading their barrack life by 
 rule, sitting down at stated hours to the 
 same primitive fare, in the company that 
 has become only too familiar. They must 
 have " sucked each other s brains " till the 
 exhaustion is complete, and traveled over 
 every inch of their respective minds till 
 
In a Club Corner 303 
 
 they know them as well as the bit of prai 
 rie that lies round their stockade. It was 
 the opinion of Hazlitt that in the course An opinion 
 
 f . of Hazlitfs. 
 
 of a long acquaintance we have repeated 
 all our good things, and discussed all our 
 favorite topics several times over, so that 
 our conversation becomes a mockery of 
 social intercourse. We might as well talk 
 to ourselves. The soil of friendship is 
 worn out with constant use. Habit may 
 still attach us to each other, but we feel 
 ourselves fettered by it. Old friends might 
 be compared to old married people without 
 the tie of children. It may seem a hard 
 and worldly thing to say, says the author 
 of The Intellectual Life, but it appears to 
 me that a wise man might limit his inter 
 course with others before there was any 
 danger of satiety, as it is wisdom in eating Danger of 
 to rise from table with an appetite. Cer- sa 
 tainly, if the friends of our intellect live 
 near enough for us to anticipate no per 
 manent separation from them by mere dis 
 tance, if we may expect to meet them 
 frequently, to have many opportunities for 
 a more thorough and searching explora 
 tion of their minds, it is a wise policy not 
 to exhaust them all at once. 
 
304 In a Club Corner 
 
 SLEEP OF Vauvenargues, in one of his Maxims, de 
 fines indolence to be the sleep of the mind. 
 You remember the vivid picture of Dick 
 ens , describing Gabriel Varden, standing 
 working at his anvil, his face all radiant 
 with exercise and gladness, his sleeves 
 turned up, his wig pushed off his shining 
 forehead the easiest, freest, happiest 
 man in all the world. Beside him sat a 
 sleek cat, purring and winking in the light, 
 and falling every now and then into an idle 
 
 Excess of doze, as from excess of comfort. You re- 
 
 comfort. 
 
 member also the twenty-fourth stanza of 
 Thomson s Castle of Indolence the lazi 
 est lines in literature : 
 
 " Waked by the crowd, slow from his bench arose 
 
 A comely, full-fed porter, swoln with sleep : 
 
 His calm, broad, thoughtless aspect breathed repose; 
 
 And in sweet torpor he was plunged deep, 
 
 Ne could himself from ceaseless yawning keep ; 
 
 While o er his eyes the drowsy liquor ran, 
 
 Through which his half-waked soul would faintly peep : 
 
 Then taking his black staff, he called his man, 
 
 And roused himself as much as rouse himself he can." 
 
 Agassis Agassiz, in his Journey to Brazil, speaks 
 of a sloth on board his vessel on the Ama 
 zon, the most fascinating of all his pets 
 not for his charms, but for his oddities. 
 " I am never tired," he says, "of watching 
 him, he looks so deliciously lazy. His 
 
In a Club Corner 305 
 
 head sunk in his arms, his whole attitude 
 lax and indifferent, he seems to ask only Asked only 
 for rest. If you push him, or if, as often 
 happens, a passer-by gives him a smart tap 
 to arouse him, he lifts his head and drops 
 his arms so slowly, so deliberately, that 
 they hardly seem to move, raises his heavy 
 lids and lets his large eyes rest upon your 
 face for a moment with appealing, hope 
 less indolence; then the lids fall softly, the 
 head droops, the arms fold heavily about 
 it, and he collapses again into absolute re- coiiapud 
 
 ,,_,.. , into absolute 
 
 pose. Ihis mute remonstrance was the repose. 
 nearest approach to activity the naturalist 
 saw him make. Lamb, in his delicious 
 essay On Some of the Old Actors, says of 
 Dodd, that " in expressing slowness of ap 
 prehension he surpassed all others. You 
 could see the first dawn of an idea stealing The first 
 slowly over his countenance, climbing up i!* m 
 by little and little, with a painful process, 
 till it closed up at last to the fullness of a 
 twilight conception its highest meridian. 
 He seemed to keep back his intellect, as 
 some have had the power to retard their 
 pulsation. The balloon takes less time in 
 filling, than it took to cover the expansion 
 of his broad moony face over all its quar 
 ters with expression. A glimmer of un- 
 
jo6 In a Club Corner 
 
 derstanding would appear in the corner of 
 his eye, and for lack of fuel go out again. 
 A part of his forehead would catch a little 
 intelligence, and be a long time in commu 
 nicating it to the remainder." One day, 
 at the one store of a cross-roads village, 
 
 *" - I had convenient means of witnessing a 
 
 scene which has remained in my memory. 
 It was in summer, and the laziest day of 
 the season. Waiting for a friend, I had 
 ample opportunity to observe an interest 
 ing person who sat a few feet from me. 
 He was evidently in perfect health, and 
 perfectly at his ease in his life and posses 
 sions. His complexion and figure were 
 proof of unconscious digestion, undisturbed 
 circulation, and absolute repose of nerves. 
 Everything about him, indeed, denoted an 
 
 A utter utter absence of sensation. He was a 
 
 absence of , *_" i 
 
 sensation, farmer, there was no doubt in full enjoy 
 ment of enough of earth s fat acres, and 
 a generous sufficiency of all fat things. 
 There were no burdens or cumbersome im 
 provements on his land, and he was happy 
 in the possession of it. 
 
 " Wi sma to sell, and less to buy, 
 Aboon distress, below envy, 
 Oh who wad leave this humble state, 
 For a the pride of a .the great ? " 
 
In a Club Corner 
 
 He had come over to the neighborhood 
 store to buy something, and had sat him 
 down with the newspaper, at the open Atth eo pen 
 
 door, in the 
 
 door, in the sweet air, to read ; but he was sweet air. 
 too comfortable, or the task was too great 
 he had made no progress. The paper 
 had slipped from him, and his hand had 
 the expression of reaching for it, but the 
 will was wanting to move it. He was not, 
 as we say, asleep, but only profoundly re 
 posing dreaming, as his faculties would 
 permit drowned, as they were, in excess 
 of comfort deep down in the still depths 
 of tranquillity, where the mind rests free 
 of currents, friction, or fretting. His eyes 
 were nearly closed, as if to remain so. He 
 seemed to be absolutely unconscious of the 
 little life that was about him. A boy, 
 passing before him, made no more impres 
 sion than the shadow of a cloud. An 
 express train rushed by, a few rods from 
 where he sat: the newspaper felt it, and The news. 
 
 , . 11 A i paper moved 
 
 moved the man not at all. Animated the man 
 
 . . not at all. 
 
 conversation sprang up ; spirit and humor 
 prevailed. A story was told. The news 
 paper moved again a little ; at last, the 
 man. His mind slowly waked from its 
 blissful state ; eyelids lifted ; eyes bright 
 ened ; sides shook ; and a burst of laugh- 
 
3 o8 
 
 In a Club Corner 
 
 ter was heard showing, not only appreci 
 ation, but thankfulness, that another en 
 joyment had been reserved for him, to fill 
 up his cup of happiness to boundless over 
 flowing. 
 
 THR 
 
 FRIENDLY 
 GUIDANCE 
 OF NECES 
 SITY. 
 
 A saying- 
 of von 
 MoltkSs. 
 
 It is a true saying, that opportunity is 
 kind, but only to the industrious. The 
 Persians have a legend that a poor man 
 watched a thousand years before the gate 
 of Paradise. Then, when he snatched one 
 little nap, it opened, and shut. Dr. John, 
 in Villette, throughout his whole life, was 
 a man of luck a man of success. And 
 why ? Because he had the eye to see his 
 opportunity, the heart to prompt to well- 
 timed action, the nerve to consummate 
 a perfect work. And no tyrant-passion 
 dragged him back ; no enthusiasms, no 
 foibles encumbered his way. "To win," 
 said von Moltke, "you must be at the 
 right place at the right time with a supe 
 rior force." A distinguished traveler was 
 struck with the excess of wealth and luxury 
 in the old countries, where persons of orig 
 inal or splendid gifts are obliged to invent 
 careers for themselves, being denied the 
 friendly guidance of necessity. When Sir 
 Horace Vere died, it was asked what had 
 
In a Club Corner 309 
 
 occasioned his death ; to which some one 
 replied, " By doing nothing." Among the 
 companions of Reynolds, when he was 
 studying his art at Rome, was a fellow- 
 pupil of the name of Astley. They made 
 an excursion, with some others, on a sultry 
 day, and all except Astley took off their 
 coats. After some taunts he was per 
 suaded to do the same, and displayed on 
 the back of his waistcoat a foaming water 
 fall. Necessity had compelled him to patch 
 his clothes with one of his own landscapes. 
 Montesquieu, alluding in a letter to one of 
 his works, says to his correspondent, " You 
 will read it in a few hours, but the labor 
 expended upon it has whitened my hair." 
 Fortune, it has been said, does not like a 
 swordsman, she scorns to encounter a fear 
 ful man : there is no honor in the victory 
 where there is no danger in the way to it ; 
 she tries Mencius by fire ; Rutilius by 
 exile ; Socrates by poison ; Cato by death. 
 It is only in adverse fortune, and in bad 
 times, that we find great examples. 
 
 The Orientals, as clearly stated, defined THR PAI.M 
 Fate to be the penalty of deeds committed 
 in a former state of existence. And the 
 like penalty is reaffirmed by Jews and 
 
jio In a Club Corner 
 
 Christians, ancestral sins being visited 
 
 upon the children even to the third and 
 
 fourth generation, by imputation upon 
 
 "Fate is a the race itself. "Fate is a hand," say the 
 
 hand^ say 
 
 the orien- Orientals. " It lays two ringers on the 
 
 tals. J 
 
 eyes, two on the ears, one on the mouth, 
 and ever cries, Be still." Fate, the phi 
 losophers define to be, "a name for facts 
 not yet passed under the fire of thought ; 
 for causes which are unpenetrated." 
 Materialists give it the name of destiny. 
 " I do not," said Carlyle, " quake in my bed 
 like Wordsworth, trying to reconcile the 
 ways of Providence to my apprehension. 
 I early came to the conclusion that I was 
 not very likely to make it out clearly : the 
 notions of the Calvinists seem what you 
 cannot escape from, namely, that if it s all 
 known beforehand, why, it all must hap 
 pen." It is now twenty years ago or more 
 A worn- since a morning s walk led me by Bellevue 
 Hospital and the Morgue. It was on Sun 
 day, and in dog-days the close of a heated 
 term. The temperature was high in the 
 eighties, and steadily rising. I saw, as I 
 crossed over one of the street railroads, 
 that the iron rails had already expanded to 
 an extent to bow them perceptibly. Cross 
 ing the avenue to the hospital corner, I 
 
In a Club Corner 311 
 
 particularly noticed the people going in 
 and coming out of the dead-house, and that The 
 
 , ... i re dead-house, 
 
 they emerged with very different counte 
 nances than they went in with. Generally 
 a sort of social exchange, it was evident 
 that on this occasion, for some reason, it 
 was a serious place, discouraging to socia 
 bility. Persons that went in together chat 
 ting, came out apart, and with grave faces. 
 Curiosity, which in great part had led them curiosity 
 thither, was confounded, and a bitter lesson " 
 of life had been impressed on their minds. 
 I passed by. The smell of salt water at 
 the foot of the street, as it lapped the piles 
 and timbers, made me linger, though com 
 pelled to listen to the yelping and snarling 
 and fighting of the dogs at the pound hard 
 by. The peculiar types of men the canine 
 unfortunates brought about them were of 
 interest, and to an extent diverted my at 
 tention from the miserable noises. Oppo 
 site the Morgue I lingered again, and again 
 noticed the marked differences of expres- 
 sion upon faces as they went in and came 
 out. Never having visited a place of the 
 sort, and never having had a desire to do 
 so, on this occasion I felt an irresistible in 
 clination to cross over. I did so, and went 
 in. The mystery of the changed faces was 
 
In a Club Corner 
 
 soon enough explained. Three or more of 
 the marble slabs within the glass-inclosed 
 room were occupied by dead bodies, two 
 of which immediately engaged my atten 
 tion. They lay side by side, covered to the 
 neck with rubber cloth, streams of water 
 from pipes above breaking over them and 
 TWO poor running away at the edges. Two poor 
 
 dead human 
 
 bodies. dead human bodies could hardly have been 
 more different in appearance. They were 
 women, and apparently of about the same 
 age. One had light, soft hair, and a very 
 fair, delicate complexion ; the face in every 
 feature was remarkably beautiful ; the eye 
 lids, not entirely closed, revealed a line of 
 bright blue under the long lashes ; the fore 
 head of breadth and height and expression 
 to denote unusual cultivation ; the delicate 
 ears almost transparent ; the nose straight, 
 with nostrils exquisitely thin and sensitive ; 
 the mouth of peculiar refinement and 
 sweetness ; lips not wholly covering rows 
 of perfectly white teeth ; chin and cheeks 
 with dimples still in them ; throat and neck 
 shapely enough to suggest happy achieve 
 ments to sculpture ; looking, altogether, 
 
 Face of like the face of opulence, the face of a 
 
 opulence. 1-11 i i 
 
 bright human being who just now was the 
 centre of intelligence and elegance the 
 
In a Club Corner 31 3 
 
 petted favorite of enlightenment and the 
 social virtues. She looked to be the de 
 scendant of long lines of gentlemen and 
 ladies, whose faces had been set against 
 evil, and whose aspirations were upward 
 and pure the best fruit of the best and 
 most encouraging civilization. The other The other of 
 unfortunate was of a totally different type. "type. er 
 Her complexion was cloudy and forbid 
 ding ; her hair black and coarse ; her brow 
 low and marked by lines of distress ; her 
 cheek-bones high, and jaws square and set, 
 as if in habitual desperate resistance to 
 fate ; eyes close shut and shrunken ; two 
 ugly scars, one on the forehead and the 
 other behind one of her ears, disfigured 
 and marked her as a victim of grossness 
 and brutality. The head and face were 
 expressive of degradation and wretched 
 ness, and remain to me to this day a haunt 
 ing memory. Alas the life too plainly 
 written in the hard lines and sinewy con 
 formation. Existence had been a struggle 
 life an unequal and awful battle. She Life an 
 had suffered the ills of generations. Her 
 father and her grandfather likely had been 
 anything but gentlemen ; her mother and 
 grandmother anything but ladies. Poor un 
 fortunates ! Side by side they lay, skimmed 
 
In a Club Corner 
 
 off the bay the same hour. Through 
 
 what devious and diverse ways they had 
 
 met in this horrible place. Human nature 
 
 Dumb in the and human experience stand dumb in the 
 
 presence of 
 
 such/acts presence of such facts of life. The inev- 
 
 oflife. \ 
 
 itable, the irremediable who can even 
 guess to what extent ? had to all appear 
 ance determined the end of these two poor 
 human creatures. Call it fate, call it des 
 tiny, call it predestination, in effect it is 
 the same ; all philosophies and all religions 
 to a greater or less extent include it, and 
 we all unconsciously bow to it. 
 
 CONTENT. " What has God given to the wren ? 
 Content." St. Jenny (created and canon 
 ized by Jerrold) was wedded to a very poor 
 man ; they had scarcely bread to keep 
 them ; but Jenny was of so sweet a temper 
 that even want bore a bright face, and 
 Jenny always smiled. In the worst sea 
 sons Jenny would spare crumbs for the 
 birds, and sugar for the bees. Now it so 
 happened that one autumn a storm rent 
 their cot in twenty places apart ; when, 
 behold, between the joints, from the base 
 ment to the roof, there was nothing but 
 A little honeycomb and honey a little fortune 
 J honey. ei for St. Jenny and her husband, in honey. 
 
In a Club Corner 315 
 
 Now, some one said it was the bees, but 
 more declared it was the sweet temper and 
 contentment of St. Jenny that had filled 
 the poor man s house with honey. When 
 Pittacus, after the death of his brother, who 
 had left him a good estate, was offered a 
 great sum of money by the king of Lydia, 
 he thanked him for his kindness, but told 
 him he had already more by half than he 
 knew what to do with. In short, content content 
 
 equivalent 
 
 is equivalent to wealth, and luxury to pov- to wealth. 
 erty ; or, to give the thought a more agree 
 able turn, " Content is natural wealth," 
 says Socrates; to which Addison adds, 
 "Luxury is artificial poverty ; " and recom 
 mends to the consideration of those who 
 are always aiming after superfluous and 
 imaginary enjoyments, and will not be at 
 the trouble of contracting their desires, an 
 excellent saying of Bion the philosopher ; 
 namely, that u No man has so much care 
 as he who endeavors after the most happi 
 ness." "After all," wrote Bulwer to Lady Buhverto 
 Blessington, " a very little could suffice to *Bu 
 make us happy, were it not for our own de 
 sires to be happier still. Certainly I think, 
 as we grow older, we grow more cheer 
 ful ; externals please us more ; and were it 
 not for those dead passions which we call 
 
In a Club Corner 
 
 memories, and which have ghosts no ex 
 orcism can lay, we might walk on soberly 
 to the future, and dispense with excitement 
 by the way. If we cannot stop Time, it is 
 something to shoe him w r ith felt, and pre 
 vent his steps from creaking." 
 
 DEMOC- It would seem that in the United States 
 
 of America all things promising are to be 
 tried. Societies are to be organized for 
 everything, corporations multiplied indefi 
 nitely, and legislation exhausted to make 
 and to keep everybody honest, temperate, 
 and virtuous. Both sexes and all colors 
 are to be educated together. Suffrage is 
 to be universal. Distinctions of God are 
 to be unrecognized by men. An ideal 
 government of the people, it is to know no 
 distinctions, and permit none. Nothing 
 shall be impossible to it. Whimsical at 
 times it will appear, but its whimsicalities 
 will be the recreations and gambols of power. 
 So generally and intensely preoccupied, it 
 is but natural that sometimes a child should 
 
 itsfavorit- lead it. Its favoritism, more and more, 
 will be fickle and qualified. More and more 
 
 it will delight to scatter its gifts, limiting 
 their tenure to subordination. Individuals 
 may be its favorites, until they assume to 
 
In a Club Corner 
 
 be, when they are not. The rights it would 
 secure to each are not to be incompatible 
 with the rights of any. Opportunity for 
 all, advantages to none. All elements must 
 come under control, and be compounded. 
 Masses it will ostentatiously affect, not in- Masses a 
 
 , . . , , . will ostenta- 
 
 dividuals. Heads so much on a level, one twusiy 
 above the rest will be an obstruction. If ^ 
 a quiet blow will reduce it, down it must 
 go. "To live alone is the chastisement 
 of whoever will raise himself too high." 
 Kings have no company. What one knows 
 all will be understood to know. Weak 
 nesses and interests will be accommodated. 
 What affects one must affect all. The 
 materialities where the attempt is made 
 to make all things material will increas 
 ingly govern. Wealth, more and more, wealth the 
 will be acknowledged or not the om- S!^tion. 
 nipotent distinction. Society at large, ac 
 customed to its aggressive splendor and 
 monopoly of advantages, will bow down to 
 it, envy it, and hate it unconsciously 
 unconscious all the time of its own grow 
 ing enslavement. Intellect and purity 
 come to be regarded as the creations of 
 the schoolmaster and the legislator will 
 submit to be graded, averaged, and appro 
 priated kneaded, so to speak, by the 
 
3 1 8 In a Club Corner 
 
 hand of the master without resistance or 
 . sense of responsibility till the end comes. 
 A scrupulously applied Christianity, puri 
 fying, protecting, and directing the ballot, 
 and reducing the universal selfishness to 
 its minimum, must of course dissolve all 
 that is gloomy or discouraging in any out 
 look, speculation, or conjecture. 
 
 PROUD Michelet describes a French peasant on 
 
 POSSESSORS. _ . ... . . . 
 
 a Sunday morning, walking out in his clean 
 linen and unsoiled blouse. His wife is 
 at church, and this simple farmer paces 
 across his acres and looks fondly at his 
 land. You see him in solitude, but his 
 face is illuminated when he thinks his farm 
 is his own, from the surface of the globe 
 to its centre, and that the climate is his 
 own from the surface of the earth up to 
 the seventh heaven. You find that man, 
 if a stranger approaches him, withdraw 
 ing, that he may enjoy his affection in soli- 
 The French tude ; and as he turns away from his Sun- 
 Snnday day walk through his own pastures, you 
 notice that he looks back over his shoulder 
 with affection, and parts with regret. He 
 is not at work ; he is not out to keep off 
 interlopers ; he is out simply to enjoy the 
 feeling of ownership and to look upon hirfl- 
 
In a Club Corner 319 
 
 self as a member of responsible society. 
 
 The cit also is proudly at his ease, and The cu also 
 
 proudly at 
 
 paces the avenue a sovereign in his pos- his ease. 
 sessions. What to him are acres and plow 
 shares compared with the great town of 
 which he is a part ? The vast congeries of 
 activities and forces exists and is operated 
 for his convenience and comfort. Plans 
 he could not originate are ready made. 
 The flow of his life is in a common chan 
 nel. The full volume and steady current 
 satisfy his efforts, and the chances of move 
 ment float him momentarily to the top. 
 Happy or wretched, he can touch a thou 
 sand like him. The best and worst of every 
 thing are at hand, and contiguous. The 
 virtues and vices are organized, and recruit 
 ing. The great town is the greatest, and 
 he is a part of it. Helping to make it, he 
 does something, and will not have lived in 
 vain. He does not see how, but he would 
 be missed. He expands with the bigness Expands 
 
 -with the 
 
 about him. I he great assemblage makes bigness 
 
 *- about him. 
 
 him decorous. His conduct disgraces or 
 dignifies it. He dresses to be presentable 
 to it. It keeps a guard over him while 
 he sleeps and knows his footsteps when 
 awake. The streets are lit for him. The 
 parks are planted for him. The harbor is 
 
In a Club Corner 
 
 The harbor 
 broader for 
 his eye. 
 
 broader for his eye. An opera he may 
 hear at the Academy for a guinea, or at 
 the cathedral for a shilling. Church priv 
 ileges are purchasable or acceptable, at 
 will. The cemetery, where they bury in 
 tombs and trenches, is one of his posses 
 sions. All are his as much as anybody s, 
 and his without exciting anybody s envy 
 or cupidity. Each illustrates the fable of 
 the swimming apples, and applies it to the 
 rest. The universal hat is lifted in conde 
 scension and recognition. 
 
 RESPONSI 
 BILITY. 
 
 The duty oj 
 tlie hour tht 
 duty of all 
 time. 
 
 If we truly believed and realized that 
 here we begin to be what we are to be 
 ever, how absorbing and responsible life 
 would be. How conscientiously and per 
 sistently we should seek the good and 
 avoid the evil. How carefully we should 
 guard ourselves against whatever must 
 perish with the body, and how ardently 
 cultivate all which must survive it. Hap 
 piness would not be sought in its transient 
 forms. Life would be appreciated by its 
 resultant uses. The duty of the hour 
 would be the duty of all time. The good 
 would inhere. The present would be re 
 alized as the period of growth and achieve 
 ment ; and having something to do worth 
 
In a Club Corner 321 
 
 doing, we should need all the time we have 
 to do it well. The duties of the day faith 
 fully discharged, we should not much con 
 cern ourselves about the morrow. The The morrow 
 
 111 r i anticipated 
 
 morrow would be so tar provided tor that it and made 
 would be anticipated and made easy, if it 
 come. Refinement and intelligence and 
 excellence would result from fidelity to 
 duty, and a happiness would be established 
 as serene as it would be unconscious. 
 Living and acting, and getting the pleasure 
 and good of life with each day of it, we 
 should enjoy a foretaste of fruition and 
 perpetuity. 
 
 [Titles for essays, with some citations ESSAYS IN 
 
 J TITLES. 
 
 and hints.] 
 
 Malignant Joy. Edmund Kean s act 
 ing. 
 
 Monopolists of Salvation. 
 
 The Heroism of Self-Denial. 
 
 Indolence and Cowardice. At the bot 
 tom of too many of our beliefs and prac 
 tices. 
 
 Pitiers of Themselves. Emerson. 
 
 Doubt. De Tocqueville s three miser 
 ies. 
 
 Pride and Conscience. Poe s Margi 
 nalia. 
 
In a Club Corner 
 
 "My Dear Devil." The fidelity of 
 woman. 
 
 Dodging the Drops. 
 
 Organic Egotism. 
 
 An Embodiment of Nothing. 
 
 Animal Spirits. " My distresses are 
 so many that I can t afford to part with my 
 spirits." 
 
 The Difficult Ways of Honesty. 
 
 Life, the Touchstone of Profession. 
 
 One-Eyed Men. " It is only in the 
 kingdom of the blind that one-eyed men 
 are kings." 
 
 Sally Jackson s Dream-Book. 
 
 Faith in Knavery. Jonas Chuzzlewit. 
 
 The Books That Have Flavor. 
 
 The Fidelity of Silence. 
 
 Avarice of Reward. 
 
 Keyholes. Tom Jones. 
 
 Milk and Praise. Mary Lamb. 
 
 Morbid Oblivion. Johnson to Boswell. 
 
 Medicines for the Mind. A saying of 
 Burke s. Holmes in the Autocrat. Burns. 
 Old pamphlet of Dr. VVayland s. 
 
 Summer Friends. Timon of Athens. 
 
 Falsehood of Extremes. Justice with 
 out mercy. 
 
 An Autumnal Harvest of Leisure. 
 Wordsworth s letter to Crabb Robinson. 
 
/ a Club Comer 3 2 3 
 
 Sensibility of Reproach. Swift. Steele s 
 last paper of the Englishman. 
 
 The Dismal Precocity of Poverty. 
 Becky Sharp. 
 
 Intellectual Detachment 
 
 Sour Bread. Hawthorne s great horror. 
 Marble Faun. 
 
 The Brutality of Justice. To be treated 
 satirically. 
 
 The Sniveling Virtue of Meekness. 
 Walter Shandy. 
 
 Incorrigible and Losing Honesty. 
 Lamb s father. 
 
 Ornamental Sorrow. The Widow Row- 
 ens. 
 
 A Habit of Virtue. Sterne. 
 
 Constitutional Inertness. 
 
 Ferocious Discontent 
 
 The Dull Virtuous and the Brilliant 
 \Yicked. 
 
 A Glutton of Books. 
 
 Solemn Plausibilities. 
 
 Avarice in Youth. 
 
 Protracted Misery. 
 
 Expansive Intentions. Skimpole. 
 
 Snappishness of Tone. The brisk old. 
 
 Domestic Dyspepsia, The name given 
 to the disease of which Jane Carlyle was a 
 chronic sufferer, by Caroline Fox. 
 
324 I H a Club Corner 
 
 The Decencies of Ignorance. John 
 Buncle. 
 
 Too Quickly Won. Romeo and Juliet. 
 
 The Holy Goggle. Halifax s advice to 
 his daughter. 
 
 The Infirmity of Pride. Bulwer s Earl 
 of Warwick. 
 
 Other People s Sins. 
 
 The Equity of Providence. Rasselas. 
 
 Microscopic Eyes. 
 
 Socrates Sauce. 
 
 Foresight of Troubles. John Buncle. 
 
 Unfinished Faces. 
 
 The Devil s Amanuensis. A misan 
 thropic writer. Hazlitt s Commonplaces. 
 Humboldt. Schopenhauer. Sir Thomas 
 Browne. 
 
 Aggressive Self-Possession. 
 
 The Rapture of Ravage. 
 
 Cork John. Nimble. Always atop. 
 
 The Infinite Malice of Destiny. Shel 
 ley to Hogg. 
 
 Omnigenous Erudition. Celestial Rail 
 road. 
 
 The Feeling of Identity and the Instinct 
 of Perpetuity. 
 
 Married Misery. 
 
 The Wild Thunder Months. Richter. 
 
 Disenchanted Maturity. " The years 
 
In a Club Corner 325 
 
 that bring the philosophic mind." Prelude 
 to Laon and Cythna. 
 
 Patent Antif rictions. Oil of flattery, 
 etc. 
 
 The Air of Omnipotence. 
 
 Moral Physicians. 
 
 Wise Slowness. Sainte-Beuve. Mad. 
 Geoffrin. 
 
 Raking the Desk of the Devil. Byron s 
 club-foot. Byron and his sister. Napo 
 leon and his sisters. Memoirs of Mad. de 
 Remusat. 
 
 The Medicine of Example. 
 
 The Healing Power of Admiration. 
 
 The Etiquette of Sectarianism. 
 George Eliot. 
 
 Running a Thought to Death. 
 
 The Popularity-Hunting Air. 
 
 Post Mortem Wisdom. 
 
 The Habit of Belief. 
 
 The Diseases of Sorrow. 
 
 Suffrage as a Safety- Valve. 
 
 The Mythical Indispensable Man. 
 
 Ignorance as a Medium. " One can see 
 anything in a fog," is a saying of the Dutch. 
 
 On Exchanging Advantages. 
 
 Sanscrit for Memoranda. 
 
 Responsibility the Basis of Morals. 
 
 Applied Christianity. 
 
In a Club Corner 
 
 This World in the Next. Farrar, in 
 his lecture on Dante. 
 
 Living on the Privations of Others. 
 
 Living on Brilliant Hopes. 
 
 An Enthusiast Without a Mission. 
 
 What to Do with the Kittens ? 
 
 The Fool s Eye in an Old Head. 
 
 On Being Found Out. Fag in The 
 Rivals. 
 
 The Fury Passions. " The vultures of 
 the mind." 
 
 The Unforgiving Eye. Sir Oliver s. 
 
 The Dread of Scolding Women. Cap 
 tain Cuttle, after he fled from Mrs. Mac- 
 Stinger s, "lived a very close and retired 
 life, seldom stirring abroad after dark ; 
 venturing even then only into the obscur 
 est streets, never going forth at all on Sun 
 days ; and both within and without the 
 walls of his retreat, avoiding bonnets, as if 
 they were worn by raging lions." Hesiod. 
 Juno s tongue. Doctor to his patient. 
 
 The Universal Dependence. 
 
 Posthumous Reflections. 
 
 Behind the Time, and Poor. Solomon 
 Gills. 
 
 Making an Effort. Mrs. Chick s reply. 
 
 The Desolation of Disuse. Dombey s 
 house. 
 
In a Club Corner 
 
 Rash Judgment. One of Lamb s Es 
 says. Wesley s warning. 
 
 Sanctified Immoralities. 
 
 Books in Phrases. In Shakespeare, 
 Browne, Sterne, Emerson, etc., and in 
 every wise man s conversation. 
 
 The Mystery of the Lady. 
 
 Personal Option. 
 
 The Goitre of Egotism. Emerson. 
 
 Self-Swindlers. 
 
 Difficulties of Decency. 
 
 Vice of Rectitude. 
 
 Wrath of Celestial Minds. 
 
 Congestion of Ideas. 
 
 Accident, as Element or Factor. Na 
 poleon. Wellington. Napier. 
 
 Excess in Temperance. 
 
 The Hobby Club. Each member to be 
 permitted uninterrupted opportunity to air 
 his hobby. 
 
 The Slow Coach. A newspaper, to be 
 made up from the papers of the day pre 
 vious, the objectionable and the ephem 
 eral to be omitted. 
 
 The Eddy of Indecision. 
 
 Masks. 
 
 The Art of Friendliness. 
 
 The Uneasiness of Remorse. 
 
 The Loneliness of Pride. 
 
In a Club Corner 
 
 Sailing on a Wish from World to World. 
 
 Whatsoever ye would do unto others do 
 ye even so unto them. 
 
 Lord be merciful unto him a sinner. 
 
 Passions and Aversions. Fouche. 
 
 The Litany of our Little Miseries. 
 
 How to make Superfluous People Con 
 tent ? 
 
 Homes for the Indolent. 
 

 
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 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY