Ups and Downs in the Life of a Distressed Gentleman Part 1

Ups and Downs in the Life of a Distressed Gentleman.

by William L. Stone.

INTRODUCTION.

The best parallel to the conduct of the silly ostrich, that thrusts her head into a thicket, or the sand, and fancies she is thereby hidden from view, occurred some years since in the village of Catskill. A printer, who was neither an observer of the Sabbath, nor a member of the Temperance Society, went to a grocery one Sunday morning for a bottle of gin. On coming out of the dram-shop, with his decanter of fire-water, he perceived that the services in the church near by, were just closed, and the congregation were returning to their homes. Not having entirely lost his self-respect, and unwilling to be seen in the public street by the whole village, on such a day, and with such a burden, he hastily thrust his hand, holding the bottle, behind, for the purpose of concealing it underneath the skirts of his coat: and in this way, apparently with the greatest possible unconcern, the disciple of Faust walked up the street, just in advance of the congregation.

Unfortunately, however, in his haste he had thrust his decanter quite through between the folds of his coat-skirts, so that his hands and the neck of the bottle only were concealed; while, to the irresistible merriment of the people, the object which he wished to hide was ten times more the subject of observation than it could have been before.

Very much in the same predicament stands the writer of the following pages. His intention was to publish them anonymously, if at all. But an unauthorized annunciation of his name, in the Booksellers' Advertiser, a few weeks since, has rendered the effort as abortive as the trick of the foolish bird, and the expedient of the printer. The mask, thus torn, has therefore been entirely doffed.

And now a few words as to the sketches themselves.

Whatever else may be said of the writer, it cannot be predicated of him, as by Addison of a certain cla.s.s of biographers of his day, "that they watched for the death of a great man, like so many undertakers, on purpose to make a penny by him." The subject of this little volume is neither a great man, nor, happily, is he yet numbered among the dead.

Should it then be asked, Why write about small men at all, or, in any event, until after they are dead? The answer is at hand: it is the fas.h.i.+on of the times in which we live. The present is the age of small men, whose lives are necessarily written while living, lest, when dead, and all hope of reward is past, nothing should be remembered to be said of them. What, moreover, can be more agreeable, than for a man to read his own biography, especially when drawn by the partial hand of friends.h.i.+p, and retouched in each successive edition, as new circ.u.mstances require, new virtues are disclosed, and new deeds demand a record? It may be likened to the reading of one's own epitaph, wherein one can see to it for himself, that SHAKSPEARE did not speak advisedly when he wrote, "It is the evil only that men do that lives after them, while the good is interred with their bones." And besides, biography is history; and history has been defined to be "philosophy teaching by example." By having his own biography in his library, therefore, a man may become his own philosophical teacher, and save the expense of a professor; while, at the same time, he can enjoy the consolation of seeing how mankind around him are improving themselves by the study of his example. Should the subject of the present sketches object, that the writer has deviated from the course of most modern biographers, by the indulgence of his old-fas.h.i.+oned notions of impartiality and truth, he must plead guilty to the charge; but, in mitigation of punishment, he would beg leave to relate a story:

It is written in the annals of the Celestial Empire, that there once, and for ages, existed an historical tribunal, inst.i.tuted for the purpose of perpetuating the virtues and vices of their monarchs. One day the Emperor Tai-t-song summoned the President of this tribunal before him, and ordered him to exhibit the history of his own reign.

The President declined to obey the mandate, upon the ground that they were required to keep an exact record of the virtues and vices of their sovereigns, and would no longer be at liberty to record the truth, if their register was to be subject to the royal inspection. "What!"

exclaimed the Father of the Sun and the Uncle of the Moon, "you transmit my history to posterity, and do you a.s.sume the liberty of acquainting it with my faults?" "It is inconsistent with my character,"

rejoined the President, "and with the dignity of my office, ever to disguise the truth. I am bound to record the whole, even to the slightest fault; and such is the exactness and severity of my duty, that I am not suffered to omit a record of our present conversation."

Tai-t-song had an elevation of soul to be found in the hearts of few monarchs, even in more civilized countries than the land of Confucius.

"Continue," said he to the official historian, "to write the truth without constraint. May my virtues and vices contribute to the public utility, and be instructive to my successors. Your tribunal is free; I will for ever protect it, and permit it to write my history with the utmost impartiality."

It is readily admitted that the cases are not exactly parallel. Still, the relation contains an excellent lesson, not only to princes, but to other people. How happy would it be for the world, if we all lived under the full persuasion of the fact, that the faithful hand of history will not fail to send us down to posterity odious or respected, as by our lives and conduct we shall have deserved! And if my friend Wheelwright shall feel offended that I have kept a record of the most striking incidents of his life, I have only to hope that he will dispel his frowns, dismiss his objections, and, by his own example, ill.u.s.trate the value of such magnanimity as that displayed by the Emperor of China.

SOME Pa.s.sAGES

IN THE LIFE OF

MR. DANIEL WHEELWRIGHT.

CHAPTER I.

A DISQUISITION ON CIRCLES.

"In _circle_ following _circle_."

The horse at the cider-mill; the mules in the press-room of the American Tract Society; and the watchman who walks his drowsy round until he falls asleep; are not the only beings that spend their lives in traversing a circle. As the curve is the true line of beauty, and as the circle in Egyptian hieroglyphics is ever used as the symbol of renewed life--the type or sign of the generative principle--so the motion produced by the _centripetal_ and _centrifugal_ forces, seems to be that of nature. We are often told of the never-ending domestic duties of the faithful housewife, doomed--

"To tread the same dull circle round and round;"--

The parson often discourses touching the round of his parochial duties; and who does not sympathize with the diurnal editor at the thought of the hara.s.sing duties devolving upon him, "in circles incessant." The man of the world, and the sensualist, dance the giddy round of pleasure.

The judge goes his circuit, to bring men to justice in this world, and the self-denying missionary traverses his, to save them from it in the next. It is very true that the periphery of the circles traversed by some persons and objects, is greater than that of others. One man walks the circ.u.mference of his duties in a single day; another in a week; while it may require the whole life of the third to perform the journey. Many members of Congress make speeches in circles, whether arguing abstruse points of const.i.tutional law, or the claims of a party candidate; as do lawyers their cases at the bar, proving the foregoing proposition by the following, and inferring the following from the foregoing. Cast a stone into a lake or a mill-pond, and it will produce a succession of motions, circle following circle in order, and extending the radius until they disappear in the distance. The political movements of nations are circular. Under the severe pressure of despotism the people rise in their fury, and snap their chains asunder. A republic follows; degenerating first into a rude and wild democracy; and thence into a cruel and more turbulent anarchy. As a relief from the evils of this, the people, sighing for repose, fly back again into the arms of despotism. But with a people who have once tasted the sweets of liberty, this kind of tranquillity is short.

Maddened by wrongs, real or supposed, they are soon prepared again to rush into the death-dance of revolution. The "one eternal principle" of the Chinese, forming "the first link in the great material chain" of their system, is represented by a circle. Time wings his flight in circles, and every year rolls round within itself. Hence the poets sing of "the circling years." The sun turns round upon his own axis; and the moon "changes monthly in her circled orb." The other celestial bodies all wheel their courses in circles around the common centre. The moons of Jupiter revolve around him in circles, and he carries them along with him in his periodical circuit round the sun. Saturn always moves within his rings, and thus adorned himself, walks in circles through the regions of s.p.a.ce:--

"And other planets circle other suns."

A s.h.i.+p on the ocean, though apparently bounding over a plain of waters, rides in fact upon the circ.u.mference of a circle around the arch of the earth's diameter. The brisk swallow cuts the air in circles; the vampire wheels circularly about your head; the timid hare flees the ravenous pack of the sportsman in a winding course, until in despair it returns to die in its form. The lunar circle betokens a tempest;--modern writers on pneumatics affirm every breeze that blows, from the gentle-breathing zephyr to the rude northeastern blast, to be a whirlwind; and the beautiful hues of the iris, bright with hope and promise, play upon the melting clouds in the segment of a circle. The eagle soars toward the heavens in curves, as though measuring the angles of distant objects by geometrical figures; and the drunkard, when unable longer to control his movements, describes a curvilinear path as he reels homeward from his revels, and waits at his bed-side to catch hold of a post as it "comes round again." Those German princ.i.p.alities which are represented in the Diet, are denominated circles; and if a man is so ignorant as not to know that the moss always grows on the north side of a tree, and consequently gets lost in the woods, he invariably makes the discovery by finding that he has been unconsciously traversing a circle. Indeed, with most of our race the journey of human life would be circular, were it not that it has both a beginning and an end,--and so has a circle, if you could find them. From all which it follows, that by the laws of the universe, all things, animate and inanimate, move in revolutionary harmony; and though complex in their machinery as the wheels of Ezekiel's vision, are yet so perfect and beautiful in their order, as to have suggested to the ancients the poetical idea of "the music of the spheres." And now for the truth of the foregoing propositions in geometrical physics, they shall, in at least one striking instance, be ill.u.s.trated by a few pa.s.sages from the life and adventures of a quondam acquaintance of mine, whose name stands at the head of this bit of biography.

CHAPTER II.

BIRTH AND PARENTAGE.

"I am no herald, to inquire of men's pedigrees; it sufficeth me if I know their virtues."--_Sidney._

There being no herald's college in this free and happy country, where equality was declared by the revolutionary congress to be as self-evident as our right to independence, I have no means of tracing the pedigree of my friend for many generations back. Indeed, as it was long ago remarked by Lord Camden, alterations of sirnames were in former ages so very common, as to have obscured the truth of our pedigrees, so that it is no little labor to deduce many of them. But, although no crest marks the career of his ancestors, or s.h.i.+eld emblazons their escutcheon with mementoes of achievements in arts or in arms; and although I claim not in his behalf, as of the heroes in olden times, "a pedigree that reached to heaven," yet no doubt exists of the antiquity of his family. The name was duly inscribed in the Doomsday book of the Norman Conqueror, and had not the limbs of the genealogical tree been broken, it is believed that their ancestry might, nevertheless, have been traced back to a gentleman by the name of j.a.pheth, "who was the son of Noah." Still, as I have already intimated, this inquiry can be of little consequence. In this land of freedom, where every tub stands on its own bottom--where men are the architects of their own fame and fortunes--where he that hath neither coat nor shoes is at liberty to go without them,--it is of little moment whether a man knows who he happens to be, or not, provided always that he behaves well. Nay, if he cannot tell whence he sprung, he escapes the censure of being the son of his father, and may arrive at the highest honors of the republic without either borrowing merit from the dead, or having any too much of his own. Avoiding genealogies, therefore, I will come directly to the point, and a.s.sume it as granted, that, inasmuch as Mr. Daniel Wheelwright is known to have had a father and mother, so likewise he must have had grand-parents. And these were, doubtless, sensible and judicious people, more desirous of being industrious and useful, than what the world calls great. Borrowing, therefore, a hint from their own honest name, in selecting an occupation for their son, they chose that of coachmaking--an art, which, in the progress of civilization, he carried from New-Jersey into the beautiful valley of the Mohawk--not many years after the original proprietors of that section of the republic had been finally driven away by those who understood tilling their land better than they. It was in this picturesque and delightful valley, on the banks of the river, and in a town alike celebrated for the taste of its people in architecture, and distinguished as a seat of learning, that my friend and hero, Daniel, first saw the light. I have cast no figure to ascertain which of the divinities presided at his birth, or what particular star first pencilled his pale blue eyes with its silver rays. But no angry planet was culminating in that particular chamber of the heavens at the time, for he grew up the best-natured being in those parts; and if the genius of Dulness was not actually present on the occasion, his court must have been held on that evening at no great distance therefrom. Not to be too particular, however, it is enough for the present to say, that he waxed towards the stature of manhood much as other boys do--save that he was never engaged in a quarrel--from the circ.u.mstance, probably, that he had neither sufficient energy, nor decision of character, to commence or to end one. To do him justice, if honesty be a fault, it was surely his; and I can truly say that in all the pa.s.sing vicissitudes of his life, it has never been taken out of him to this day. His father was industrious and economical, never losing an hour in which he could make any thing, or parting with a dollar so long as he could keep it. In his domestic arrangements he was exceedingly careful that nothing should be lost. If he had eels for breakfast, he would always contrive, by preserving and drying the skins, to save more than the original cost of these somewhat questionable members of the piscatory family. He early instructed his son in the elementary principles of his trade; and it is believed that before he was seventeen he not only knew the number of spokes in a wheel, but had actually adjusted them to the felloes, and driven them up to the hub.

He was also taught in some branches of household carpentry work, which proved of no disadvantage to him in the end. Full of good nature, he was always popular with the boys; was never so industrious as when manufacturing to their order little writing desks, fancy boxes, and other trifling articles not beyond the scope of his mechanical ingenuity--for which he exacted such compensation as he could obtain.

In sober truth, like his parent, he was fond of money. The world, he was wont to say, owed him a living, and he prided himself not a little on his skill in procuring the wherewithal. And yet he was rarely known to realize one s.h.i.+lling that did not cost him two; or in other words, in all his multifarious transactions of barter and otherwise, he was almost uniformly overreached. There was one way, moreover, in which his little earnings could always be taken from him. He was fond of good living, albeit not his father's fault, since his family board was seldom spread with other than the plainest and least expensive fare.

Certain was it, therefore, that the palate had never received any epicurean lessons at home; but it was equally certain that he had acquired a _taste_ for the good things of this world. Hence those of his a.s.sociates who had a design upon whatever of small change they supposed him from time to time to have acc.u.mulated, had only to tempt him with some trifling luxury, and the work was done. A plate of oysters was irresistible!

CHAPTER III.

HIS DESTINY UNDERGOES A CHANGE.

"G.o.d give them wisdom that have it; and those that are fools, let them use their talents."--_Shakspeare._

Daniel Wheelwright grew up a tall and stately youth; and to do him justice, his personal appearance was not a little in his favor. I have before intimated that the city in which he dwelt was the seat of a learned inst.i.tution; and it was his fortune--ill or good, will appear in the sequel--to make the acquaintance of several inmates of the university, who seemed "to take a liking to him," to borrow the quaint juvenile expression in such cases, especially during the ripening and ingathering of the fruit in his father's little orchard. At these seasons their visits were frequent; and as the student's life appeared to be at once more easy and promising than a coachmaker's, and more genteel withal, Daniel manifested a desire to change his occupation. It may be, however--for Daniel is my friend, and were he not, I would do him no injustice--that the fire of ambition had begun to glow in his bosom, and that he was really and truly desirous of describing a wider "circle" than that of a carriage wheel. His mother, too--mothers always most love and indulge the oldest son--discovered a genius in Daniel requiring only means and opportunity, to wing an eagle-flight. It was some considerable time, however, before the father could be persuaded into the measure. By dint of industry and economy, he was getting along snugly in the world; and as he had no more extended education himself, he judged it all-sufficient if a man could read his Bible, and cast the interest on a note of hand by the a.s.sistance of Daboll's Arithmetic. My friend's common-school education, therefore, was judged by his father to be all that was necessary for an honest man. But the woman prevailed,--as women generally do. It happened that at the distance of some sixty or seventy miles farther up the vale of the Mohawk, lived a man whom she had previously known in New-Jersey, and whose occupation was that of "teaching young ideas how to shoot"--not grouse and woodc.o.c.k, but to shoot forth into scions of learning. He had a son whom he desired exceedingly to send to college; but as he was forever compelled to be sc.r.a.ping the bottom of his scanty exchequer to supply the current wants of his family, he was dest.i.tute of the means;--and there were fewer education societies, and other facilities for obtaining eleemosynary instruction in those days than in the present age of disinterested benevolence. The inventive genius of the woman was therefore not slow to devise a project by which her friend might be served, while at the same time her own favorite design might be furthered--and that, too, without making, even prospectively, any essential encroachment upon the means of her husband. For the attainment of this object--or rather for the removal of so formidable an obstacle in the future career of her son--she had for a long while been taxing her inventive and diplomatic powers. An arrangement was therefore soon negotiated, by which the pedagogue received our hero under his own roof, and prepared him for the university, while his own son was taken as a boarder into the family of the coachmaker, where he remained during the whole of his collegiate course. The immediate results were auspicious. The son of the pedagogue took the honors of his cla.s.s, and has since been enabled to rejoice as the president of a transmontane university; and our hero was, in turn, duly prepared for matriculation beneath the academic evergreens of his own neighborhood.

It is but fair to acknowledge, moreover, that students have entered that inst.i.tution, as well as divers others, no better prepared than Daniel Wheelwright. Notwithstanding the natural indolence of his character, he knew that he must know something before he could enter college, and that in case of a failure, he must again cultivate more acquaintance with the _felloes_ of the shop, than with the fellows of the university; and with the stimulus of such a consideration before him, he applied himself to his books with extraordinary diligence. His preceptor was in all respects adequate to his task; and the requisites of the college being quite liberal and republican--not repressing the generous ardor of young ambition by exacting too much in the outset--the aspiring Daniel crossed the threshhold of the university without any considerable difficulty. His prudent and sagacious mother had managed every thing with consummate forecast and tact; and to avoid any difficulty that might have resulted from too many unanswered questions, her son had been represented to the faculty as a very modest and diffident youth, who knew much more than he could tell--like the grave bird, of which it was believed that although it said but little, it thought the more. Indeed, it is believed that he had actually read Cornelius Nepos and three books of the aeneid. He had likewise thumbed over his Greek grammar, and gone through the gospel of John. The kind mother heard of his initiatory success with delight, and the father was rather gratified than otherwise--especially as it cost him nothing.

CHAPTER IV.

OF UNIVERSITY HONORS AND THE WAY THEY ARE OBTAINED.

"O this learning! what a thing it is!"--_Shakspeare._

"You do ill to teach the child such words: he teaches him to hick and to hack, which they'll do fast enough of themselves; and to call horum; fye upon you!"--_Idem._

How young Wheelwright had ever accomplished even what has already been indicated, was a matter of astonishment to himself; and before many months had pa.s.sed away, to every body else, for his subsequent acquirements did not correspond thereunto. In good sooth it is believed that he never really mastered a single lesson afterward. Having succeeded in getting _into_ the college, it was a very rational conclusion that he would some day find his way _out_ of it. He knew that the four years would pa.s.s away in less than five; and as he had turned student to avoid hard labor, why should he fatigue himself by digging at the roots of hard language! It was either from sheer indolence, or because he had completely exhausted himself in his preparatory studies, that he made no farther advances in literature, although he kept within its flowery walks. I have already mentioned a snug little orchard, which, in truth, was one of rare productiveness, and of which his father's industry had made him the proprietor. The produce of this orchard, both of apples and cider, added to, and in connection with, his imperturbable good nature, enabled Daniel to maintain the popularity among the students of which I have spoken in a former chapter. The reader will not be surprised, therefore, to learn that he succeeded in obtaining an election as a member of the _Philo-Peitho-logicalethian Inst.i.tute_--a society, as its name imports, learned in all that is eloquent, logical and veracious--and of which, I am proud to say, the distinguished subject of this memoir had the honor once of being chosen semi-monthly secretary, after a sharp and close canva.s.s. In the transactions of this society the princ.i.p.al forte of Daniel was debating; albeit the character of his elocution was not the most brilliant, and it was not often until after the ayes and noes were called, that it could be determined from the drift of his argument, which side he had espoused, or in fact whether he himself understood the proposition--unless, indeed, as was sometimes the case, he commenced his speech by saying, "Mr. President, I _are_ in favor of the negative of that are question." In the ordinary tasks of his cla.s.s he contrived from day to day, by the promptings of others, to work his way along; and previous to the quarterly examinations, it was his practice to obtain the a.s.sistance of some of his cla.s.smates to go over his exercises with him, which they very cheerfully did, as an evening could always be comfortably spent in this way, over a pitcher of cider and a basket of apples. Having a pretty good memory, Dan could retain a part of his lesson, guess at another part, and catch the wings and legs of the residue from the promptings of friends--although he so greatly outstripped them in growth, that it became difficult to send the necessarily subdued sounds of their corrections up to his anxious ears.

It was a kind and indulgent cla.s.s of which he was a member, and of no ordinary character--it having furnished the president of one university; the chief manager, for years, of half the Christian missionaries in heathendom; and its full share of learned professors, sagacious legislators, and eloquent counsellors in the law. And as the truly great are ever the most active in labors of love, its members were always ready and willing to lend our hero a helping hand in "climbing" the difficult "steep" which Dr. Beattie p.r.o.nounces so "hard"