Bygones Worth Remembering Volume Ii Part 14

The Scotch display in contest a sort of divine ferocity, such as we read of in the Old Testament. Their battle song at Flodden ran thus:--

"Burn their women, lean and ugly, Burn their children, great and small, In the hut and in the palace, Prince and peasant--burn them all.

Plunge them in the swelling torrents With their gear and with their goods; Spare--while breath remains--no Saxon, Drown them in the roaring floods."

The Irish could not excel this rage of h.e.l.l. Yet the same race gave us Burns and Sir Walter Scott, which no seer would have predicted or any would believe. The Scotch have deliberate generosity. Though narrow in piety they are broad in politics and have veracity in their bones.

It concerns us to notice that in every _individual_ there is the same variety of qualities which exist in the race. Not to understand this is to misunderstand everybody with whom we come in contact. Take the case of a man in whom personal ambition predominates. That implies the existence of other qualities which may be even estimable, though subordinated to ends of power. William, the Norman Conqueror, had a gracious manner to any who lent themselves to further his ends; but, as Tennyson tells us, he was "stark as Death to those who crossed him."

The first Napoleon gave thrones to generals who would occupy them in his interest, or as his instruments. The third Napoleon was very courteous even to workmen, so long as he believed they would be on his side in the streets; but their throats were not safe in the corridor outside his audience chamber, if he distrusted them.

This unexpected blandishment confused the strong brain of John Arthur Roebuck, who, under the influence of Bonapartean courtesy, forgot that he had become Emperor by perjury and murder. A man caring above all things for power will give anything to acquire it or hold it. If any one will help him even to plunder others, he will share the plunder with a liberal hand among his confederates, who proclaim him as a most amiable, generous, and disinterested gentleman. To them he is so. The political world and private life also abounds in men who, like Byron's captain, was the "best-mannered gentleman who ever scuttled a s.h.i.+p or cut a throat."

There are very few who say as Byron elsewhere wrote:--

"I wish men to be free, From Kings or mobs--from you or me."

The point of importance is that in judging a man we should accustom ourselves to see all about him, and, while we hate the evil, not shut our eyes to what there may be of good in the same person.

For objects of popularity men will encounter peril in promoting measures of public utility, and though they care more for themselves than for the public, the public profit by their ambition. Provided it is understood that these advocates are not to be depended upon any longer than it answers their purpose, n.o.body is discouraged when they take up with something else, which better serves their ends.

Men like Mr. Gladstone have a pa.s.sion for conscience in politics; or, like Mr. Bright, have a pa.s.sion for justice in public affairs; or, like Mr. Mill, have a pa.s.sion for truth; or, like Mr. Cobden, who had a pa.s.sion for national prosperity founded on freedom and peace--will encounter labour and obloquy with courage, and regard applause only as a happy accident, caring mainly for the consciousness of duty done.

However, this cla.s.s of men are not numerous, but command honour when known.

Men of the average sort very much resemble fishes, except that they are less quiet and not so graceful in their movements. There is the Pholas Dactylus, which resembles a small, animated sausage with a pudding head.

His plan of life is to bore a perfectly tubular pa.s.sage in the soft sand rock on the sea-side, and lie there with his cunning head at the mouth of his dwelling and snap up the smaller creatures who wander heedlessly by. Sometimes a near relative has made a dwelling-place at right angles to the direction in which he has elected to make his residence. He does not consult the rights or convenience of any one, but bores straight through his father or his mother-in-law. There are many persons who do the same thing. There is the subtle and picturesque devil fish, who hides himself in the sedge and opens his mouth like a railway tunnel.

With the fis.h.i.+ng-rod which Nature attaches to his nose, the end of which is contrived like a bait, he switches the bright water until fish run forward, when he draws it cleverly up, and the foolish, impetuous, and un.o.bservant creatures rush down his cavernous and treacherous throat He offers a bait, not to feed them, but to feed himself. If people had only eyes to see, there are devil fish about in the sedges of daily life--political, clerical, and social. There is the octopus, with its long, aimless arms, as silent and lifeless as seaweed. It lies about as idle, as soft, as flexible, and as easy as error, or intemperance, or dishonesty. But let any edible thing approach it, and every limb starts into energy, every fibre is alive, every muscle contracts, and the thing seized dies in its inextricable and iron arms. People abound of the octopus species, and it is prudent to avoid them. However, the bad are not so many as are supposed. Yet, when we consider that, upon a moderate calculation, a fool a day is born--and doubtless a knave a day to keep him company--there must be some dubious people about.

A common mistake is that of taking offence at some unpleasant quality, and never looking to see whether there be not others for which we may tolerate and even respect a man. A person is often judged by a single quality, and sometimes by a single word. Persons who have lived long years in amity take offence at one expression. It may be uttered in pa.s.sion; it may be spoken in mere lightness of heart, with no intention and no idea of offending--yet it enters into the foolish blood of those who hear it, and poisons the mind evermore. Nevertheless every man who reflects knows that those are fortunate and even miraculously skilful people, who can always say exactly what they intend to say, and no more.

What resource of language--what insight of the minds of others--what mastery of phrases--what subtlety of discrimination--what perspicuity of statement must he possess who can express his every idea with such unerring accuracy that no word shall be redundant, or deficient, or ambiguous; and that another shall understand the speaker precisely as he understands himself! Yet by a chance phrase what friends.h.i.+ps have been severed--what enmity has arisen--what estrangements, even in households, have occurred from these small and incidental causes? All memory of the tenderness, the kindness, the patient and generous service of years is often obliterated by a single word! The error people make is--that everything said is intended. Yet out of the many qualities every man has, and by which any man may be moved, a single pa.s.sion may go mad in a mind unwatchful. Not only hatred or anger, but love will go mad and commit murder, which is often but the insanity of a minute. Yet n.o.body remembers that all are liable to insanity of speech.

What a wonderful thing is perfection! It must be very rare. Yet some people are always looking for it in others who never offer any example of it in themselves. It is not, however, to be had anywhere. All we are ent.i.tled to look for is that the good in any individual shall in some general way predominate over the bad. We have need to be thankful if we find this. The late George Peabody was not a mean man, though he would stand in the rain at Charing Cross, waiting for a cheap omnibus to the City. There was a threepenny one waiting, but one with a twopenny fare would come up soon--Mr. Peabody would wait for it Making money was the habit of his mind, and he made it in the street as well as the office, and having made it, gave it away with a more than royal hand.

One Sunday I rode in a Miles Platting tram car, amid decorous, well-dressed chapel-going people--several of them young and active. A child fell out of the tram, whose mother was too feeble to follow it. No one moved, save a woman of repulsive expression, with whom any one might suppose her neighbours had a bad time. She seemed the least desirable person to know of all the pa.s.sengers; yet this woman, on seeing the child lying in the road, at once leapt out of the tram, brought the child back and put it tenderly into its mother's arms. Intrepid humanity may dwell in a very rough exterior.

There goes a man with a hard, forbidding face, and a headachy Evangelical complexion. Like the man mentioned in the last paper, he is not an alluring person to know--those at his fireside have a dreary time of it. His children have joyless Sundays. He is a street preacher.

His voice is harsh and painful. He howls "glad tidings" at the street corner. He is wanting in the first elements of reverence--those of modesty and taste. Yet this same man has kindness and generosity in his heart After his hard day's work is done he will give the evening, which others spend in pleasure, to try and save some casual soul in the street.

Though we continually forget it, we know that men are full of mixed qualities and unequal pa.s.sions. Ignorance of this renders one of the n.o.blest pa.s.sages of Shakespeare dangerous if misapplied:

"To thine own self be true, And it must follow as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man."

But what is a man's "own self"? It all lies there. Tell the liar, the thief, the forger, or the ruffian to be true to himself, and any one knows what will follow. Polonius knew the heart of Laertes, and to him he could say, "to thine own self be true." We must be sure of the nature of him whom we advise to follow himself.*

* Cicero appears to have thought of this when he said: "Every roan ought carefully to follow out his peculiar character, provided it is only peculiar, and not vicious,"

What is or what can be the object of education but to strengthen by precept, habit and environment the better qualities of human nature; and to divert, repress, or subordinate where we cannot extinguish hereditary, unethical tendencies? Though we deny--or do not steadily see--that nations as well as individuals have capacities for good as well as evil, we admit it when we attempt to create international influences, which shall promote civilisation.

If any would avoid the disappointment of ignorance and the alarms of the foolish, let him learn to look with unamazed expectancy at what will appear on the ocean of Society. Do not look in men for the qualities you want to find, or for qualities you imagine they ought to have, but look with unexpectant eyes for what you can find. Do not expect perfection, but a few good points only, and be glad if you find them, and be tolerant of what is absent. Of him of this way of thinking it may be said, as was said of Charles Lamb: "He did not merely love his friends in spite of their errors, he loved them errors and all." Whoever remains under the delusion that nations and men possess only special qualities, and not all qualities in different stages of development, will hate them foolishly, praise them without reason, and will never know men.

But whoever understands the trend of things in this ever-changing, uncontrollable world, where

"Our fate comes to us from afar, Where others made us what we are,"

will utter the prayer of Sadi, the Persian poet: "O G.o.d! have pity on the wicked, for Thou hast done everything for the good in having made them good." A prayer worth remembering.

CHAPTER XLV. IDEAS FOR THE YOUNG

There are people who live many years and never grow old. We call them "young patriarchs." Limit not the golden dreams of youth, which, however, would be none the worse for a touch of the patriarch in them.

There is sense in youth, and it will a.s.similate the experience of age if displayed before rather than thrust upon it. Youth should be incited to think for itself, and to select from the wisdom it finds in the world.

Then the question comes--what is safe to take? That is the time for words of suggestion. Every one has read of the fox, who seeing a crow with a piece of cheese in her bill, told her "she had a splendid voice, and did herself an injustice by not singing." The credulous crow began a note, dropped the piece of cheese, with which the fox ran away. This trick is always being played. Among young persons there are a great number of crows. A youth is given a situation where advancement goes with a.s.siduity. A fox-headed comrade or clerk below him tells him his "work is beneath his talents, and he ought to get something better."

Discontent breeds negligence. He loses his place, when the treacherous prompter, whom he took to be his friend, slips into his situation, and finds it quite satisfactory.

In public affairs, in which youth seldom takes part, many are confused by pretences which they understand when too late. A person puts forward an excellent project, and finds it a.s.sailed and disparaged by some one he thought would support it. Discouraged by opposition, he comes to doubt the validity of the enterprise he had in hand. When he has abandoned it he finds it taken up by the very person who denounced it, and who claims credit for what he has opposed. All the while he has thought highly of the scheme, but wanted to have the credit of it himself, and therefore defamed it until he could get it into his own hands. This sort of thing is done in Parliament as well as in business.

It is only by listening to the experience of others that youth can acquire wariness and guard against serious mistakes.

The young on entering life are often dismayed by dolorous speeches by persons who have never comprehended the nature of the world in which they find themselves. People are told "a great crisis in public affairs is at hand." There never was a time in the history of the world when a "crisis" was not at hand. Nature works by crises. Progress is made up of crises through which mankind has pa.s.sed. Again there breaks forth upon the ears of inexperienced youth the alarming information that society is "in a transition state." Every critic, every preacher, every politician, is always saying this. Yet there never was a time when society was not in a "transition state." According to the Genesian legend, Adam discovered this in his day, when, a few weeks after his advent, he found himself outside the gates of Paradise, and all the world and all the creatures in it thrown into a state of unending perturbation and discomfort which has not ceased to this day. The eternal condition of human life is change, and he who is wise learns early to adapt himself to it. As Dr. Arnold said, there is nothing so dangerous as standing still when all the world is moving.

The young are bewildered by being left under the impression that they should learn everything. Whereas all they need is to know thoroughly what their line of duty in life requires them to know. No man can read all the books in the British Museum, were arrangements made for his sleeping there. No one is expected to eat all he finds in the market, but only so much as makes a reasonable meal. Lord Sherbrooke translated from the Greek guiding lines of Homer who said of a learner of his day:--

"He could not reap, he could not sow, Nor was he wise at all: For very many arts he knew, But badly knew them all."

The conditions of personal advancement can only be learned by observing the steps of those who have succeeded. Disraeli, whose success was the wonder of his time, owed it to following the shrewd maxim that he who wants to advance must make himself necessary to those whom he has the opportunity of serving. This can be done in any station in life by skill, a.s.siduity and trustworthiness.

Practical thoroughness is an essential quality which gives great advantage in life. Spurgeon had a great appreciation of it A servant girl applied to him for a situation on the ground that she "had got religion." "Yes," said the great pulpit orator, "that is a very good thing if it takes a useful turn; but do you sweep under the mats?" he asked, cleanliness being a sign of G.o.dliness in the eyes of the sensible preacher.

Cleanliness is possible to the very poorest--walls which have no paper might have whitewash. Children should never see dirt anywhere. They should never come upon it lying out of sight. Fever and death lurk in neglected corners. Children may be in rags, but if they are clean rags and the children are clean, they are, however poor, respectable. When I first went to speak in Glasgow, it was in a solemn old hall, up a wynd.

The place was in the Candleriggs. Everybody knows what a dark, clammy, pasty, muddy, depressing thoroughfare is the Candleriggs in wintry weather.

The pa.s.sage leading to the lecture hall and the steps which had to be ascended were all murky and dirty; as in those days the pa.s.sage leading to the publis.h.i.+ng house of the Chambers Brothers was, as I have seen it, an incentive to sickness. My payment for lecturing was not much, but out of it I gave half a crown to an active woman I found in the wynd to wash down the stairs and the pa.s.sage leading to the Candleriggs, and the s.p.a.ce as wide as the pa.s.sage along the causeway to the curb-stone.

People pa.s.sing along might see signs of cleanliness leading to the hall.

I never forget what the woman said to some of the a.s.sembly as they pa.s.sed by her: "I don't know what this man (or "mon") is, who you have to lecture to you to-day, but at least he has clean principles." That was precisely the impression I wanted to create. My tenets might be poor, my arguments badly clothed, but to present them in a clean state was in my power.

Do not readily be deterred from a good cause because you will be told it is unprofitable, but take sides with it if need be. You will find persons born with a pa.s.sion of putting the world to rights. A very good pa.s.sion for the world, but now and then a very bad thing for him who is moved by it They have no engagement to undertake that work, no salary is allotted for it, nor even any income coming in to pay expenses "out of pocket," as the prudent, open-eyed lawyer puts it. Nevertheless, it may be well to follow the Jewish rule of giving a t.i.the of your time to the public service. There are a large amount of t.i.thes contributed in other ways which are not half so beneficial to mankind. Many whose names now are luminous in history, whose fame is on every tongue, have been personally known to the old. The magical notes of great singers the living can never know, the triumphs of the great masters of speech in Parliament and on the platform, whom it was an education to hear--only the old can recount. What they looked like, and how they played their memorable parts, are the enchanting secrets of the old, who tell to the young what pa.s.sed in a world unknown to them, and which has made them what they are. The purport of this chapter is to stimulate individuality and self-reliance. Disraeli's maxim of self-advancement was to make himself necessary by service in the sphere in which he found himself. In public affairs committees are not, as a rule, suggestive; they can amend what is submitted to them; they originate nothing, and generally take the soul out of any proposal brought before then. If they advance business it is when some individual provides a plan to which their consent may be of importance. Individual ideas have been the immemorial source of progress. A committee of one will often effect more than a committee of ten; but the committee of ten will multiply the force of the one, and lend to it influence and authority. Seeing that ideas come from individuals, a young person cannot do better in life than by considering himself a committee of one, and ponder himself on every matter of importance. This gives a habit of resourceful thought--renders him cautious in action, and educates him in responsibility. In daily life a man has continually to decide things for himself without the aid of a committee. It is thus that self-trust becomes his strength.

If youth could see but a little with the eyes of their seniors, some pleasures would seem less alluring, and they would avoid doing some things which they will regret all their lives. Now and then some young eye will glance at a page of bygone lore and see a gleam of inspiration, like a torch in a forest, which reveals a bear in a bush which he had chosen for a picnic, or discovers a bog which he had taken to be solid ground. Proverbs come around the young observer, so fair seeming he trusts them on sight, and does not know they are only in part guiding and in part elusive, and have limitations which may betray him into confident and futile extremes. Even professors will beguile him with statements which he doubts not are true, and finds, all too late, that they are false.

He will hear forebodings which fill him with alarm at some new undertaking, not knowing that they are but the sounds of the footfalls of Progress, which every generation has heard, the ignorant with terror, and the wise with gladness. Only the relation of bygone experiences can save the young from perilous illusions. Of course, youth is always asked to look at things with the eyes of age, but they never do. They never can do it, because the eyes of the old look at things with the light of experience which, in the nature of things, youth is without.

Nevertheless, the experience of others may be good reading for them.

If in the generous eagerness of youth the heart inclines to a forlorn hope, take it up notwithstanding its difficulties, for if youth does not, older people are not likely to attempt it. The older are mostly too prudent to do any good in the way of new enterprise. This is where youth has its uses and its priceless advantage. However, it is well not to let enthusiasm, n.o.ble as it may be, blind the devotee. Take care that the cause espoused is sound. Take heed of the j.a.panese maxim,

"The lid, if the pot be broken, It is no use mending."