HABITS OF A MAN OF BUSINESS.
A sacred regard to the principles of justice forms the basis of every transaction, and regulates the conduct of the upright man of business.
He is strict in keeping his engagements.
Does nothing carelessly nor in a hurry.
Employs nobody to do what he can easily do himself.
Keeps everything in its proper place.
Leaves nothing undone that ought to be done, and which circumstances permit him to do.
Keeps his designs and business from the view of others.
Is prompt and decisive with his customers, and does not over-trade his capital.
Prefers short credits to long ones; and cash to credit at all times, either in buying or selling; and small profits in credit cases, with little risk to the chance of better gains with more hazard.
He is clear and explicit in all his bargains.
Leaves nothing of consequence to memory which he can and ought to commit to writing.
Keeps copies of all his important letters which he sends away, and has every letter, invoice, etc., relating to his business, titled, classed, and put away.
Never suffers his desk to be confused by many papers lying upon it.
Is always at the head of his business, well knowing that if he leaves it, it will leave him.
Holds it as a maxim that he whose credit is suspected is not one to be trusted.
Is constantly examining his books, and sees through all his affairs as far as care and attention will enable him.
Balances regularly at stated times, and then makes out and transmits all his accounts current to his customers, both at home and abroad.
Avoids as much as possible all sorts of accommodation in money matters and lawsuits where there is the least hazard.
He is economical in his expenditures, always living within his income.
Keeps a memorandum-book in his pocket, in which he notes every particular relative to appointments, addresses, and petty cash matters.
Is cautious how he becomes security for any person; and is generous when urged by motives of humanity.
Let a man act strictly to these habits; when once begun they will be easy to continue in—ever remembering that he hath no profits by his pains whom Providence doth not prosper—and success will attend his efforts.
[HABIT OF TAKING PAINS.]
By JAMES KERR, M. A.
Who can doubt that the habit of taking pains, the habit of minute attention, of patient thought and persevering study, is one of the leading characteristics of genius! To this rule there seems to be no exception.
We see it illustrated in the lives of our greatest thinkers. Did a genius like Lord Bacon compose his immortal works with ease, and, as it were, without effort? Far from it. On the contrary, he took great pains. They were written and re-written. They were the fruit of much patient thought, of repeated revision and persistent effort. Thus, we are told that he transcribed his “Novum Organum” twelve times with his own hand, each time revising it carefully. He was employed on this great work at intervals for a period of thirty years. When he transcribed it he did not merely recopy what he had written, with a few verbal alterations only, but changed it in substance, so as to bring it nearer the model in his own mind. This was his constant practice, as we know from his own words. Writing to a friend, he says—“My great work goeth forward, and, after my manner, I alter even when I add; so that nothing is finished till all be finished.”
Who is there among us who would have the patience to write any literary production in which he might be engaged twelve times over with his own hand! Think, too, of the patient thought that must have been bestowed on the work each time it was transcribed! If Bacon’s genius is immensely greater than what any of us can boast of, do not his patient thought, his persevering study, his habit of taking pains, exceed ours in the same proportion!
Bacon’s precept corresponded to his practice. How does the great author of the inductive method direct us to make discoveries? Not by volatile flights of fancy, but by patient labor. We are patiently to observe and make experiments. We are to collect all sorts of facts which have any bearing on the subject, not even neglecting what may appear trifles. We are to arrange them under proper heads. We are to examine them under every aspect, and reflect upon them with deepest thought. Thus only, he tells us, will discoveries be made worthy of the name.
Let us turn to another great philosopher of our own country. How did Newton succeed in making his name immortal? The poet says of him—
“Nature and nature’s laws lay hid in night,
God said—Let Newton be, and there was light.”
Yet it was not without effort and painstaking care that he made his discoveries. The laws of light and gravitation did not reveal themselves to him at a glance. The process of discovery was much slower. Let us go to the man himself and learn the secret of his success. He tells us that he made his discoveries by always thinking about them. This patient thought, this persevering study, this painstaking care, enabled him at last to succeed where others failed. This it was, and not mere genius alone, that shed a luster on his name, which shall last so long as the sun and the moon endure.
To come nearer our own times and to men of less dazzling fame. George Stephenson, the inventor, we may say, of railways, will be allowed to have been a great mechanical genius. The lesson we learn from his life is to take pains and persevere. His inventions were, in no small degree, the result of careful study. We see the pains he took to acquaint himself with every detail as to the habits of “the engine” while still a brakesman. He thus laid the foundation of his future success in applying the steam-engine to the railway. We read, also, that when he retired for the night, it was not always to sink into slumber. He worked out many a difficult problem in bed, and for hours he would lie awake and turn over in his mind, with painstaking care and patient thought, how to overcome some mechanical obstacle that stood in his way.
In the later years of his life, when railways had spread over the kingdom, he was fond of pointing out to others the difficulties he had to surmount, and what pains and perseverance had brought him to. It was not talent, it was not genius, in the ordinary sense of the word, to which he attributed his success; it was to perseverance. In addressing young men his grand text was “persevere,” and on this theme the old man grew eloquent, glowing with the recollections of his own personal experience.
Hugh Miller was another man of undoubted genius. When we contemplate such a man rising to distinction both in science and literature, in spite of the most adverse circumstances, we are apt to think that he must have been indebted to the native vigor of his mind alone, without the aid of any extraneous advantages. But what do we find to be the case? No one can peruse his works without perceiving that he was a great reader, and that the thoughts of others supplied the food on which his mind grew. Like Dr. Johnson, he was a robust genius, capable of grappling with whole libraries. He seems, while yet unknown to fame, to have ransacked our whole literature, quarrying his way into many hidden recesses not generally explored. Even classical works, translated into English, he read with avidity. He says himself—“I have read Cowper’s ‘Homer’ and Dryden’s ‘Virgil’ again and again, and drunk in all their beauties.”
This appetite for reading commenced at an early age. When a lad about twelve he got access to a small library belonging to one of his neighbors, and was allowed freely to peruse its contents. He says, casting a glance back to these times:—“I read incessantly; and, as the appetite for reading becomes stronger the more it is indulged, I felt, when I had consumed the whole, a still keener craving than before.”
By these steps he rose to eminence. He thus became a distinguished man. His mind was enriched by much reading. It received a training which qualified him in future years to become a geologist of the first rank, to write on scientific subjects in a style of rare beauty, so picturesque and expressive that men of distinguished parts have said they would give their “left hand” if they could only imitate it, and, in a word, to handle skilfully any subject to which he turned his attention, not excepting just and delicate criticism on some of our less known poets.
Among men of science there are few, if any, whose writings have made a greater impression on the present generation than those of Charles Darwin. How were his works produced? Not by fits and starts. Not by flights of fancy. He is penetrated by the true scientific spirit, and steadily pursues his object for years, patiently accumulating facts, and by their light drawing conclusions in which, though men may differ on some points, there will always be found large portions of solid truth. Let us see, for example, how his remarkable book on the “Origin of Species” was produced. It was not struck out at a blow, but was the labor of years and of much patient thought. He himself says of it:—“On my return home it occurred to me, in 1837, that something might perhaps be made out on this question by patiently accumulating and reflecting on all sorts of facts which could possibly have any bearing upon it.” He steadily pursued his object from that time, for more than twenty years, and then his work was published to the world.
This is the way in which great works on science are produced. The author takes great pains. He steadily pursues his object for years, with patient thought and unremitting attention, leaving no stone unturned. It is this that accomplishes great things, and not mere flight of untutored genius.
It is needless to say that his latest work, on the modest subject of earth-worms, exhibits the same painstaking care, the same laborious study, and the same patient accumulation of facts.
Hitherto the examples adduced have been more of a scientific than literary character. If, leaving science, we take a glance at general literature, it will be found that those also who come to the front as writers in this branch of learning are, without exception, distinguished by their habit of taking pains with the subject in hand.
Were the writings of the brilliant Macaulay the outpourings of pure genius, unaided by painstaking labor and diligent study? Far from it. When he wrote on any subject he was unwearied in his researches. No amount of labor appalled him. Even when husbanding his resources, and engaged in no particular literary task, he read continually, laying in a store for future use. To read was his passion and delight. It was his solace under all circumstances. It cheered him in his Indian exile. In turning over the pages of his life we are absolutely struck with awe at his insatiable appetite for books. It would be difficult to find an example of anyone in these modern times whose reading, especially in the Greek and Roman classics, took so wide a range. He read, not only in his study, but in his long walks he had always a book with him, which he read incessantly.
Nothing is said in his life of his habits of composition, but there can be little doubt that his clear and vigorous style was not formed without much study and practice. In addition to his admirable prose style, he had great facility in writing verses. How did he acquire it? By long continued practice. He says, in a letter to one of his sisters:—“As you like my verses, I will some day or other write you a whole rhyming letter. I wonder whether any other man ever wrote doggerel so easily. I run it off just as fast as my pen can move. This comes of a schoolboy habit of writing verses all day long.”
Of our modern prose writers, there are few whose writings are more easy to read than those of Charles Dickens. They look like the spontaneous outpourings of genius, flowing freely from his pen without effort. And yet, in point of fact, he took great pains with what he wrote. When engaged on “Little Dorrit” he jots down these words in his journal:—“Now to work again. The story lies before me strong and clear. Not to be easily told; for nothing of that kind is to be easily done that I know of.”
Then, in another direction, look at the pains he took in preparing his “Readings” for the public. He learned them all by heart, so as to have no mechanical drawback in looking after the words. He was also at great pains to correct his pronunciation, and cultivate the habit of self-possession. As the reputation of these “Readings” widened, he was ambitious that they should grow better and better. When engaged in giving a series of readings, he used to repeat them to himself, often twice a day, and with exactly the same pains as at night when before his audience. He felt that nothing could be done well, that no great perfection could be reached, without taking pains. We are here reminded of Mrs. Siddons, who played the character of Lady Macbeth for thirty years. Such was her solicitude to act the part well, that she invariably read over the play, once more, on the morning of the performance, and with such care as always to discover something new in the character which she had not observed before.
Whoso acts a hundred times with high moral principle before he speaks once of it, that is a man whom one could bless and clasp to one’s heart. I am far from saying that he is on that account free from faults, but the plus et minus, the degree of striving after perfection and virtue, determines the value of the man.—George Forster.
[A CHAPLET OF PEARLS.]
By WILLIAM JONES, F.S.A.
There is a magic charm in the pearl that seems to have fascinated the world in various countries. The modest splendor and purity of the jewel made it the favorite of all others among the Orientals.[J] Chares, of Mitylene, alludes to the Margaritæ necklaces as far more highly valued by the Asiatics than those made of gold. The Romans went wild over them, and of all the articles of luxury and ostentation known to them, pearls appear to have been most esteemed. Pompey, as the richest spoils of his victories in Asia, displayed in his procession into Rome, after his triumph over the third continent, among his treasures, thirty-three crowns made of pearls, a temple of the Muses with a dial on the top, and a figure of himself, formed of the same materials. This roused the ire of the stoic Pliny, but contributed to the popular passion for obtaining these jewels. He remarks of Lollia Paulina (wife of the Emperor Caligula) that she was covered with emeralds and pearls, strung alternately, glittering all over her head, hair, bandeau, necklaces, and fingers, valued at forty millions of sesterces (£400,000).
Servilia, the mother of the famous Brutus, received from Julius Cæsar a pearl as a present which cost the donor £50,000. The celebrated pearls of Cleopatra, worn as earrings, were valued at £161,457.
Some consider bdellium, which is mentioned in the Scriptures (Genesis and Numbers), as a precious stone, and the Jewish rabbins, together with some modern commentators, translate it by pearl, but it is more than probable that the pearl was unknown in the time of Moses. Most probably, the Hebrew bedolach is the aromatic gum bdellium, which issues from a tree growing in Arabia, Media, and the Indies.
According to the poetic Orientals, every year, on the sixteenth day of the month of Nisan, the pearl-oysters rise to the sea and open their shells, in order to receive the rain which falls at that time, and the drops thus caught become pearls. On this belief the poet Sadi, in his “Bostau,” has the following fable: “A drop of water fell one day from a cloud into the sea. Ashamed and confused at finding itself in such an immensity of water, it exclaimed, ‘What am I in comparison of this vast ocean? My existence is less than nothing in this boundless abyss!’ While it thus discoursed of itself, a pearl-shell received it in its bosom, and fortune so favored it that it became a magnificent and precious pearl, worthy of adorning the diadem of kings. Thus was its humility the cause of its elevation, and by annihilating itself, it merited exaltation.”
Moore alludes to this pretty fiction in one of his sweetest melodies:
“And precious the tear as that rain from the sky
Which turns into pearls as it falls in the sea.”
Sir Walter Scott, in the “Bridal of Triermain,” says:
“See these pearls that long have slept;
These were tears by Naiads wept.”
Lilly, in “Gallathea:”
“Is any cozen’d of a teare
Which (as a pearle) disdaine does weare?”
Shakspere (“Richard III.”):
“The liquid drops of tears that you have shed
Shall come again, transform’d to orient pearl,
Advantaging their loan with interest
Of ten-times-double gain of happiness.”
In Lee’s “Mithridates” we have:
“’Twould raise your pity, but to see the tears
Force through her snowy lids their melting course,
To lodge themselves on her red murmuring lips
That talk such mournful things; when straight a gale
Of startling sighs carry those pearls away,
As dews by winds are wafted from the flowers.”
Elena Piscopia (1684), of the Corraro family of Venice, had a medal struck in her honor, on the reverse of which is an open shell, receiving the drops of dew from heaven, which form into pearls: the motto was Rore divino—by the divine dew.
Pearls have for ages been significant for tears. It is related that Queen Margaret Tudor, consort of James IV. of Scotland, previous to the battle of Flodden Field, had strong presentiments of the disastrous issue of that conflict. One night she had fearful dreams, in which she thought she saw her husband hurled down a great precipice and crushed and mangled at the bottom. In another vision she thought, as she was looking at her jewels, chains, and sparkling coronets of diamonds, they suddenly turned into pearls, “which are the emblems of widowhood and tears.”
A few nights before the assassination of Henry IV. of France, his queen dreamed that all the jewels in her crown were changed into pearls, and she was told that they were significant of tears.
Milton, in his “Epitaph on the Marchioness of Winchester,” says:
“And those pearls of dew she wears
Prove to be presaging tears.”
Similes of pearls and tears are frequent in our old writers. Thus Shakspere in “Midsummer Night’s Dream:”
“And that same dew which sometimes on the buds
Was wont to swell like round and orient pearls,
Stood now within the pretty floweret’s eyes,
Like tears that did their own disgrace bewail.”
In “King John:”
“Draw those heaven-moving pearls from his poor eyes
Which heaven shall take in nature of a fee;
Ay, with those crystal beads heaven shall be bribed
To do him justice and revenge on you.”
The metaphor is a favorite one with Lovelace:
“Lucasta wept, and still the bright
Enamor’d god of day,
With his soft handkerchief of light,
Kiss’d the wet pearls away.”
And—
“If tears could wash the ill away,
A pearl for each wet bead I’d pay.”
In Chalkhill’s “Thealma and Clearchus,” we find of the former:
“Anon she drops a tear,
That stole along her cheeks, and falling down,
Into a pearl it freezeth with her frown.”
Robert Southwell, in “St. Mary Magdalen’s Tears,” says: “The angels must bathe themselves in the pure stream of thine eyes, and thy face shall be set with this pearly liquid, that, as out of thy tears were stroken the first sparks of thy Lord’s love, so thy tears may be the oil to feed his flames.”
[THE WORTH OF FRESH AIR.]
Your neighbor, John Stedman, is set fast with aches and pains, and is very ill. You have just been to see him, you say, and you can not think why it is that people are every now and then attacked in this way with sickness. You have been told that God sends disease; but for your own part you can not understand why it is that some of your neighbors, who, like John Stedman, seem to be the most honest and deserving, get the largest share of it. I think, my industrious friend, I can perhaps help you to the explanation of the riddle. At any rate, there are many things touching upon this very subject, which as an old acquaintance, and one who has learned through long intimacy to take great interest in all that concerns you, I have for some time desired to say. I shall now seize this opportunity to make a beginning, and shall seat myself comfortably that I may chat with you more at my ease. Pray do not trouble yourself to move anything. This empty chair near the door will do excellently well for me. I know you will listen to me with attention and patience, first for old friendship’s sake, and then because you will very soon feel that what I do say is intended frankly and solely for your good.
You have a fine, smart-looking clock, I see, ticking away there opposite. But the old fellow can hardly be so correct as he seems; his hands point to eight, although the day wants but a couple of hours of noon. I fear there must be something wrong about him, notwithstanding his looking so vastly well in the face.
You say you can not make the clock keep time. You wind it up carefully every Saturday, and set it correctly, and yet before the next Saturday comes round, it has either lagged hours behind, or it has galloped on hours too fast. It goes as if it were moved by the uncertain wind, instead of being driven by regular machinery, and it was a shame for the man to sell you such a bad-going thing. If the clock never did behave itself any better, you are right in this: but perhaps you are too hasty in finding fault with the maker; he may not altogether deserve the blame. Let us just open the door of the case, and peep at the inner workmanship, and see whether we can not discover some cause for the irregular performance.
What is this? As soon as I open this little door I stumble upon something that looks rather suspicious; it is a quantity of light flue, and hair, and dust, mingled together. The clockmaker never put that into the case. Then, observe how every wheel and pinion is soiled with dirt, and every crevice and corner is choked up with filth. It really would be a very wonderful thing if the wheels did move regularly. The secret of the bad working of your clock is, simply, that you have not known how to take care of it, and use it fairly. I dare say it went very well when it was turned out of its maker’s hands, but he never meant it to be in the state in which it now is. You must send it back to him, and get him to clean the works and oil the wheels, and then you must try whether you can not prevent it from getting into such sad disorder again.
Now, your neighbor yonder with his aches and pains and his sickness, are you sure that he is not in very much the same predicament as this clock? If we could look into the works of his body, are you confident that we should not find them choked up and uncared for, instead of being in the condition in which they were intended to be? His aches and pains, are they not the grating and complaining of deranged and clogged machinery? I am quite aware that sick people generally are not sensible of having allowed anything to come near to their bodies which they ought to have kept away. But neither did you know that dirt was getting to the works of your clock, although we discovered it there in such plenty. The dust and dirt which collected there, first flew about in the air, scattered so thinly and lightly that you could not see them. So, too, other things which you can not see may have been floating in great abundance around you, some of them being to the living frame what dirt and dust are to clockwork. That there are such invisible things floating around living creatures, and that some of these clog and derange the working of their frames, I think I shall have no difficulty in showing you. I hope I shall also be able to point out to you, that many of them may be discovered, although they can not be seen, and may be driven away or avoided.
That wonderful object which you call your body, is actually a machine like the clock, contrived and put together for a certain service. It has for its works, muscles and bones, and blood vessels and nerves. These works have been most beautifully fitted and adjusted: indeed, they are the workmanship of a skill which can not fail. The maker of your body is the great and unerring Power, who has also made all the rest of creation. It is God.
God made your body with supple joints and free limbs; with strong muscles and ready nerves. The machine was perfect when it came from his hands. It was then capable of going better than the best clock that was ever constructed by human ingenuity. It was able even to cleanse, and oil, and repair itself, and it was prepared to continue its orderly movements, without suffering the slightest derangement, for sixty or seventy long years. But when God placed this perfected piece of delicate workmanship at your disposal, he, like the clockmaker with his clock, required that you should at least take care of it, and use it fairly. If, however, you do not do this, then as with the clock, so will it be with your body. If you keep it amid dust and dirt, no other result can come but the clogging of its works, and the derangement of their movements. Out of that dusty old clock-case it is my purpose to draw this very surprising and important lesson in your behoof. Whenever men get out of happiness and ease into wretchedness and disease, it is almost sure to be their own fault, and the consequence of their own doings. Either they perversely and wilfully do something which they know very well they ought not to do, or they do something which they ought not to do, in ignorance.
Comfort and ease are to body and mind, what steady and even movements are to clock-work—signs that the machinery is in perfect order. Discomfort and dis-ease (absence of ease) are to body and mind what fitful and irregular movements are to clock-work;—signs that the machinery is clogged and in disorder. You are always inclined to rebel against discomfort and pain. Never give way to this inclination. Discomfort and pain are friendly monitors, that come to you to perform a kind service. They come to warn you that there is something wrong in and around your own body, which requires to be set right.
You will observe that I have said men nearly always have themselves to blame when they get out of health and into disease. I have said nearly always, because it occasionally does happen that the suffering is not immediately caused by the sufferer’s own wrong doing. This, for instance, is the case when a child has a constitutional disease, which has been communicated to it by a parent. It is, however, even in these instances none the less true, that human blindness or wilfulness leads to the mischief, and this is really the practical point that I am desirous you should see. These are the cases in which, in accordance with God’s law, “the sins of the fathers are visited upon the children.” The parents have done wrong, and the offspring have to pay the penalty. The line of obvious duty, however, is in no way altered here. If a man suffers because his parents did what was wrong, this really is an additional reason why he ought never to do that which may cause his own children to suffer, in like manner, with himself.
There is this further proof, that even in these cases it really is man’s wrong doing which leads to human suffering. When the children of parents who have done what was wrong, go on doing only what is right through several generations, their offspring at last cease to suffer, and become altogether healthy and sound. The burden of the fathers’ sins is then, at length, mercifully taken off from their shoulders.
Having listened patiently to this little sermon, you would now like me to come to the point, and show you some of the dust and dirt which are scattered around the living body, and which at times get into the machinery to the damage of its working. First of all, in my endeavor to do this, I should like to make you quite comprehend the possibility of there being very weighty matters pressing close round you, which you nevertheless are entirely unable to see, even in bright daylight. Just come out with me, here, upon the road. How pleasant and fresh the day is! Do you not feel the gentle breeze fanning your cheek as you turn up the lane? Yet you can not see the breeze! What is it, then? Certainly it is something, for it touches and even presses against your skin. But it is something, too, which has weight and power of its own. Observe how it shakes the leaves of the trees as it sweeps past them. It is, as you know, the same unseen breeze which also drives round those great mill-sails yonder with such violence, and which grinds as much corn in that mill, as could be ground by the efforts of a dozen horses, kept up to their work by the whip. We have not had to move far, then, before we have come upon something which we cannot see;—before we have proved to ourselves that we must not altogether depend upon our eye-sight for information, even concerning the existence of surrounding things.
But what is this? The breeze is not so fresh here as it was just now at the end of the lane. There is some very disagreeable smell now floating upon it. Here again we can see nothing, any more than we could when we had only the fresh breeze blowing around us. But there must be some cause for the unpleasant odor. The smell gets stronger and stronger as we approach this bank. We climb over the bank, and we find on the other side, in the corner of a field, a manure-heap, from which the smell is evidently poured out. Now that smell is really a vapor, bred of decay in the manure, and then steaming up from it into the air. If our eyes were as sharp as our noses, we should be able to see a host of little bodies rushing up from the manure, and scattering themselves through the air. It is because some of those little bodies strike upon the lining of our noses, as they are drawn in by our breathing, that we smell the unpleasant odor. The nose feels the touch of those bodies as a smell.
Wherever substances which have been alive, are dead and undergoing decay, vapors of this kind are bred and steamed forth. This is the way in which dead things are got rid of; they turn to vapor and crumble to dust. If we could see all the vapors that are being bred of decay, we should be sensible of a thick mist covering the entire face of the land and sea, and rising up from it continually. Some of these vapors have strong smells, like those which issue from the manure-heap; but some of them can not even be smelt, any more than they can be seen.
But these invisible vapors, bred of decay, were not intended to be breathed by living creatures; and indeed, can not be breathed by them without mischief. We are able to stand near the manure-heap for some time without taking any particular harm, because the vapors are scattered as fast as they are formed, and are mingled in small quantities with large quantities of pure air. We thus breathe air tainted with these vapors, rather than the vapors themselves. But suppose all the air were taken away, and you were left standing with nothing around you but these vapors, what do you think would happen to you? You would be dead in less than three minutes, killed by their poisonous power. The vapors which are bred in decaying substances are poison vapors.
You would like to know why it is, as these poison vapors are poured out in such quantities from all decaying substances, that you do not see people dying all around from breathing them. Did I not tell you, in the case of the poison vapors of the manure-heap, that you could breathe them because they were freely scattered into the fresh air? Now just come a few yards this way. You observe the smell of the manure grows less and less. Here you can not any longer perceive it, although the wind is actually blowing over the manure-heap toward us. The fact is, these poison vapors can not bear the presence of pure air. Pure air is the natural antidote or remedy for their poison. The instant it mingles with them it begins to destroy their hurtfulness, and in a few moments it has so thoroughly accomplished this good work that no single trace of mischievous power remains.
Has it ever occurred to you to ask yourself why the pleasant wind blows over hills and fields, and through lanes and streets? You know very well that the wind always is blowing, more or less. Go out when you will, you find it, if you turn the right way. It is the most uncommon thing in the world for the air to be altogether still. The fresh wind blows so constantly over hill and plain, because God sends it to sweep away and destroy the poison vapors that steam out from decaying substances. The breeze is God’s invisible antidote to the invisible poison. The pleasant wind blows in order that the air may be kept fresh and pure.
In the open air the fresh wind very soon scatters and destroys all poison vapors. But civilized men do not dwell always in the open air. The wind sometimes makes them feel cold, so they build themselves houses to shut out the wind. To-night, before you go to bed in your small sleeping room, you will close the windows and the door; and you will think, when you have done so, that you have shut out everything which could harm you, with the cold. But what will you say to me if I show you that after you have closed the windows and the door, poison vapors are bred in great quantities in the room where you are lying? and that so long as you remain in it, they keep gathering more and more strength, and becoming more and more dangerous. Just come back with me to the cottage, and let us look at the room in which you were sleeping last night. The beds, you believe, are not yet made. Never mind that. I often go into rooms under such circumstances, and perhaps upon this occasion it may be even better for the purpose I have in view, if I find the chamber in disorder. At any rate let us go upstairs and take our chance.
Sure enough you have been at great pains here to keep the cold from getting in. There is only one casement in this low small room, and that casement has not been unbarred since yesterday. I do not need to be told this. I make the discovery myself; for you have also kept something from getting out, which had better have been away. I feel at once this is not the same kind of air which we were breathing just now in the open garden. Indeed, I can not remain in the room without opening the window. There; I throw open the casement, and in a few minutes the air will be as fresh here as it is outside of the house.
Now what do you think it was that made the air of this room so unpleasant? It was the poison-vapor with which it was laden, and which had steamed out of your body mixed with your breath during the night. Poison-vapors are bred in the bodies and in the blood of all living animals, just as they are in manure-heaps. All the working organs of your frame being exhausted by use, undergo decay and are turned into vapor, and that vapor, being bred of decay, is poison-vapor, which must be got rid of out of the body as quickly as it is formed. Living bodies are worn away into vapor by working just as mill-stones are worn away into dust by grinding. You would see them waste under work, if it were not that they are repaired by food. You wonder, then, that as this vapor is poisonous, living creatures do not destroy themselves by the poison they form in their blood? Occasionally human creatures do so destroy themselves, as I shall presently show you. But the merciful Designer of the animal frame has furnished a means by which, in a general way, the poison is removed as fast as it is formed. Can you not guess what this means is?
God employs the same plan for driving away poison vapors from the inside of living animal bodies, that he uses for the purification of the air in the open country. He causes a current of air to circulate through them. Notice how, while we are talking together, our chests heave up and down. You know this is what we term breathing. Now, when we breathe, we first make the insides of our chests larger by drawing their walls and floors further asunder. Then we make them smaller by drawing their walls and floors once more nearer together. When the chest is made larger, fresh air rushes in through the mouth and wind-pipe, and through the twig-like branches of this pipe, until it fills a quantity of little round chambers which form the ends of those branches. The wind-pipe branches out into several millions of fine twig-like tubes, and then each tube ends in a blind extremity, or chamber exactly like this.
The air-chamber in the body is covered by a sort of net-work, stretched tightly over it. That net-work is formed of blood-vessels, through which the blood is constantly streaming, driven on by the action of the heart. This blood sucks air from the air-chambers into itself, and carries that air onward to all parts of the living frame. But the blood-streams in the net-work of vessels also steam out into the air-chambers poison-vapors, which are then driven out through the windpipe and the mouth. Thus the breath which goes into the mouth is fresh air; but the breath which comes out of the mouth is foul air. Air is spoiled, and, as it were, converted to poison, by being breathed; but the body is purified by the breathing, because it is its poison-vapors that are carried away, mingled with the spoiled air.
This, then, is why men breathe. Breathing is the blowing of a fresh wind through the living body for the cleansing away of its impurities. The purifying part of the air which is breathed actually circulates with the blood through all parts of the frame.
Exercise quickens and exalts the cleansing powers of the breathing—and this is why it is of such great importance to the health. When you go and take a brisk walk in the open air, you increase the force of the internal breeze. The exertion makes your chest expand to a larger size, so that it can admit more fresh air, and it also causes your blood-streams to course along more rapidly, so that a greater abundance of the air is carried on through your frame.
[To be concluded.]
I could never find out more than three ways to become happier (not happy). The first, rather a high one, is this: to soar so far above the clouds of life that one sees the whole external world, with its wolf-dens, charnel-houses, and thunder-rods, down far beneath us, shrunk into a child’s little garden. The second is—merely to sink down into this little garden, and there to nestle yourself so snugly in some little furrow, that when you look out of your warm lark-nest you likewise can perceive no wolf-dens, charnel-houses, and poles, but only blades, every one of which, for the nest-bird, is a tree, and sun-screen, and rain-screen. The third, finally, which I regard as the hardest and cunningest, is that of alternating with the other two.—Jean Paul F. Richter.
[THE MAMMALIA.]
From the French of ERNEST MENAULT.
This is a class of animals which, by their organization and intelligence, approach nearest to man. The mammalia have a bony skeleton, the center of which is the spine, to which the other organs are attached, and whence they all radiate. They possess, also, a brain, in which the hemispheres are well developed; a heart with two ventricles and two auricles; lungs for inhaling air to oxydize the blood and stimulate all the organs, the brain especially. The thoracic cavity contains the lungs and the heart, which are always separated from the abdominal cavity by a complete diaphragm.
In this class the organs of sense acquire great perfection, even in their accessory parts. For instance, the greater number of each species have distinct eyelids, an external ear, and other peculiarities which are not found amongst the oviparous animals. The mouth is furnished with fleshy lips (except the monotrematous animals[K]), and the body is habitually protected with a specially adapted covering.
All the mammalia have five senses, but in different degrees. Thus, one species, such as the chamois and wild goats, that live upon the mountains, have long sight, and can see better far away than near. On the contrary, the heavy races which inhabit the valleys, such as the hog and rhinoceros, can see objects best when near them. Those whose eyes are too sensitive to bear the bright light of day, only go out during the night, like bats, or even hide themselves under the earth, as the armadillo and hedgehog. Those creatures which are the weakest, being on that account the more timid, are gifted with a keen sense of hearing. This enables them to avoid danger. The hare, the rabbit, the jerboa, the mouse, and other rodentia, on hearing the slightest noise prepare for flight. The more powerful or courageous races, the lion, tiger, cat, and lynx, whose sight is keen, even at night, have short ears and weak hearing, the strength of one sense generally compensating for the weakness of others.
With the carnivora the sense of taste becomes an eager, sanguinary appetite, while the herbivorous animals require a delicacy of taste to enable them to distinguish the nourishing plant from that which would poison them. “Thus,” says Virey, “nature adapts the constitution of each individual to its destiny on earth.” In depriving the armadillo and pangolins of teeth, she covers them with a coat of mail or scales. In making the hedgehog and porcupine weak and defenseless, she enables them to raise at pleasure a forest of sharp quills, and these animals have only to roll themselves up and become a prickly ball, which is quite impregnable. In denying to the herbivorous animals strong teeth and hooked claws, nature has armed the head of the ruminants with formidable horns; finally, she gives to the timid animals, such as the rodentia, either the industry to hide themselves in the earth, like the marmot, the rabbit, and the rat; the agility to jump from tree to tree, like the squirrel; or great quickness in running, and power to take immense leaps in fleeing from danger, as the kangaroo, which bounds along like a grasshopper. The llama is quite defenceless, but, if attacked, it covers its enemies with a disgusting and bitter saliva. The pole-cats, and all of that species, when pursued, throw off such execrable odors that their most ferocious enemies are obliged to give up the pursuit.
Some animals frighten their persecutor by frightful cries, like the howling monkey; others mislead their foes by a number of tricks and careful precautions, and know where to obtain safe shelter and seek obscure retreats.
The smallest species, besides being more numerous and multiplying more abundantly, are also more lively in proportion to their size than the larger animals. Before an elephant or a whale could turn round, a dormouse or a mouse would have made a hundred movements, the smallness of the limbs giving more unity and more control over the body; the shorter muscles contract more easily, and each movement is more rapid than amongst larger creatures. The mammalia form the intermediate class by which the other animals approach to us, and by which the inferior species are grouped around man. In fact, the family of the apes seems to come very near to the human race. On the other hand, the bats, the flying squirrel of Siberia, and other like species, appear to link the birds to the mammalia; while the armadillo and the pangolin, quadrupeds covered either with a cuirass or with scales placed one over the other, seem related to the reptile, such as tortoises and lizards. The amphibious mammalia, such as the seal, sea-cow, and other cetacea, which apparently partake of the nature of fishes, are linked to the large and numerous classes of aquatic animals.
“Thus,” says Virey, “the mammalia form the nucleus round which are grouped the different superior classes of the animal kingdom as being the most perfect type of creation, and the first link in the chain of animated nature next to man.” Let us compare the various other classes with the mammalia. The bird, inhabitant of the air, has received a temperament warm and lively, delicate and sensitive; always gay, full of fire and inconstancy, like the variable region he traverses. The fishes again, the cold creatures of the waters, are more apathetic, and occupy themselves chiefly with material wants; their scaly covering seems to steel them against gentle impressions, and hinder them from feeling acutely, or bringing their intelligence to anything like perfection. The quadrupeds, on the contrary, existing in a medium state, equally below the airy heights, as above the deep abyss of the waters—sharing with man the possession and sovereignty of the earth—seem to hold the middle place between two extremes. They have neither the ardor nor petulance of the bird, the lower sensibility of the fish, nor the apathy of the reptile; but, living as they do on a dry and firm soil, their nature has received more consistency, and their frame more solidity. The locomotion of the quadruped has not the rapidity of flight, nor the nimbleness of swimming; but it has not the painful slowness of the tortoise and other reptiles.
All the series of these mammalia represent a long succession of inferior structures below that of man. The monkey, considered either with regard to his external form of internal organization, seems but a man degenerated. Skeleton, members, muscles, veins, nerves, brain, stomach, and principal viscera resemble ours almost entirely, not only in general structure, but in the ramifications of the lesser vessels. In comparison with us it appears an imperfectly formed being, although it is perfect as regards its own species.
The same scale of graduated inferiority is observed in descending from the monkey to the bat; from the latter to the sloth, to the carnivora, and through all the series.
The smaller the extent of the brain, especially the hemispheres, and the fewer the number of its circumvolutions, the more brutal or more animal do we find the creature. In fact, in the monkey itself, and the quadrupeds with long snouts, which bend toward the earth, everything tends to the growth of the appetites and the development of the senses. They think only of satisfying their physical wants. Of all animals the quadrupeds are the most capable of understanding us; not only on account of their organization, but also because they are the more susceptible of being domesticated. The bird has less relationship with us; for, whatever familiarity or intelligence may be attributed to the parrot or tame canary, the qualities of the dog, the beaver, and the elephant always surpass those of the most clever birds. The more closely a well-organized animal approaches to us, the more it can comprehend us, and we can more easily aid in developing its intelligence. This is especially the case with the mammalia.
Nevertheless, the influence of man upon the domestication of the animals is limited by their fitness for sociability. There is not a single domesticated species which does not, naturally, live in society. Of all the solitary species, there is not a single one which has become domesticated; and sociability does not in the least depend on their intelligence, for the sheep lives in companionship, while the lion, fox, and bear live solitarily. Neither does it depend on habit; for the long continuance of the young ones with their parents does not produce it. The bear cherishes its young ones with as much tenderness and for as long a time as the dog, and yet the bear is amongst the most solitary animals.
Frederic Cuvier has observed three distinct conditions amongst animals:—The solitary species, such as cats, martens, bears, and hyenas; those which live in families, such as wolves, roebucks, etc.; those which live in societies, such as beavers, elephants, monkeys, dogs, seals, etc.
Cuvier has devoted himself to the study of these societies. He follows the progress of the animal, which, born in the midst of the flock, is there developed, and which, at each epoch of its life, learns from all which surrounds it to place its new existence in harmony with that of the old ones. The feebleness of the young animals is the cause of their obedience to the old, which possess strength; and the habit of obeying once adopted by the young, is the reason why the power still remains with the most aged, although he has become in turn the most feeble. Whenever a society is under the direction of a chief, that chief is nearly always the most aged of the troop. Mons. Flourens thinks that this order may, perhaps, be disturbed by violent passions. If this be the case, the authority passes to another: and, having commenced anew by reason of strength, they preserve the same by habit. There are, therefore, amongst the mammalia, species which form real societies; and it is from these alone that man takes all domesticated animals. The horse becomes, by domestication, the companion of man; and of all animals of his species is the most naturally so.
The sheep, which we have reared, follows us, but he also follows the flock, in the midst of which he was born. According to Cuvier, he looks upon man as the leader of the flock. Man, says M. Flourens, is to the animals only a member of their society; all his art is reduced to making himself acceptable to them as an associate; for, let him once become their associate, he soon becomes their chief, being superior to them in intelligence. Man does not, therefore, change the natural state of these animals, as Buffon says; on the contrary, he profits by it. In other terms, having found the animals sociable, he renders them domesticated; and thus domestication is not a singular case, but a simple modification, a natural consequence, of animal sociability. Nearly all our domestic animals are naturally sociable. The ox, goat, pig, dog, rabbit, etc., live, by nature, in society; that is, in herds or flocks.
The cat is not really a domesticated animal—it is not subdued, only tamed; in the same way the bear, lion, and tiger even might be tamed, but not domesticated. Man’s influence will make a sociable animal domesticated, but a solitary animal he can only tame.
When a thought is too weak to be simply expressed, it is a proof that it should be rejected.—Vauvenargues.
WASHINGTON IRVING.[L]
By Prof. WALLACE BRUCE.
The record of Washington Irving rests like a ray of sunlight upon the pages of our early history. Born in 1783, at the close of the great struggle for independence, his life of seventy-six years circles a period of growth and material progress, the pages of which this centennial generation has just been turning. And perhaps it is not unfitting to consider at this time the life and services of our sweetest writer, the best representative of our earliest culture. On the other hand, I am well aware that the great mass of mankind are absorbed in business, and like the Athenian of old continually asking for something new; that the initials of our nation were long ago condensed into a plain monogram of dollars, and this our nineteenth century represented and symbolized by a large interrogation point. We question the stars, the rocks and our Darwinian ancestors; and we are thoroughly occupied in looking after our own personal interest and the prosperity of the republic; yet I may hope that this lecture will call up some pleasure in the hearts of those who read and re-read the writings of Washington Irving, and will help to renew your acquaintance with the incidents of his life, and perhaps awaken the attention of some who are asking what to read—the one question which more than any other decides their individual happiness and the education of the rising generation. It is my purpose this afternoon to consider his writings, his associations and his life; and I take up his works in the order in which they were written, as in this way we trace the natural development of the writer and the man.
“Knickerbocker,” his earliest work, written at the age of twenty-six, bears the same relation to his later work as “Pickwick,” the first heir of Dickens’ invention, to his novels that followed; and there is another point of similarity in the fact that “Knickerbocker” and “Pickwick” both outgrew the original design of the authors. Neither Dickens nor Irving had any idea of the character of the work he was proposing. The philosophical and benevolent Pickwick, you will remember, was barely rescued from being the head of a holiday hunting club; and the idea of “Knickerbocker,” at least at first, was simply to parody a small hand-book which had recently appeared under the title of “A Picture of New York.” Following this plan, a humorous description of the early governors of New York was intended merely as a preface to the customs and institutions of the city; but, like Buckle’s “History of Civilization,” the introduction became the body of the book, and all idea of a parody was early and happily abandoned. The “Rise and Fall of the Dutch Nation along the Hudson,” presented a subject of unity, and gave Irving an opportunity to depict the representative of a race whose customs were fast passing away. The serio-comic nature of the work is intensified by notices in the New York Post calling attention to the mysterious disappearance of Diedrich Knickerbocker. Never was any volume more happily introduced. Before we turn a single page we have an idea of the veritable writer. The description of Knickerbocker makes him rise before us; we become interested in the mystery that surrounds him. In fact, the charm of the book is in the simple reality or assumed personality of Diedrich Knickerbocker. The portrait of Don Quixote starting out to redress the wrongs of the world is not more clearly drawn than that of the historian of New Amsterdam, with his silver shoe buckles and cocked hat and quaint costume. But there is this difference in the mind of the reader: in the great satire of Cervantes there is an element of sadness. We see a crazed old man wandering out in quest of adventure, exciting our pity, almost excusing the paradox of Lord Byron: the saddest of all tales, and more sad still because it makes us laugh. Here there is only a mild sort of insanity about the old gentleman, with his books and papers and various employments, which touches our humor, without exciting our sympathy. By the way, the books of humor which we have here associated with each other belong to the same form, are second cousins of one another, and ought to stand upon the same shelf of our libraries.
Some of the Holland families are reported to have taken the work in high dudgeon, as a rash innovation of the domain of history; and I believe one of the gentler sex, who perhaps had no lover to fight a duel or no brother to take her part, proposed herself with her own hands to horsewhip the offensive writer for his bold attempt at spelling and printing for the first time some of the old family names. From to-day’s standpoint these things seem ludicrous and uncalled for in reference to a work abounding in kindly humor everywhere, accepted as the finest blending of the classic and the comic in all literature; and were it not that these early enemies soon became his warmest friends, I should pass it over in silence. The transition was so sudden and severe that it is one of the pleasantest in his history. In later years Irving thus refers to “Knickerbocker”: “When I find, after the lapse of forty years this haphazard production of my youth cherished among the descendants of the Dutch worthies; when I find its very name become a household word, and used to give the home stamp to everything recommended for popular acceptance; when I see rising around me Knickerbocker societies, Knickerbocker insurance companies, omnibuses, steamboats, bread, ice, wagons; and when I find New Yorkers of Dutch descent priding themselves upon being genuine Knickerbocker stock, I please myself with the persuasion that I have struck the right chord, that my dealings with the good old Dutch times and customs derived from them are right in harmony with the beliefs and humors of our townsmen, that I have opened up a vein of pleasing associations equally characteristic and peculiar to my native place, and which its inhabitants will not willingly suffer to pass away; and that although other histories of New York may appear of higher claim to learned acceptance, and may take their appropriate and dignified rank in the family library, Knickerbocker’s history will still be received with good-humored intelligence.” It was, indeed, wide from the sober aim of history; but no volume ever gave such rose-tinted colors to the early annals of any country, and New York instead of being covered with ridicule, is to-day the only city of this Union whose early history is associated with the golden age of poetry, with antiquity extending back into the regions of doubt and fable; and it is safe to say that the streams of Scotland are no more indebted to the genius of Robert Burns and Walter Scott than the Hudson and the Catskills to the pen of Washington Irving. [Applause.]
[At this point the lecturer gave some illustrations of Irving’s style; his rendering of them being, as usual, all that could be desired.]
In this his first volume we would naturally look for his characteristics as a writer, and we find a rich fund of humor and invention; but here and there are gentle touches and the promise of other qualities, to which Walter Scott refers in a letter to one of his friends. He says: “I have never read anything so closely resembling the style of Dean Swift, as the annals of Diedrich Knickerbocker. I think, too, there are some passages which indicate that the author possesses powers of a different kind, and he has some touches which remind me of Sterne.”
The prophecy of Scott waited ten years for its fulfillment, but it came at last in the most charming collection of essays in our language, the “Sketch-Book,” which I divide into essays of character and sentiment, English pictures and American legends. The “Broken Heart” is perhaps the greatest favorite of his character sketches, and at the same time a transcript of his early experience. In the short space of six pages he portrays the qualities of woman’s nature, and illustrates it with the touching story of Curran’s daughter, whose heart was buried in the coffin of Robert Emmet. This essay was suggested by a friend who had met the heroine at a masquerade. The name and the time of its writing were closely associated with Moore’s familiar poem:
“She is far from the land where her young hero sleeps,
She sings the wild songs of her dear native plains,
Every note which he loved awaking;
Ah! little they think, who delight in her strains,
How the heart of the minstrel is breaking.”
In the whole range of English literature I know of no pen except Irving’s which could have written an essay like this in plain and simple prose. We find the same tender sentiment in Burns’ “Highland Mary,” and Poe’s “Annabel Lee;” but poetry is the natural language of passion and sorrow. Irving has often been likened to Addison, but in this particular they have nothing in common. Edward Everett has well said: One chord in the human heart, the pathetic, for whose weird music Addison had no ear, Irving touched with the hand of a master. He learned that in the school of early disappointment; and in the following passages we seem to hear its sad but sweet vibration, still responding through years of sorrow to the memory of her whose hopes were entwined with his: “There are some strokes of calamity, which scathe and scorch the soul, which penetrate to the vital seat of happiness, and blast it never to put forth bud and blossom; and let those tell her agony who have had the portals of the tomb suddenly closed between them and the being they most loved on earth, who have sat at its threshold as one shut out in the cold and lonely world, whence all that was most lovely and loving had departed.”
It is said that when Lord Byron was dying at Missolonghi, he required an attendant to read to him the “Broken Heart,” and while the attendant was reading one of the most tender portions the poet’s eyes moistened, and he said: “Irving never wrote that story without weeping, and I can not hear it without tears.” He added: “I have not wept much in this world, for trouble never brings tears to my eyes; but I always had tears for the ‘Broken Heart.’”
Kindred to this, I select “The Wife” as a true picture of woman’s power in adversity. As the story goes, his friend Leslie had married a beautiful and accomplished girl, and having an ample fortune, it was his ambition that her life should be a fairy tale. Having embarked in speculation, his riches took to themselves wings and flew away, leaving him in bankruptcy. For a time he kept his situation to himself, but every look revealed his story; and at last he told all to his wife. We see her rising from a state of childish dependence, and becoming the support and comfort of her husband in his misfortune. Following them from a mansion to a cottage, we feel that the last state of that man is better than the first; in the knowledge and possession of such a heart he had truer riches than diamonds can symbolize. [Applause.] To the credit of our better nature, the words of Irving are true: “There is in every true woman’s heart a spark of heavenly fire, which lies dormant in the broad daylight of prosperity, but which kindles up and blazes in the dark hour of adversity. No man knows what the wife of his bosom is, what a ministering angel she is, until he has gone with her through the fiery trials of this world.” Outside the dramas of Shakspere and the pages of Walter Scott, I know of no such pictures of graceful womanhood as we find in these sketches.
Another quality no less marked than his humor and pathos we see in his reverence and love for antiquity, which forms a marked feature in the English pictures. In his “Rural Life” and “Christmas Sketches” we see his love for the old English writers, and that Chaucer and Spenser were his favorite authors. “To my mind these early poets are something more than wells of English undefiled. They are rather like the lakes of the Adirondacks, separated from each other and from us by events which loom up like mountains in the world’s history; clear and cool in far off solitudes, reflecting in their bright mirrors the serenity of earth and the broad expanse of heaven, responding to the gentle glow of summer sunset, holding quiet communion with the evening stars and awakening rosy life at the first touch of morn. . . . The old English ballads have all the energy, the rhythm and sparkle of our mountain streams, but Chaucer and Spenser and Shakspere and Bunyan are the fountains from which flows a river, ay, the Hudson of our English language.” With this deep love for the masters of English literature, we are not surprised that Westminster Abbey, with its poets’ corner, should be the subject of one of his earliest essays; and the principal feature of this essay, that which makes it the enduring one of all that have been written upon this venerable pile, is its truth and sincerity. It is, indeed, pleasant, in these days of irreverence; when flippant writing is received for wit and mis-spelled slang accepted for originality; when popular literature is running into low levels of life and luxury and the vices and follies of mankind; when modern poets take their cue from the heathen Chinee and find rhyme and rhythm in subdued oaths and significant dashes; when even home ballads are infected with the speech, if not the morality of Jim Bludsoe; in these days of scoffing at all things temporal and spiritual; when it seems as if belief had gone out of man: we turn with satisfaction to these essays, in which we see the nobility of a loyal heart, and feel that truth and goodness and beauty, the offspring of God, are not subject to the changes which upset the invention of man. [Applause.] I make no quotation from this familiar essay; it possesses too much unity to detach a paragraph or a sentence. I can only say I read it over and over again with the same interest to-day as years ago in the deep shade of that melancholy aisle at the tomb of Mary Queen of Scots.
There is one other place in England where I took my pocket edition of the “Sketch-Book”—to Stratford-on-Avon, for, more than any other man, Irving is associated with the world’s greatest poet. Writers without number, and many of them well known to fame, have given their impressions of Stratford-on-Avon, but Irving’s description supersedes them all. In this companionship of Shakspere and Irving we see the enduring qualities of the human heart. In the deep sympathy of Irving for the olden time, we feel that he has added another charm to Stratford, and that we as a nation have a better claim to the great poet.
In Irving’s “Rip Van Winkle,” and “Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” which I take as illustrations of his “American Legends,” we see that he is one of the few writers who recognize the fact that comedy is quite as natural as tragedy. At the time this essay was written we understand that Irving had never visited the Catskill Mountains; but there is this feature about all his essays or stories: wherever he locates them, they seem at once to take root and flourish. This story is too well known, through the genius of Jefferson on the stage, and Rogers in the studio, to need delineation. The old Dutch village, with its philosophers and sages, the sorely-tried Gretchen, the shiftless, good-natured Van Winkle, the adventure on the mountains, the return—it all passes before our minds like a series of pictures; and we come to the closing scene, which the play-writer and dramatist would have done well to follow, for there is more dramatic unity in the story which Irving left us than in the drama.
I must pass over to-night “Bracebridge Hall,” the “History of Columbus,” the “History of Washington,” the “Alhambra,” and many more, which, as we think of them, rise up before us like a new vision of the “Arabian Nights” in our literature; and in order to read them and get the full beauty of Irving’s works, we must read them in connection with his “Life and Letters,” published by his nephew, Peor Irving, in which we see the whole history of the man pass before us, from the time when the boy of twenty went through the northern wilderness of New York, until the time when, a man of seventy, he again stood on the banks of the St. Lawrence, and in a letter to his niece called up the changes of fifty years.
[After referring to the changes Irving had lived to see take place, the speaker made the following allusion to Chautauqua:]
Think of Mr. Miller when he ten years ago laid out the site of the first humble cottage in this grove; and if he had slept from that time until now, he would be more than Rip Van Winkle, could he look in to-night upon this Auditorium. [Applause.]
[HOURS OF REST.]
By ANNA H. DRURY.
“Come ye yourselves apart into a desert place, and rest awhile.”—Mark vi: 31.
Come ye apart, and rest awhile
From all your hope, from all your fear:
The sunny fields where harvests smile,
The thankless soil, the blighted ear—
Leave all behind, and rest with Me
One hour in still Gethsemane!
Come ye apart, and find repose
In this the garden of My pain;
Drink of the cup I share with those
Who lose for Me, and find it gain.
I from an angel comfort drew,
But I myself will comfort you!
Come ye apart, and taste the calm
My love can shed beneath the rod.
Rest on the everlasting Arm—
Be still, and know that I am God!
Accept your Heavenly Father’s Will,
As I accepted—and was still.
Come ye, as Moses came of old,
While humbled Israel mourned below,
And wrestled for his guilty fold,
With pangs that only shepherds know;
And won them back the forfeit grace!
Sealed with My glory on his face!
Come ye, as erst Elijah came,
Through forty days of mystic fast;
And through the earthquake, storm, and flame,
Thrilled to the still small voice at last;
And learned, when every hope looked dim,
That unknown thousands prayed with him!
Come, rest with Me on that stern bed
Whose tortures were endured for you;
Till faith and patience perfected,
There, where I triumphed, triumph too.
Who share the Paschal nail and thorn,
Shall know the joy of Easter morn!
[THE RESOURCES OF THE UNITED STATES.]
In a book written by J. Harris Patton, M. D., and published by D. Appleton & Co., entitled “The Natural Resources of the United States,” we find so much information that commends itself to every citizen of the country, that we have noted a few of the general facts, hoping thereby to give some light on the great wealth of our country. From this little book we learn first the general position and description of the country, together with the mountain ranges, rivers, lakes, valleys, etc.; then the amount of available coast line. This is, on both oceans, nearly 18,000 miles, while the shore line of the lakes and navigable rivers is 11,000 miles in length, making 29,000 miles in all. The vast importance of this need only be suggested to bring up a host of advantages that we derive from such means of traffic. In comparing the coal fields of Europe with those of the United States it is found that the latter country has twenty square miles of coal for one of the former, with a surplus of territory in the Rocky Mountain region amounting to 100,000 square miles. The ease with which the coal of the United States is mined is of great importance in the industry of the country. This facility of mining is due to the thickness of the veins and the dip of the seams.
Anthracite coal is most abundant in Pennsylvania. There are over four hundred and seventy square miles of this coal with an average thickness of sixty feet. Anthracite is also found in Virginia, Rhode Island, and New Mexico. Of bituminous coal there seems to be such a general distribution that almost every part of the country is supplied with fields of its own. The bituminous coal fields of the Allegheny lie on the western slope of the mountains and extend through Western Pennsylvania across the upper course of the Ohio river; and in like manner southwest along the slope nearly to the Gulf.
In many of these localities the beds of iron ore and limestone are all in the same mountain with the coal, and as they are all above the water-level, the coal is dry and well adapted to blast furnace purposes.
Block and cannel coals are found in great quantities throughout Ohio and Indiana. Block coal is also abundant in Iowa and Illinois.
Lignite is found in vast fields in the Rocky Mountain district. The veins of this partly formed coal are often nearly thirty feet thick. It is useful where great heat is not required. The extent of these fields on the east of the Rockies, and between them and the Sierras, is estimated to be fifty thousand square miles.
On the Pacific slope there are many localities where seams of coal are now worked, some of which are over one hundred feet in thickness. These fields extend far up into Alaska.
Iron-ore is found in inexhaustible quantities. The Creator seems to have placed the most useful of minerals within the reach of all mankind. New York State produces ore that yields iron of the best quality. Rich ores are found in New Jersey, while Pennsylvania surpasses all other states in her minerals. Ore is found in this state in all conditions, and of almost every variety. The ore is often associated with limestone and coal. Virginia has some valuable deposits of iron that are practically free from sulphur and phosphorus. North Carolina is rich in singular beds of ore which, when mined, looks like black sand. This ore is the “black oxide.” Kentucky, Tennessee and Alabama all have important beds of ore. In Missouri there are two large mountains containing one-tenth of their weight in iron. Lake Superior regions are so valuable that ore is mined in this country and shipped to Pittsburgh to be smelted. Even the Rocky Mountains are well supplied with iron-ore in many places.
Gold and silver. These constitute the precious metals of the United States, and though the world could dispense with them, they are sought after and prized by all classes. The opening up of the great West is due to these metals. They are produced in limited quantities in the Allegheny range, but the methods of working the ore in these mines are not well enough adapted to make it paying property. The Rocky Mountains and the Sierras contain ore bearing both gold and silver in large quantities. The gold and silver fields of the United States occupy nearly one hundred and fifty thousand square miles. Of the metals iron, zinc, platinum, nickel, etc., we have limited quantities in the United States.
Massachusetts has tin. Zinc is found in New Hampshire and New York, while New Jersey is the only State that has this metal in paying quantities. Nickel has been found in Connecticut and Maryland. Platinum is found in Idaho.
Petroleum producing territory covers an area of two hundred thousand square miles, and from this vast amount it would seem that the world could be supplied from the United States alone for an indefinite number of years.
Lead is found in abundance in some of the Eastern and many of the Western States. At Galena, in Illinois, there is a lead deposit that will supply this metal for centuries.
Vast fields of copper are found in the State of Michigan and Isle Royale, yet it is quite abundant in many of the other States of the Union.
Mercury is produced from cinnabar, an ore found in California, and is useful in extracting gold and silver.
Graphite comes from New York, Massachusetts, Vermont, Connecticut, and North Carolina. That of New York is especially fine, and fit for making the best quality of pencils.
Slate, granite, sandstone and marble are found in such vast quantities in the Northeastern States that the supply may be deemed inexhaustible. The country contains immense beds of gypsum, clay, whetstone, slate for pencils and glass-sand.
The salt industries of the Middle States are very great, the quantity seems to be without limit, and the pumping of brine for a series of years does not seem to weaken its strength.
Fertilizers in the shape of phosphates, limestone and marl abound everywhere; while health-giving mineral springs are distributed throughout the breadth of the land.
The resources of the United States are not confined to minerals, but enormous wealth is in the natural fertility of the soil. Supplied with copious rain fall over a vast territory, the soil yields throughout the different latitudes such variety of products that nothing seems left to be desired in this line. Even where the rain fall is very little the land will give abundant return if the farmer will only irrigate the soil. Grains, fruits, grasses, etc., are produced in wonderful quantities.
Our forests are enormous in extent, though they have suffered from wanton destruction, and with proper care, may be made to supply timber for hundreds of years.
The review of the fishing industries by the author gives astonishing figures to show us how much we are indebted to the lakes and seas for our food.
Fur bearing animals are abundant, as also wild game of all kinds.
By carefully constructed, though liberal laws, the government has made it possible to get homes in the great West, to obtain mining lands and in all has done the best for the working man and citizen.
We are less annoyed when fools despise us, than when we are slightly esteemed by men of understanding.—Vauvenargues.
[MONTANA.]
By SHELDON JACKSON, D.D.
“Her empire the cradle of the two mightiest rivers of North America; a scepter of gold in her right hand, and a shield of silver in her left; her cornucopia full and overflowing from the abundance of her own bosom; and with the dawning star of statehood flashing independence from her youthful forehead, she will soon fall into line and ‘march to the music of the Union.’ Seated on her throne of forest-decked mountains, her enchanting landscapes of
‘Mountain, forest, and rock,
Of deep blue lake and mighty river,’
stretching in picturesque grandeur toward either main—the Missouri her natural carrier to the east, and the Columbia to the west; the trade, traffic, and travel of two worlds rattling over her mountains and through her valleys by the great Northern Pacific or Northern Utah railways; her power centered on Nature’s wall of division between the waters of the Atlantic and Pacific, with an equal interest in the commerce of both; valleys teeming with bountiful harvests and mines of boundless wealth in the precious metals; with such natural attractions and advantages, is it possible to draw an over-colored picture of her future?”
The country of which the above is a glowing description, is, with the exception of Alaska, the youngest of our territorial dependencies. It was cut off from Idaho and formed into a Territory May 26, 1864. Stretching for 275 miles from north to south, and 460 to 540 miles from east to west, it embraces a territorial area of 143,776 square miles; an area equal to three States like New York, the Empire State of the East.
Its surface is beautifully diversified with mountains, valleys, foot-hills, rivers, and creeks. The mountains supply the minerals and the timber; the foot-hills and uplands unlimited grazing for all kinds of stock; the creeks and rivers a water-power a hundred-fold greater than all New England. It is estimated that this great inland empire contains 10,000,000 acres of farming land, 21,000,000 acres of mountains, 5,000,000 acres of mines, 12,000,000 acres of timber, and 38,000,000 acres of grazing land.
Like Minnesota, it is a great water-shed. The Yellowstone, Madison, Jefferson, Muscleshell, Milk, Big Horn, Tongue, Powder, Sun and Gallatin rivers drawing their supplies from unnumbered springs and crystal rivulets descending from numberless mountain gorges, form the Missouri River; while the Big Blackfoot, Missoula, Hell Gate and Flathead rivers through the Columbia find their way to the Pacific. The hills and mountains bordering these rivers are spurs putting out from the main range of the Rocky Mountains, and sometimes excel in height and grandeur the main range itself.
As its name signifies, Montana is a mountainous country. The western portion is traversed by the main, the Cœur d’Alene and Bitter Root ranges. In the northern portion are the Bear Paw, and Little Rocky ranges; in the central the Snow, Judith and Bull ranges; and in the southeast the Big Horn, Powder River and Wolf ranges. These have a varying height of from 7,000 to 11,000 feet, and by their arrangement form a series of depressions or basins, of which there are four large ones east and one west of the Rocky Mountains proper.
Though far to the north the mean temperature of some of the valleys is that of Philadelphia.
Like Minnesota it is a dry, invigorating climate and remarkable for its salubrity and freedom from malaria. On an average there are 250 days of sunshine during the year.
With the present development of the country there are about 300,000 head of cattle, 60,000 horses and 300,000 sheep; the annual product of wheat, 450,000 bushels; oats, 650,000 bushels; barley, 60,000 bushels; vegetables, 500,000 bushels, and 70,000 tons of hay. Montana is also rich in timber, coal, and the precious metals. In the past sixteen years more than $120,000,000 worth of gold-dust has been washed from her placers.
The first authentic information of Montana was given to the country by the famous expedition of Lewis and Clark in 1804. In 1834 Capt. Bonneville, and in 1853 Gov. I. I. Stevens, threw additional light upon the character of the country.
The permanent settlement of the country commenced with the rush of gold miners. As early as 1852 the existence of gold was discovered, but this knowledge was not made available until 1862, when the rush commenced, culminating in 1865-66.
The first mining settlement was at Bannock. Discovered in the summer of 1862 by some miners from Colorado, that winter found clustered there a population of 2,000; desperados from Idaho, bankrupt speculators from Nevada, guerrilla refugees from Missouri, miners from Colorado, gamblers and saloon-keepers, with a small leaven of good and true men. It was to that point that the Presbyterian Committee of Home Missions sent their first missionary.
The following year gold was discovered in Alder Gulch, and Bannock was deserted for the new diggings. With the population went Rev. Messrs. Smith and Price, Presbyterian ministers, and the first Protestant clergymen to preach in the Territory.
In 1864 Rev. A. M. Hough, the first regularly appointed Methodist missionary, reached the new diggings and commenced preaching.
Virginia City, the outgrowth of the Alder Gulch mines, is the county seat of Madison County. Like all mining towns, it was not laid out, but grew. The miner only wanted a temporary shelter, and every newcomer located his log cabin to suit himself, usually adjoining the last one built. When common convenience required a street, a street appeared. There were no yards or gardens, for beyond the narrow ravine filled with straggling cabins, only grew sage-brush. The miners thrived and the city grew. For sleeping accommodations a limited space was allotted upon the floor, the occupant furnishing his own blankets; and it was a long time before the regular diet of bacon, bread, and dried apples was varied by a potato. But gradually things changed; a better class of buildings appeared; the number of gambling and tippling places steadily decreased; the vigilantes gained the upper hand of the roughs; old residents brought in their wives and children, and the whole face of things became more like the “States.”
From the huge piles of dirt and stone that mar the beauty of the gulch, has been taken out $30,000,000 worth of gold dust. Of the ten thousand men that once worried and toiled and fought for gold, only about one thousand remain; yet the city is improving, and has a good future in store.
The next discovery of rich mines was on the Prickly Pear Creek. The Fisk Brothers with a colony from Minnesota had crossed the plains to this point and worked on quietly until the fame of the “Last Chance Mines” went abroad throughout the land, and a city arose like an exhalation, taking the name of Helena from the resemblance of the surrounding hills to those in the isle of St. Helena. Helena is not only the political capital, but the commercial, literary, social and religious center of the territory. It has many handsome buildings and is growing rapidly.
In the meantime discoveries were made in many directions and small camps of miners flourished until their gravel beds were worked over, or a new excitement enticed away the miners. The latest developed and most flourishing of the mining centers is at Butte, which has become the largest city in the Territory.
Among the beautiful villages with a promising future may be mentioned Deer Lodge, situated in a beautiful grazing valley. The first white settler was Johnny Grant, who had among his wives a squaw from every tribe that roamed that section. When the Flatheads passed by his ranch, no woman was to be seen but a Flathead, and when the Blackfeet came the sole wife of his bosom was a Blackfoot. And thus he lived at peace with the natives, a sharer in their spoils and an arbiter in their quarrels.
Down the Hell Gate River to the northwest of Deer Lodge is the broad, rich valley of the Bitter Root, with Missoula as its thriving county-seat. For many years the great Hudson Bay Fur Company had a station in that valley and monopolized the fur trade. From thence westward the natives speak the famous Chinook jargon, invented by the company to facilitate trade with the natives. Words were borrowed from the English, French, and various Indian tongues and worked into an incongruous combination which the all powerful influence of the company introduced everywhere. The Flathead and Pend d’Oreilles Indians that now inhabit that region are under papal influence. Among them is the Jesuit mission of St. Ignatius.
To the northeast of Helena is Fort Benton, which was originally built in 1846 as a trading post of the American Fur Company, and afterwards sold to the Northwestern Fur Company. Situated at the head of steam navigation on the Missouri River, it is growing rapidly and promises to be an important place. From thence, in days past, the citizens of the Territory would take a steamer for Sioux City, Iowa, two thousand miles distant by the windings of the river—a thousand miles of which was then through a wild Indian country. Steamers were frequently fired into by hostile Indians, whose camps and graves were met at frequent intervals. This route also passed through wild, and among the Citadel Rocks, weird scenery. These curious rocks are of soft white sandstone, worn into a thousand grotesque shapes by the waters which have come down from the table-lands during the unknown ages of the past.
To the southeast of Helena is Bozeman, a picturesque village with grand natural surroundings and a grand future as a city on the main line of the Northern Pacific Railway. From it the eye can range over four hundred miles, and a little way to the south of it, over the range, is the great Yellowstone Park—the enchanted wonderland—where trappers declare “they have seen trees, game and even Indians petrified, and yet looking as natural as life; where they have seen a mountain of quartz so transparent that they could see the mules feeding on the other side;”—a combination of many of the freaks of nature, which are usually looked for and found over many and widely separated lands. Already an increasing throng of tourists each summer are visiting its falls and cañons, its geysers and springs.
To the eastward down the Yellowstone Valley is Miles City, named after General Miles of the United States Army.
The rising cities of Glendive, Billings and Miles are examples of the great transformation that is passing over Montana with the advent of railways.
Only six years ago the savage Indians destroyed Custer and his troops of the 7th United States Cavalry, and held full sway of the entire valley of the Yellowstone. Now railway trains pass up and down through its scores of villages and hundreds of farms.
The census of 1880 gives the following statistics: Population 39,157; Roman Catholics, 10 churches and 13 priests; Disciples of Christ, 6 churches and 4 ministers; Methodist Episcopal, 8 churches and 6 ministers; Methodist Episcopal (South), 9 ministers; Protestant Episcopal, 8 churches and 6 ministers; Presbyterian, 6 churches and 7 ministers.
There are in the territory 19,791 Indians, of whose children only 287 are in school. Among the American population are 5,885 children of school age, of whom 2,804 are in school.
[TALES FROM SHAKSPERE.]
By CHARLES LAMB.