TOUCHING A LONG SLUMBERING CHORD
If houses have souls, as Hawthorne believed and taught, and can admire and remember, there is one residence, toward which I turn my willing pilgrim feet, on revisiting the earth, which supports his way of thinking. I was hardly within the door of this dwelling, once occupied by my father, himself a clergyman, when it began to reel off to me, the impressions it had received and retained, for a generation. First, came in minute detail, with all the vividness of moving pictures, a recital touching the old-fashioned donation party which, like the husking-bee and the quilting-bee or house-raising, requires a good deal of interpretation to those, living in days, when money flows like water. The mingling of work and pleasure, combining philanthropy and social enjoyment was the custom of the time. All came together in a fine spirit of neighborliness and all the labor and all the supplies for the feast were gratuitously furnished. A Donation Party was featured particularly by spare-ribs, also by cake, bags of flour, and pies, also by all kinds of things both from the cellar and larder of the members of the parish. The soiree with refreshments, was always a surprise, with this exception that the minister's wife was asked, with a knowing look, if the dominie was to be at home. The outstanding fact was the overwhelming abundance of everything. The party over, when we sat down to a meal, we began just where we left off at the last repast.
The Past at Least is Secure
Wood, in sled lengths, used to be dragged to our door. Coal was unknown to our experience. When a man had a pig-sticking, in anticipation of the school-teacher's coming to his house to board, he brought a portion of the result to the manse, as if to obtain and enjoy a blessing on the rest. A minister's salary was by necessity used for pocket money. The occasions were joyous, social, extremely helpful, and welcome. The cake left a precious memory behind. Sometimes the lambs of the flock combined to procure something that the shepherd was known to need. What killed the Donation Party and buried it, beyond the hope of resurrection, was the fun and ridicule and wit that came to be aimed at its ludicrous features. A colored porter, on a Pullman car, said he had a good position until the comic papers took up the prevalent method of collecting tips and made it ridiculous. One must orient himself to place the right estimate upon this party at the minister's house. He was not in those days independent to the point of being defiant. There was no beggary, no humiliation, and the people were generous, considering that they had, in many cases, difficult problems of their own. If a minister went into a community to live, as they did, there was a fine feeling all around.
Where a Critical Struggle was Beginning
As I stood in the floor of my early home all the situations were plainly outlined for me. In the front corner of one of the best rooms, stood the study table of the dominie, on which he wrote the ministerial recommendations. Ministers used to be mediators: that was their office. This kindly disposition, to put the influence of one's name, and the weight of his ministerial character, behind any good thing, that seemed to need promoting, could be developed into a form of second nature. The new form of charity, "Not alms, but a friend," did not reduce the number of letters of recommendation. We were taught that a little kindness is often worth more than a great deal of money. The poor, unemployed man lacked opportunity, acquaintance, and recognition. The minister, in pure disinterestedness, brothers him. The usual form of helpfulness is a letter. The misfortune is that everybody can recommend anybody. Exaggerations can be given to certain qualities and a discreet silence observed with regard to others. Thus Mrs. Stowe accentuates the negro's peculiarly religious character and disposition. Thus Wendell Phillips never tells the truth, and yet he always tells truth.
Rising Young Men
The relation of this subject to the book canvasser is extremely suggestive. Some of those who have written their names highest on the rolls of deserved honor have followed this laudable calling. The foremost American, George Washington, sold two hundred copies of Bydell's "American Savage." Our most melodious poet, Longfellow, sold books by subscription. Our pre-eminent orator, Daniel Webster, handled de Tocqueville's "America." Our greatest general, the hero of Appomattox, Ulysses S. Grant, canvassed for Irving's "Columbus." And our magnetic statesman, James G. Blaine, began his career as a canvasser for a life of Henry Clay. In the small, dark, dingy parlors of country hotels, travelers on rainy days often now find copies of books that were sold, or rather traded, to the well-fed, good natured, boniface in exchange for entertainment. I can remember items that I have read in these books. I can now go to the tavern and the table where I read after dinner from Butler's book his explanation of the reason that he lost more cases after he became celebrated as a lawyer than he did before. After his fame was established clients flocked to him, with desperate cases. They did not balk at the amount of his retaining fee. As these hotly contested cases had been put through all of their preliminary stages, in all the lower courts, Benjamin F. Butler has lost each one of these chances to get his client by. The case was substantially decided adversely before the great lawyer appeared in it at all.
Tendency to Exaggerate Rather than to Daguerreotype
The dependence of the agent upon ministers is a testimonial to their sympathy. It stamps them as leaders and establishes the fact that their influence in the community is effective. Great evils are wrought in churches and communities by the fact that indorsements are so easily obtained. A man who wants testimonials can get them. Some of our little home missionary churches in the West, that deserve better things, are grievously tormented. This department of religious helpfulness has been so sadly overworked that it is suggestive to find one Christian association of young men that now omits to give letters of recommendation, feeling that discrimination is always difficult and certainly invidious.
The Practice Has Boomerang Implications
When one is in doubt about recommending a person or thing he ought to take the elder Weller's advice with regard to widows, "Don't." A letter of recommendation ought not to express the judgment of him who seeks it, but of him who gives it. Recommendations too often embody the opinion of the applicant only voiced in the words of a man of influence and position. The pen had over-employment as compared with the feet. We ought to help convicts, released from prison, at the expiration of their sentence, to get employment; but the employer ought to be put in possession of the facts. There is probably no one of us but can say that his letters of recommendation have surpassed in fruitfulness every other form of helpful service. By them currents have been set in motion that have changed the course of many a life. Among those eminent deeds that have caused most of happiness to others, that the angels unmistakably approved, stand out foremost in all one's past those instances in which a letter of introduction and of unhesitating recommendation has brought certain rare spirits into appropriate positions of usefulness and honor. An aged clergyman, loving and beloved, tells a wondering company, how one of Boston's merchant-princes went up to the metropolis of New England, cherishing in his pocket as his chief possession, a letter that meant every word it said and into which a whole country church, through its minister, had put its true estimate of a young, manly, Christian character, also its well wishes and its hopes.
Things with a Difference
There is a saying that Adam once returned to the earth where he recognized no country but Spain. "Ah," said he, "this is exactly as I left it." Since 1880 we have built more than five hundred cities in America, among them some of the smartest in the world. We once lived here, in a plain country town, and now forsooth they have a little doll of a city. In a Boston burial ground there is an enclosed grave-lot. The iron fence is warping and rusting and crumbling. On the iron gate-way to the lot is moulded the caption, "Never to be disturbed." Nature the same, everything else changes is the rule. Even in hoarse, brutal, unprogressive Russia everything is becoming new fangled, dress, features, manners, pursuits, all are becoming new. The alterations, in our former place of abode, have been so unconsciously and so gradually made, as to escape the attention of the resident. The secrecy with which all forms of business was conducted is an example. "No admittance" signs were once so much used that the form could have been manufactured in lots and kept in stock to supply the constant demand. It used to be the custom, in paying a bill, for a man as he drew out his pocket-book, to turn half way around, and with his back to the gentleman he was dealing with, open the wallet and examine his money.
There has been an astonishing increase in the number of employments, as compared with the few different vocations of earlier days. Medical men and lawyers had no specialties as they do now. Many doctors today, who would like an all-round development, would better enjoy a country practice. The sons of the physicians have gone into vocations that were hardly recognized when their fathers began practice. One of the electrical firms asked to be given, for their work alone, the entire graduating class of 1900 from Cornell University.
The Changing World
The slang of a generation ago, some of it is given a permanent place in our language, and while in the dictionaries it is rated as a colloquialism, it is thus recognized. It has increased so greatly in the speech of the people, it comes freely also from student bodies, from the trades and sports and from the war camps, that it will now keep the lexicon makers busy.
