1888
It seems to me that the constructive age of man begins when he has passed fifty. Not until then can he be a master builder. As I sped past the fifty-fifth milestone life itself became better, broader, fuller. My plans were wider, the distances I wanted to go stretched before me, beyond the normal strength of an average lifetime. This I knew, but still I pressed on, indifferent of the speed or strain. There were indications that my strength had not been dissipated, that the years were merely notches that had not cut deep, that had scarcely scarred the surface of the trunk. The soul, the mind, the zest of doing—all were keen and eager.
The conservation of the soul is not so profound a matter as it is described. It consists in a guardianship of the gateways through which impressions enter, or pass by; it consists in protecting one's inner self from wasteful associations.
The influence of what we read is of chief importance to character. At the beginning of 1888 I received innumerable requests from people all over New York and Brooklyn for advice on the subject of reading. In the deluge of books that were beginning to sweep over us many readers were drowned. The question of what to read was being discussed everywhere.
I opposed the majority of novels because they were made chiefly to set forth desperate love scrapes. Much reading of love stories makes one soft, insipid, absent-minded, and useless. Affections in life usually work out very differently. The lady does not always break into tears, nor faint, nor do the parents always oppose the situation, so that a romantic elopement is possible. Excessive reading of these stories makes fools of men and women. Neither is it advisable to read a book because someone else likes it. It is not necessary to waste time on Shakespeare if you have no taste for poetry or drama merely because so many others like them; nor to pass a long time with Sir William Hamilton when metaphysics are not to your taste. When you read a book by the page, every few minutes looking ahead to see how many chapters there are before the book will be finished, you had better stop reading it. There was even a fashion in books that was absurd. People were bored to death by literature in the fashion.
For a while we had a Tupper epidemic, and everyone grew busy writing blank verse—very blank. Then came an epidemic of Carlyle, and everyone wrote turgid, involved, twisted and breakneck sentences, each noun with as many verbs as Brigham Young had wives. Then followed a romantic craze, and everyone struggled to combine religion and romance, with frequent punches at religion, and we prided ourselves on being sceptical and independent in our literary tastes. My advice was simply to make up one's mind what to read, and then read it. Life is short, and books are many. Instead of making your mind a garret crowded with rubbish, make it a parlour, substantially furnished, beautifully arranged, in which you would not be ashamed to have the whole world enter.
There was so much in the world to provoke the soul, and yet all persecution is a blessing in some way. The so-called modern literature, towards the close of the nineteenth century, was becoming more and more the illegitimate offspring of immaturity in thought and feeling. We were the slaves of our newspapers; each morning a library was thrown on our doorstep. But what a jumbled, inconsequent, muddled-up library! It was the best that could be made in such a hurry, and it satisfied most of us, though I believe there were conservative people who opened it only to read the marriage and the death notices. The latter came along fast enough.
In January, 1888, that well-known American jurist and illustrious Brooklynite, Judge Joseph Neilson, died. He was an old friend of mine, of everyone who came upon his horizon. For a long while he was an invalid, but he kept this knowledge from the world, because he wanted no public demonstration. The last four years of his life he was confined to his room, where he sat all the while calm, uncomplaining, interested in all the affairs of the world, after a life of active work in it. He belonged to that breed which has developed the brain and brawn of American character—the Scotch-Irish. If Christianity had been a fallacy, Judge Neilson would have been just the man to expose it. He who on the judicial bench sat in solemn poise of spirit, while the ablest jurists and advocates of the century were before him to be prompted, corrected, or denied, was not the man to be overcome by a religion of sophistry or mere pretence. Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase said that he had studied the Christian religion as he had studied a law case, and concluded that it was divine. Judge Neilson's decisions will be quoted in court rooms as long as Justice holds its balance. The supremacy of a useful life never leaves the earth—its influence remains behind.
The whole world, it seemed to me, was being spiritualised by the influences of those whose great moments on earth had planted tangible and material benefits, years after they themselves were invisible. It was an elemental fact in the death chamber of Mr. Roswell, the great botanist, in England; in the relieved anxieties in Berlin; in the jubilation in Dublin; by the gathering of noblemen in St. Petersburg; and in the dawn of this new year. I could see a tendency in European affairs to the unification of nations.
The German and the French languages had been struggling for the supremacy of Europe. As I foresaw events then, the two would first conquer Europe, and the stronger of the two would swallow the other. Then the English language would devour that, and the world would have but one language. Over a million people had already began the study of Volapük, a new language composed of all languages. This was an indication of world nationalisation. Congresses of nations, meeting for various purposes, were establishing brotherhood. It looked as though those who were telling us again in 1888 that the second coming of Christ was at hand were right. The divine significance of things was greater than it had ever been.
There was some bigotry in religious affairs, of course. In our religion we were as far from unity of feeling then as we had ever been. The Presbyterian bigot could be recognised by his armful of Westminster catechisms. The Methodist bigot could be easily identified by his declaration that unless a man had been converted by sitting on the anxious seat he was not eligible. The way to the church militant, according to this bigot, was from the anxious seat, one of which he always carried with him. The Episcopal bigot struggled under a great load of liturgies. Without this man's prayer-books no one could be saved, he said. The Baptist bigot was bent double with the burden of his baptistry.
"It does not seem as if some of you had been properly washed," he said, "and I shall proceed to put under the water all those who have neglected their ablutions." Religion was being served in a kind of ecclesiastical hash that, naturally enough, created controversy, as very properly it should. In spite of these things, however, some creed of religious faith, whichever it might be, was universally needed. I hope for a church unity in the future. When all the branches in each denomination have united, then the great denominations nearest akin will unite, and this absorption will go on until there will be one great millennial Church, divided only for geographical convenience into sections as of old, when it was the Church of Laodicea, the Church of Philadelphia, the Church of Thyatira. In the event of this religious evolution then there will be the Church of America, the Church of Europe, the Church of Asia, the Church of Africa, and the Church of Australia.
We are all builders, bigots, or master mechanics of the divine will.
The number of men who built Brooklyn, and who have gone into eternal industry, were increasing. One day I paused a moment on the Brooklyn Bridge to read on a stone the names of those who had influenced the building of that span of steel, the wonder of the century. They were the absent ones: The president, Mr. Murphy, absent; the vice-president, Mr. Kingsley, absent; the treasurer, Mr. Prentice, absent; the engineer, Mr. Roebling, absent. Our useful citizens were going or gone. A few days after this Alfred S. Barnes departed. He has not disappeared, nor will until our Historical Hall, our Academy of Music, and Mercantile Library, our great asylums of mercy, and churches of all denominations shall have crumbled. His name has been a bulwark of credit in the financial affairs over which he presided. He was a director of many universities. What reinforcement to the benevolence of the day his patronage was! I enjoyed a warm personal friendship with him for many years, and my gratitude and admiration were unbounded. He was a man of strict integrity in business circles, the highest type of a practical Christian gentleman. Unlike so many successful business men, he maintained an unusual simplicity of character. He declined the Mayoralty and Congressional honours that he might pursue the ways of peace.
The great black-winged angel was being desperately beaten back, however, by the rising generation of doctors, young, hearty, industrious, ambitious graduates of the American universities. How bitterly vaccination was fought even by ministers of the Gospel. Small wits caricatured it, but what a world-wide human benediction it proved. I remember being in Edinburgh a few weeks after the death of Sir James Y. Simpson, and his photograph was in every shop window, in honour of the man who first used chloroform as an anæsthetic. In former days they tried to dull pain by using the hasheesh of the Arabs. Dr. Simpson's wet sponge was a blessing put into the hands of the surgeon. The millennium for the souls of men will be when the doctors have discovered the millennium for their bodies.
Dr. Bush used to say in his valedictory address to the students of the medical college, "Young gentlemen, you have two pockets: a large pocket and a small pocket. The large pocket is for your annoyances and your insults, the small pocket for your fees."
In March, 1888, we lost a man who bestowed a new dispensation upon the dumb animals that bear our burdens—Henry Bergh. Abused and ridiculed most of his life, he established a great work for the good men and women of the ensuing centuries to carry out. Long may his name live in our consecrated memory. In the same month, from Washington to Toledo, the long funeral train of Chief Justice White steamed across country, passing multitudes of uncovered heads bowed in sorrowing respect, while across the sea men honoured his distinguished memory.
What a splendid inheritance for those of us who must pass out of the multitude without much ado, if we are not remembered among the bores of life. There were bores in the pulpit who made their congregations dread Sundays; made them wish that Sunday would come only once a month. At one time an original Frenchman actually tried having a Sunday only once every ten days. A minister should have a conference with his people before he preaches, otherwise how can he tell what medicine to give them? He must feel the spiritual pulse. Every man is a walking eternity in himself, but he will never qualify if he insists on being a bore, even if he have to face sensational newspaper stories about himself.
I never replied to any such tales except once, and that once came about in the spring of 1888. I regarded it as a joke. Some one reported that one evening, at a little gathering in my house, there were four kinds of wine served. I was much interviewed on the subject. I announced in my church that the report was false, that we had no wine. I did not take the matter as one of offence. If I had been as great a master of invective and satire as Roscoe Conkling I might have said more. In the spring of this year he died. The whole country watched anxiously the news bulletins of his death. He died a lawyer. About Conkling as a politician I have nothing to say. There is no need to enter that field of enraged controversy. As a lawyer he was brilliant, severely logical, if he chose to be, uproarious with mirth if he thought it appropriate. He was an optimist. He was on board the "Bothnia" when she broke her shaft at sea, and much anxiety was felt for him. I sailed a week later on the "Umbria," and overtaking the "Bothnia," the two ships went into harbour together. Meeting Mr. Conkling the next morning, in the North-Western Hotel, at Liverpool, I asked him if he had not been worried.
"Oh, no," he said; "I was sure that good fortune would bring us through all right."
He was the only lawyer I ever knew who could afford to turn away from a seat on the bench of the Supreme Court of the United States. He had never known misfortune. Had he ever been compelled to pass through hardships he would have been President in 1878. Because of certain peculiarities, known to himself, as well as to others, he turned aside from politics. Although neither Mr. Conkling nor Mr. Blaine could have been President while both lived, good people of all parties hoped for Mr. Conkling's recovery.
The national respect shown at the death-bed of the lawyer revealed the progress of our times. Lawyers, for many years in the past, had been ostracised. They were once forbidden entrance to Parliament. Dr. Johnson wrote the following epitaph, which is obvious enough:—
God works wonders now and then;
Here lies a lawyer an honest man.