Adventures in the Moon, and Other Worlds

by Earl John Russell Russell

While I was engaged in this study of biography, I perceived the old man with whom I had entered the room very intent on the same employment. I walked up to him, and saw his own name on the kaleidoscope into which he was looking. This surprised me; for he had spoken of his past vices with so much contrition, that I imagined he would have chosen to avoid these apparitions of them, instead of wilfully distressing himself with the sight. I supposed, therefore, that he must be reviewing his life for the benefit of reproach and mortification; but when I looked into his face, expecting to see it full of horror, I observed his eye glistening with delight at the remembrance of his pleasures. He examined them one after another, pausing at each, and turning the kaleidoscope with the slowest caution, so as not to hurry the enjoyment, nor pass over any material circumstance; and while he made these confessions, there was a voluptuous joy in his face, very ill suited to his venerable appearance. I found that these visions of the past have a singular power over the owner of the kaleidoscope, reviving his former thoughts and sensations, and imparting at the moment a fancied vigour.

"I see," said I, "that you have returned to the amusements of your youth. You have here the means of retrieving your lost time."

"How so?" he inquired.

"Why," I answered, "you have only to take back with you this little instrument, and then you can be a young man in your arm-chair whenever you please. The actual performance of these things would require an effort inconvenient to you; but, having this kaleidoscope, you may enjoy any vice you wish, with no other labour than shutting one eye."

"That is true," said he; "it will be a great comfort to me in my old age."

"But," I asked, "will it not interfere with the strict temperance and virtue which you are to practise for the rest of your life?"

"Not at all," answered he, "because none of the consequences of vice will follow these repetitions; I can do no harm by looking into this little thing. I may carouse with the friends of my youth in this kaleidoscope, and awake the next morning without a pain in my head. The wine that was drunk forty years ago will now furnish a very innocent debauch; or, if I choose to prosecute a design against a village beauty, I can accomplish the plot here, and no woman on earth will lose her peace of mind by my success. I have full confidence in my reformation, I have thoroughly reclaimed myself from actual vice; but I know not why I should be so austere as to refuse my old age the comfort of these recollections, in which I find a remarkable charm." So speaking, he put his kaleidoscope into his pocket, and walked away to practise temperance.

I saw several other old men here, each of whom had found his own kaleidoscope, and was repeating the vices of his youth with great satisfaction. Under this inspiration, their venerable countenances were disfigured with a most unbecoming look of enjoyment. Every one of them carried away his instrument for the support of his declining age. It is probable that all these old men, like the one mentioned before, had for some time past been admiring their own temperance, and extolling themselves for a complete victory over the bad passions of their youth, having become abstemious by means of seventy years, and attained a habit of refraining from all those vices which require bodily strength. Men act alike towards their vices and their friends, no one will confess himself forsaken by either. A man who finds himself avoided and discountenanced by one whose acquaintance is advantageous to him, assures himself first that the friendship is irrecoverable, and then begins to devise retaliation, endeavours to exceed the neglect with which the other treats him, and disputes his claim to the first coolness. Thus an old man, when his pleasures abandon him, pretends to priority; and being convinced by fair trial that a bad habit is irrevocably lost, he firmly demands that he and his vice shall part. This forbearance from what we cannot do resembles what is sometimes called resignation in a dying man, who, having tried in vain every expedient for remaining alive, begins to prefer death, descants on the disadvantage of being a man, and earnestly endeavours to justify his choice.

I cannot here avoid a reflection on the hard lot of virtue in being so commonly the successor of vice. When the house being torn to pieces by the riots of vice is abandoned as no longer habitable, with the foundations undermined, the roof fallen in, the furniture destroyed, and the walls tottering, it is made over to virtue, and she is desired to take possession of the ruin, and make herself comfortable for life.