From the Easy Chair, Volume 3

by George William Curtis

Any Easy Chair must be often reminded of such incidents when it reads in the papers the cards and notices and invitations and petitions to which conspicuous names are attached. It discovers, for instance, that the most eminent ministers, merchants, lawyers, and capitalists are very anxious to hear Dr. Dunderhead upon the history of chaos. They compliment the learned doctor's erudition and eloquence, and beg him to name the evening when he will speak to them. The doctor replies in blushing rhetoric, and will yield to their desires on Thursday evening, the 32d. On that evening the Easy Chair, which has perused the correspondence with eager expectation, and which has a profound interest in chaos, repairs to the hall, finds a dozen surprised stragglers like itself, but not one of the conspicuous clergymen, lawyers, merchants, or capitalists, and goes home in bewilderment to read in the morning's paper an elaborate report of Dr. Dunderhead's lecture, delivered at the request of the following distinguished gentlemen—who are duly named; and it slowly dawns upon the Easy Chair that it has been assisting at an advertisement, that the invitation to Dr. Dunderhead was also written by Dr. Dunderhead, that the gentlemen signed because they were asked to do so, and that the whole proceeding is intended to impress the rural districts, and to procure the learned and erudite Dunderhead invitations to lecture in other places.

Have these gentlemen no respect for their names? They would not indorse the note of a stranger for a thousand dollars because somebody asked them to do it for good-nature. But it is just as dishonorable to indorse a man's learning and eloquence when you know nothing of it as to indorse a man's promise to pay of whose solvency you are equally ignorant. Indeed, in the one case you could supply the money if the maker of the note failed. But, dear sirs, can you supply the eloquence and erudition which you indorsed in Dr. Dunderhead, for which many Easy Chairs paid many dollars, and which Dunderhead failed to display? You cannot, indeed, be sued at the City Hall, but you are prosecuted at another, even loftier tribunal, and you are mulcted in damages. Your own good name pays the penalty, and is thereafter less respected. If a man does not respect his own name, who will? But if he publicly announces that his name is of no weight, how can he complain if it becomes a jest?

There are every day great public meetings at which a long list of familiar names appears as vice-presidents. Very often the gentlemen are notified that their names are to be used, and that if they are unwilling they may inform the managers. But very often, also, they know nothing of the complicity until they read their names in the report of the meeting. Upon this discovery most men shrug their shoulders, and wish impatiently that people wouldn't do so. But they have a feeling that the occasion is passed; that they will be derided as courting notoriety if they write to the papers stating that their names were used without authority; so they grumble and acquiesce. But they nevertheless connive at the abuse of their names. They embolden to further abuse, and they weaken both the power and the effect of disavowal. They condoned the abuse when they were made vice-presidents of the immense and enthusiastic meeting in favor of the annexation of Terra del Fuego; and why, sneers Mrs. Grundy and Mrs. Candour—why should they be too nice to assist at the grand demonstration of fraternity for the Philippine Islands? If the correspondents of Dr. Dunderhead would show that they respected their own names, they would soon find that other people would not trifle with them.

But neither must they cheapen them by constant use. There are well-known names that appear upon every occasion. They ask all the Dunderheads to lecture; they petition for and against all public objects; they recommend everything from a Correggio to a corn-plaster; they offer benefits to actors; they are honorary directors of institutions of which they are painfully ignorant; their names appear so universally and indiscriminately that they have no more effect upon public attention or confidence than the machines with which the Chinese bonzes grind out prayers can be supposed to have upon the Divine intelligence. The consequence is that all sensible men come to regard these signatures as those of men of straw. And why not, since they give straw bail for the appearance of that which does not appear, or for the excellence of that of which, if it be excellence, they know nothing?

And so, says the old story, after crying wolf so long that the shepherds no longer heeded him, one day the boy cried wolf lustily, for the wild beast had really come. But the louder he cried, the louder they sneered: "No, no; we've learned your tricks at last, you wicked boy, and you may shout until you are hoarse!" And while they laughed the wolf devoured the boy. Remember, then, dear Dunderhead correspondents, that, when Plato himself comes, and some foolish touter obtains your names, or even yourselves this time know that the truly seraphic doctor has arrived, whose golden wisdom would make the whole world richer, it will be in vain. You have invited discredit for your names; and we, who have been deluded, when we see that you earnestly invite us all to hear Plato, shall only smile incredulously—"Plato indeed! 'tis only Dunderhead Number Twenty."

CLERGYMEN'S SALARIES

HETHER we bear or forbear, it is difficult to appease Mrs. Candour. Her responsibility is incessant, and the world always needs her correction. A certain religious society recently decided to give their minister a certain salary, which was apparently larger in the opinion of Mrs. Candour than any minister should receive, and she expressed herself to the effect that no society ought to offer and no clergyman ought to accept so large a sum. Mrs. Candour's impertinence is certainly as striking as her sense of responsibility. What business can it possibly be of hers whether a clergyman, or a lawyer, or a carpenter, or a physician, or a railroad superintendent, or a shoemaker, or a bank president, is paid more or less for his services? It is a purely private arrangement between private persons, and if Mrs. Candour had a quick sense of humor, which we sincerely hope, but are constrained to doubt, and were the editor of a paper, how she would smile if the Easy Chair should gravely remark: "We learn with great pain that the proprietors of the weekly Green Dragon have decided to pay the editor, Mrs. Candour, twenty thousand dollars a year. This is a sum much too large for the proprietors of any journal to offer, and very much more than an editor ought to receive." Does the laborer cease to be worthy of his hire when he enters the editorial room or the pulpit?

The facts of the case make this remark of Mrs. Candour's the more comical. The receipts of the society in question are very large indeed. They enable it to do good works of many kinds, and upon the largest scale—the Bethel, for instance, one of the wise charities of good men, which gathers in the poor, young and old, and thoughtfully and tenderly gives them glimpses of a bright and cheerful life. The large resources, overflowing in benefactions, are perhaps chiefly due to the minister, whose fame and eloquence constantly draw multitudes to the church. The salary which he receives, therefore, is really but a part of the money which he makes. And to put the argument as before, if Mrs. Candour, editing the paper, "ran it up" and increased the profits, for instance, by fifty thousand dollars, could she feel unwilling to receive ten thousand dollars in addition to her present salary?

Or is she of those who think that clergymen ought not to be well paid? Then she belongs to the class whose opinion is faithfully followed. The clergy are the worst-paid body of laborers in the country. They work with ability and zeal. They are educated, sensitive men, often carefully nurtured, and they are expected to be everybody's servant, to hold their time and talents at the call of all the whimsical old women of the parish and of the selectmen of the town. They are to preach twice or thrice on Sunday, to lecture and expound during the week, to make parochial calls in sun or storm, to visit the poor, to be the confidant and counsellor of a throng, and always in every sermon to be fresh and bright, and always ready to do any public service that may be asked. Of course the clergyman must be chairman of the school committee, and a director of the town library, and president of charitable societies. He cannot give a great deal of money for educational and charitable and æsthetic purposes—not a very great deal—but he can always give time, and he can always make a speech, and draw the resolutions, and direct generally.