An’ whop (hope) beath lang may happy be.
Now supper’s ruddy, weep nae mair, weyfe.
Ay fain I’d see a smeyle frae thee.”—Bad News.
Mr. Sandboys prided himself on being a “bit of a philosopher.” His great weakness consisted in his imaginary strength of mind. In his college days at St. Bees he had been charmed with the classic chronicles of Grecian stoicism and Roman fortitude, and, ever since, had been endeavouring to talk himself, out of all feeling and affection, into the hero. To his great self-satisfaction, he now believed he could bear any stroke of Fate, however severe or unexpected, without so much as a wink of his “mind’s eye,” and he flattered himself that he had arrived at that much-to-be-desired state of insensibility which, would enable him, like a Buttermere Brutus, to hand his own son Jobby over to the Carlisle hangman with no more compunction—as he delighted to tell that young gentleman, much to his horror—than he would take one of his “lean sheep” to Lanthwaite Green Fair.
And yet, truth to say, the heart of the heroic Mr. Sandboys was as soft as new bread, though he would have had the world believe it was as hard and dry as sea biscuit. If Cursty had any mettle at all in his constitution it was that particular kind of “fusible alloy” which melts at the least warmth, and loses all consistency immediately it gets into hot water.
No metaphysician has ever yet explained why poor perverse human nature always fancies it has a special talent for doing something the very opposite to that in which it happens to excel. Doubtlessly, if the truth could be known, we should find Sir John Herschel secretly regarding himself as a small astronomer, but taking great pride in his imitation of frying sausages; and Faraday thinking little of his discoveries in diamagnetism, but flattering himself that he could palm a pea better than any thimble-rigger in the kingdom. Professor Owen, for what we know, may despise himself as a comparative anatomist, but think far from meanly of his abilities as a player on the bones, and Archbishop Whately in his own eyes shine less in logic than in the mixture of a lobster salad, or the brewing of whiskey punch.
Even so was it with Mr. Cursty Sandboys! Naturally kind-hearted, and weak almost to an extreme, he conceited himself that he was firm and immoveable, amid the storms of life, as a human light-house, or as light-hearted and lively in the midst of all his “ups-and-downs” as the celebrated old Buoy at the Nore. Nothing he coveted more than decision of character, and yet no man was more undecided. Theoretically he was steel, but practically he was only case-hardened with a surface of philosophy.
As he journeyed along the road to Cockermouth, he was busy revolving in his own mind the incidents of the previous week. Had he allowed himself to be conquered by circumstances? Had he permitted the loss of his nether garments to wrest him from his purpose? Had he, because deprived of the distinctive feature of his “outward man,” been led to play the woman? Had he forgotten all that he had been so long teaching himself, and lost all that made Man admirable when he lost his breeches? “True,” he said, “Man was but a savage without such things—but then,” he asked himself, “might he not become effeminate with them?”
And as he trudged along the winding Hause, chewing the cud of his thoughts, the Buttermere philosopher got to look upon the ineffable part of Man’s apparel as one of the many evils of civilized life—the cause of much moral weakness and social misery. “If such garments were not naturally effeminate, why,” he went on inquiring of himself, “should all women have so great a desire to wear them? Were they not,” he said, “the cause of more than half of the conjugal contentions of the present day?—Was not matrimony, generally, one long struggle between man and wife as to who should possess these insignia of the domestic monarchy?”
And thus the unconventional Mr. Sandboys proceeded in his sartorial catechism, until he got to convince himself that Sin originally came into the world with breeches, and that the true meaning of the allegory of the apple was, that the Serpent had tempted the great Mother Eve with a pair.