Lessons in Life; A Series of Familiar Essays

by J. G. Holland

"All that we seem to think of is to manage matters so as to do as little good and plague and disappoint as many people as possible." —HAZLITT.

It seems to me, either that there is a great deal of human nature in a pig, or that there is a great deal of pig in human nature. I find myself always sympathizing with a pig that wishes to go in an opposite direction to that in which its owner would drive it. It would be a sufficient reason for me to desire to go eastward, that a man was behind me, with an oath in his mouth and a very heavy boot on his foot, endeavoring to drive me westward. We are jealous of our freedom. We naturally rise in opposition to a will that undertakes to command our movements. This is not the result of education at all; it is pure human nature. Command a child—who shall be only old enough to understand you—to refrain from some special act, and you excite in his heart a desire to do that act; and he will have, nine times in ten, no reason for his desire to do it but your command that he shall not. The youngest human soul that has a will at all, takes the first occasion to declare its independence.

Now, I believe this principle in human nature to be, in itself, good. It is that which declares a man's right to himself—that which asserts personal liberty in thought, will, and movement. I believe it existed in Adam and Eve, and that it is more than likely that the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was despoiled because our beautiful great-grandmother, (for whom I confess much sympathy and affection,) was forbidden to touch it. It is a principle which should always be carefully distinguished from perverseness, in all our dealings with young and old, and in all our estimates of human character. When a child obeys a man, or when one man obeys another, it should always be for good and sufficient reason. Neither child nor man should be expected to surrender his right to himself without the presentation to him of the proper motive. When, yielding to this motive, the soul consents to be directed or led, it becomes obedient. Compulsion may secure conformity, but never obedience. If I, as a child or man, am to yield myself to the direction of any other man, that man is bound to present to me an adequate motive for the surrender. God throws upon me personal responsibility—gives me to myself—and no man, parent or otherwise, can make me truly obedient without giving me the motive for obedience. When a child or a man fails to yield to the legitimate motives of obedience, he is perverse, and it is about perverseness in some of its forms of manifestation that I propose to talk in this article.

At starting, I must give perverseness a somewhat broader meaning than that thus far indicated. I will say that that person is perverse who, from vanity, or pride of opinion and will, or malice, or any mean consideration, refuses to yield his conduct and himself to those motives and influences which his reason and conscience recognize to be pure and good and true. In its least aggravated form, perhaps, we find it among lovers. Women will sometimes persistently ignore a passion which they know has taken full possession of them, and grieve the heart that loves them by a coldness and indifference which they do not feel at all. Rather than acknowledge their affection for one whose loss would kill them, or, what would be the same thing, kill the world for them, they have lied, grown sick, and gone nearly insane. This is a perverseness very uncommon. Sometimes lovers have been very tender and devoted so long as a doubt of ultimate mutual possession remained to give zest to their passion, but the moment this doubt has been removed, one or the other has become incomprehensibly indifferent.

I have noticed that very few married pairs are matches in the matter of warmth and expression of passion between the parties. The man will be all devotion and tenderness—brimming with expressions of affection and exhibitions of fondness, and the woman all coolness and passivity, or (which is much more common) the woman will be active in expression, lavishing caresses and tendernesses upon a man who very possibly grows harder and colder with every delicate proof that the whole wealth of his wife's nature is poured at his feet, as a libation upon an altar. It is here that we see some of the strangest cases of perverseness that it is possible to conceive. I know men who are not bad men—who, I suppose, really love and respect their wives—and who would deny themselves even to heroism to give them the comforts and luxuries of life, yet who find themselves moved to reject with poorly-covered scorn, and almost to resent, the varied expressions of affection to which those wives give utterance. I know wives who long to pour their hearts into the hearts of their husbands, and to get sympathetic and fitting response, but who are never allowed to do it. They live a constrained, suppressed, unsatisfied life. They absolutely pine for the privilege of saying freely what they feel, in all love's varied languages, toward men who love them, but who grow harder with every approach of tenderness and colder with every warm, invading breath. A shower that purifies the atmosphere, and refreshes the face of heaven itself, sours cream, just as love's sweetest expression sours these men.

I have known wives to walk through such an experience as this into a condition of abject slavery—to waste their affection without return, until they have become poor, and spiritless, and mean. I have known them to lose their will—to become the mere dependent mistresses of their husbands—to be creeping cravens in dwellings where it should be their privilege to move as radiant queens. I have known them thrown back upon themselves, until they have become bitter railers against their husbands—uncomfortable companions—openly and shamelessly flouting their affection. I do not know what to make of the perverseness which induces a man to repel the advances of a heart which worships him, and to become hard and tyrannical in the degree by which that heart seeks to express its affection for him. There are husbands who would take the declaration that they do not love their wives as an insult, yet who hold the woman who loves them in fear and restraint through their whole life. I know wives who move about their houses with a trembling regard to the moods and notions of their husbands—wives who have no more liberty than slaves, who never spend a cent of money without a feeling of guilt, and who never give an order about the house without the same doubt of their authority that they would have if they were only housekeepers, employed at a very economical salary. I can think of no proper punishment for such husbands except daily ducking in a horse-pond, until reformation. Yet these asses are so unconscious of their detestable habits of feeling and life, that, probably, not one of them who reads this will think that I mean him, but will wonder where I have lived to fall in with such outlandish people.

The most precious possession that ever comes to a man in this world is a woman's heart. Why some graceful and most amiable women whom I know will persist in loving some men whom I also know, is more than I know. I will not call their love an exhibition of perverseness, though it looks like it; but that these men with these rich, sweet hearts in their hands, grow sour and snappish, and surly and tyrannical and exacting, is the most unaccountable thing in the world. If a pig will not allow himself to be driven, he will follow a man who offers him corn, and he will eat the corn, even though he puts his feet in the trough; but there are men—some of them of Christian professions—who take every tenderness their wives bring them, and every expression of affection, and every service, and every yearning sympathy, and trample them under feet without tasting them, and without a look of gratitude in their eyes. Hard, cold, thin-blooded, white-livered, contemptible curmudgeons—they think their wives weak and foolish, and themselves wise and dignified! I beg my readers to assist me in despising them. I do not feel adequate to the task of doing them justice.

There is another exhibition of perverseness which we sometimes see in families. There will be, perhaps, from two to half a dozen sisters in a family, amiable all of them. Now, think of the reasons which should bind them together in the tenderest sympathy. They were born of the same mother, they were nursed at the same heart, they were cradled under the same roof by the same hand, they have knelt at the side of the same father, their interests, trials, associates, standing—every thing concerning their family and social life—are the same. The honor of one intimately concerns the honor of the other, yet I have known such families of sisters fly apart the moment they became in any way independent of each other, as if they were natural enemies. I have seen them take the part of a friend against any member of the family band, and become disgusted with one another's society. Where matters have not gone to this length, I have seen sisters who would never caress each other, or, by any but the most formal and dignified methods, express their affection for each other. I have seen them live together for months and years as inexpressive of affection for each other as cattle in a stall,—more so: for I have seen a cow affectionately lick her neighbor's ear by the half-hour, while among these girls I have failed to see a kiss, or hear a tender word, or witness any exhibition of sisterly affection whatever.

One of the most common forms of perverseness, though one of the most subtle and least known, is that shown by people who study to shut everybody out from a knowledge of their nature and their life. They make it their grand end and aim to appear to be exactly what they are not, to appear to believe exactly what they do not believe, and to appear to feel what they do not feel at all. This is not because they are ashamed of themselves, or because they really have any thing to conceal. They have simply taken on this form of perverseness. They will not, if they can help it, allow any man to get inside of their natures and characters. If they write you a letter, they will mislead you. They will say to you irreverent and shocking things, to prove to you that they are bold, and unfeeling, and unthoughtful, when they tremble at what they have written, and really show by their language that they are afraid, and full of feeling, and very thoughtful. If they have a sentiment of love for anybody, they take it as a dog would a bone, and go and dig a hole in the ground and bury it, only resorting to it in the dark, for private crunching. Very likely they will try to make you believe that they live a most dainty and delicate life —that the animals of the field, and the fowls of the air love them, and come at their call—that clouds arrange themselves in heaven for their benefit, and are sufficiently paid for the effort by their admiration—that flowers excite them to frenzy—a very fine frenzy, indeed—and that all sounds shape themselves to music in their souls. They would have you think that they live a kind of charmed life—that the sun woos them, and the moon pines for them, and the sea sobs because they will not come, and the daisies wait lovingly for their feet, yet, if you knew the truth, you would see that they sit discontentedly among the homeliest surroundings of domestic life, with their sleeves rolled up—confound them!

This variety of perverseness seems very inexplicable. I have seen much of it, but do not know what to make of it. There is doubtless something morbid in it. It is often carried to such extremes, and managed so artfully, that multitudes are deceived by it. I know of some very beautiful natures that pass in the world for rough and coarse. I know men who have the reputation of being hard and harsh, yet who are, inside, and in their own consciousness, as gentle and sensitive as women—who put on a stern air and a repellent manner, when they are really yearning for sympathy. I have seen this air and manner broken through and battered down by a friendly man, who found what he suspected behind it—a generous, warm, noble heart. This perverseness seems to be akin to that of the miser who knows he is rich, takes his highest delight in being rich, and yet dresses meanly, and fares like a beggar rather than be thought rich. Women hide themselves more than men. They are generally more sensitive, and their life and circumscribed habits have a tendency to the formation of morbid moods, and this among the number.