I have done but for just one word. Be just and fear not. If you will be just in your dealing with men, you will have no need for further advice and no need for repentance. I thank you.
NEW ENGLANDISM
"It isn't so much the ignorance of mankind that makes them ridiculous as the knowing so many things that ain't so."
--Josh Billings, writing as "Uncle Esek" in the "Century."
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NEW ENGLANDISM [Footnote 27]
[Footnote 27: The material for this was collected for a banquet address in Boston on Evacuation Day, 1909, before the Knights of Columbus. It was developed for various lectures on the history of education, in order to illustrate how easy it is to produce a tradition which is not supported by historical documents. In its present form it appeared as an article in the West Coast Magazine for July, 1910, at the request of the editor, Mr. John S. McGroarty, with whom, more years ago than either of us care to recall now, I had learned the New England brand of United States history at a country school.]
There is a little story told of a supposed recent celestial experience, that seems, to some people, at least--perhaps it may be said without exaggeration, to most of those alas! not born in New England--to illustrate very well the attitude of New Englanders, and especially of the Bostonese portion of the New England population, towards all the rest of the world and the heavens besides. St. Peter, the celestial gate-keeper, is supposed to be disturbed from the slumbers that have been possible so much oftener of late years because of the infrequent admissions since the world has lost interest in other-worldliness, by an imperious knocking at the gate. "Who's there?" he asks in a very mild voice, for he knows by long experience that that kind of knocking usually comes from some grand dame from the terrestrial regions. The reply, in rather imperative [{434}] tone, is, "I am Mrs. Beacon from Boston," with emphasis on the Boston, "Well, madam," Peter says in reply, "you may come in, but," he adds with a wisdom learned doubtless from many previous incidents of the same kind, "you won't like it."
Of course, the thoroughgoing admiration of New England people, and especially of Bostonians, for all that is New England, and, above all, all that is Boston, has been well recognized for a long while and has not failed of proper appreciation, to some degree at least, even in New England itself. To Oliver Wendell Holmes we owe that delightful characterization of it in the "Autocrat of the Breakfast Table," "Boston State House is the hub of the solar system. You could not pry that out of a Boston man (and a fortiori I think it may be said out of a Boston woman) if you had the tire of all creation straightened out for a crowbar." James Russell Lowell expressed the same idea very forcibly in other words in some expressions of his essay on "A Certain Condescension in Foreigners," that have been perhaps oftenest quoted and are dear to every true New Englander's heart. Of course, he meant it a great deal more than half in jest, but who of us who know our Down Easterners doubt that most of them take it considerably more than half in earnest? Their attitude shows us very well how much the daughter New England was ready to take after mother England in [{435}] the matter of thinking so much of herself that she must perforce be condescending to others.
Lowell's expression is worthy to be placed beside that of Oliver Wendell Holmes for the guidance of American minds. They are keys to the situation. "I know one person," said Lowell, "who is singular enough to think Cambridge (Mass.) the very best spot on the habitable globe. 'Doubtless God could have made a better, but doubtless he never did.'" It only needed his next sentence fully to complete the significance of Boston and its academic suburb in the eyes of every good Bostonian. "The full tide of human existence may be felt here as keenly as Johnson felt it at Charing Cross and in a larger sense."