That he, accepting naught on trust,
Might say, ‘It is, it is!’”
Cynic, do I hear? The term is not one of opprobrium. A cynic is the alert and discerning man who declines to cut the cotton-filled pie or pick up the decoy purse on All Fools’ Day.
We are bound to test for ourselves the identical heating apparatus which the man next door cast away as rubbish last spring. We know why its heat units were unsatisfactory to him,—it was because his chimneys were too small; and though our own are as like them as two peas we proceed to our own experiment with our eyes wide open. Mrs. B telephones to Mrs. A and asks touching the merits, habits, and previous condition of servitude of the cook Mrs. A discharged this morning. Mrs. A, who holds an honorary degree bestowed upon her by the good Doctor Experience, leans upon the telephone and explains with conscientious detail the deficiencies of Mary Ann. She does as she would be done by and does it thoroughly. But what is her astonishment to learn the next day that Mary Ann’s trunk has been transferred to Mrs. B’s third story; that Mary Ann’s impossible bread and deadly cake are upon Mrs. B’s table! Mrs. B, too, took a course of lectures under Doctor Experience, and she admires him greatly; but what do these facts avail her when guests are alighting at the door and Mary Ann is the only cook visible in the urban landscape? Moreover, Mrs. A always was (delectable colloquialism!) a hard mistress, and Mrs. B must, she feels, judge of these matters for herself. And so—so—say we all of us!
Men who have done post-graduate work in the good doctor’s school are no better fortified against error than the rest of us who may never have got beyond his kindergarten. The results might be different if it were not that Mistress Vanity by her arts and graces demoralizes the doctor’s students, whose eyes wander to the windows as she flits across the campus. Conservative bankers, sage lawyers, and wise legislators have been the frequent and easy prey of the gold-brick operator. The police announce a new crop of “suckers” every spring,—which seems to indicate that Mistress Vanity wields a greater influence than Doctor Experience. These words stare at me oddly in type; they are the symbols of a disagreeable truth,—and yet we may as well face it. The eternal ego will not bow to any dingy doctor whose lectures only illustrate his own inability to get on in the world.
The best skating is always on thin ice,—we like to feel it crack and yield under our feet; there is a deadly fascination in the thought of the twenty or forty feet of cold water beneath. Last year’s mortality list cuts (dare I do it?) no ice with us; we must make our own experiments, while the doctor screams himself hoarse from his bonfire on the bank. He has held many an inquest on this darkling shore of the river of time, and he will undoubtedly live to hold many another; but thus far we have not been the subjects; and when it comes to the mistakes of others we are all delighted to serve on the coroner’s jury.
It isn’t well for us to be saved from too many blunders; we need the discipline of failure. It is better to fail than never to try, and the man who can contemplate the graveyard of his own hopes without bitterness will not always be ignored by the gods of success.
Septimus had a narrow escape yesterday. He was reading “Tom Jones” in the college library, when the doctor stole close behind him and Septimus’s nervous system experienced a terrible shock. But it was the doctor’s opportunity. “Read biography, young man; biographies of the good and great are veritable textbooks in this school!” So you may observe Septimus to-day sprawled under the noblest elm on the campus, with his eyes bulging out as he follows Napoleon on the retreat from Russia. He has firmly resolved to profit by the failure of “the darkly-gifted Corsican.” To-morrow evening, when he tries to hitch the doctor’s good old Dobbin to the chapel bell, and falls from the belfry into the arms of the village constable, he is far more tolerant of Napoleon’s mistakes. An interesting biography is no more valuable than a good novel. If life were an agreed state of facts and not a joyful experiment, then we might lean upon biography as final; but in this and in all matters, let us deal squarely with Youth. Boswell’s “Johnson” is only gossip raised to the highest power; the reading of it will make Septimus cheerfuler, but it will not keep him from wearing a dinner coat to a five o’clock tea or teach him how to earn more than four dollars a week.
We have brought existence to an ideal state when at every breakfast table we face a new world with no more use for yesterday than for the grounds of yesterday’s coffee. The wisdom behind us is a high wall which we cannot scale if we would. Its very height is tempting, but there is no rose-garden beyond it—only a bleak plain with the sea of time gnawing its dreary shores.
To be old and to know ten thousand things—there is something august and majestic in the thought; but to be young and ignorant, to see yesterday pass, a shining ripple on the flood of oblivion, and then to buckle down to the day’s business,—there’s a better thing than being old and wise! We are forever praising the unconscious ease of great literature; and that ease—typical of the life and time reflected—was a thing of the day, with no yesterdays’ dead weight dragging it down. Whitman’s charm for those of us who like him lies in the fact that he doesn’t invite us to a rummage sale of cast-off raiment, but offers fabrics that are fresh and in new patterns. We have all known that same impatience of the past that he voices so stridently. The world is as new to him as it was to Isaiah or Homer.