Burroughs had a happy disposition that enabled him to get a measure of satisfaction out of all the vicissitudes of his life. He had learned neither to worry nor to repine. He was not troubled by the harsh judgments of his fellow men, for he had learned to find his happiness in the approbation of his own conscience.
He writes: “I possess an uncommon share of sensibility, and at the same time maintain an equality of mind that is uncommon, particularly in the midst of those occurrences which are calculated to wound the feelings. I have learned fortitude in the school of adversity. In draining the cup of bitterness to its dregs, I have been taught to despise the occurrences of misfortune. This one thing I fully believe, that our happiness is more in our power than is generally thought, or at least we have the ability of preventing that misery which is so common to unfortunate situations. No state or condition in life, but from which we may (if we exercise that reason which the God of Nature has given us) draw comfort and happiness. We are too apt to be governed by the opinions of others, and if they think our circumstances unhappy, to consider them so ourselves, and of course make them so. The state of mind is the only criterion of happiness or misery.”
It was from this lofty point of view that Stephen Burroughs wrote the history of his own life. His tendency to didacticism interferes with the limpid flow of the narrative. Sometimes a whole chapter will be given over to moralizings, but the observations are never painful. They all reveal the author’s cheerful acquiescence in the inevitability of his own actions. Along with this there is the air of chastened surprise over the fact that he was made the object of persecution.
At the very beginning of the narrative one recognizes an independence which would do credit to a better man. In New England, clergymen have always been looked upon as making good ancestors, and Burroughs might have been pardoned if he had shown some family pride. From this weakness he was free. “I am,” he says, “the only son of a clergyman, living in Hanover, in the State of New Hampshire; and were any to expect merit from their parentage, I might justly look for that merit. But I am so far a Republican that I consider a man’s merit to rest entirely with himself, without any regard to family, blood, or connection.”
The accounts of the escapades of his boyhood are intermingled with dissertations on the education of youth. “I have been in the habit of educating youth for seven years, constantly; in the course of my business I have endeavored to study the operations of the human heart, that I might be able to afford that instruction which would be salutary; and in this I find one truth clearly established, viz.: a child will endeavor to be what you make him think mankind in general are.”
The neglect of this truth on the part of his parents and teachers was the cause of much annoyance to Burroughs. Throughout his life he was the innocent victim of an educational mistake. Though after a while he learned to forgive the early injustice, one can see that it rankled. He endeavored to think well of mankind in general, but it was more difficult than if he had been habituated to the exercise in infancy.
At Dartmouth young Burroughs was peculiarly unfortunate; he fell into bad company. As an unkind fate would have it, his room-mate was an exemplary young man who was studying for the ministry. It appears that this misguided youth attempted to entice him into what he describes as “a sour, morose, and misanthropic line of conduct.” Nothing could have been more disastrous. “To be an inmate with such a character, you will readily conceive, no way comported with a disposition like mine, and consequently we never enjoyed that union and harmony of feeling in our intercourse as room-mates which was necessary for the enjoyment of social life.”
To the malign influence of his priggish room-mate several misfortunes were attributed. In endeavoring to restore the moral equilibrium which had been disturbed by the too great scrupulosity of his chum, he exerted too much strength in the other direction. The result was that “a powerful triumvirate” was formed against him in the Faculty. The triumvirate triumphed and his connection with Dartmouth ended suddenly.
This gave occasion to a chapter on the failure of the institutions of learning to prepare for real life. The author declares “more than one half of the time spent in the universities, according to their present establishment on this continent, is thrown away, and that my position is founded in fact I will endeavor to prove.”
I do not see how his argument is affected by the fact to which the editor calls attention in a carping footnote. “It is not strange that the author should reason in this manner. He was expelled from college in the second quarter of his second year, and in fact he studied but little while he was a member.” The editor, I fear, had a narrow mind and judged according to an academic standard which Burroughs would have despised.