[INNOCENT SURPRISES.]
I am somewhat inclined to the opinion, that, if positive legislation could be brought to bear upon this subject, making it a criminal offence for one person deliberately to concoct and designedly to spring a surprise upon another, society would derive incalculable benefit from the act. For the ordinary and inevitable surprises of every-day life are sufficiently frequent and startling to content even the most romantic disposition; entirely dispensing with the necessity of those artfully contrived, embarrassing little plots which one's friends occasionally set in motion, greatly to their own diversion and the extreme discomfort of the surprised unfortunate. For he who has ever broken his skull on a treacherous sidewalk, or received from the post a dunning missive when he expected a love-letter, or arrived one minute late at the car-station, or taken a desperately bad bill in exchange for good silver, or been caught in a thunderstorm with white pantaloons and no umbrella, knows that the unavoidable surprises of life are in themselves staggerers of quite frequent occurrence, and require not the aid of human invention. But the surprises which we most dread are not those which naturally fall to us as part of the misfortune we are born to inherit; not those which result from unforeseen accidental circumstances, from carelessness on our own part or from the folly of others, from revolutions in the elements or in the affairs of nations; these we can bear, by using against them the best remedies we possess, or by viewing and enduring them as wisdom and philosophy teach us to do. No; our only prayer, in this connection, is that we may be saved from our friends; not from their carelessness, but from their deliberate schemes against our security. In order to reconcile this apparent contradiction in terms, take the following instance of a friendly propensity. You walk into your house at dusky twilight, at that particular hour of evening at which your own brother, if he be a reasonable being, would not expect you to recognize him; one of your family extends his (or her) head from the parlor, and calls upon you at once to enter, and greet "an old friend." You obey, and are immediately confronted with an individual whose countenance wears an expression associated with some reminiscences of your youth, but so dim and undefined is it, that you cannot, for the life of you, give it its appropriate name or place. What is to be done? The recollections of early childhood are expected spontaneously to burst forth from under a heap of later and more vivid associations, and the name, residence, business, and whole history of the unwelcome guest are called upon to suggest themselves within a second's time.
After a long moment of painful hesitation, during which you have in vain tried to stare his name out of him, you clutch at a struggling idea, and blurt out the name of one of your former associates. You do this, not by any means because common sense or conviction suggest the course, but simply because something must instantly be done. The result, of course, is, that you hit upon the wrong name; and now your kind friends can do no more for you; even if they rush to the rescue, and formally introduce the stranger, it is of no avail. The deed is done; you are placed in a position of awkward mortification, which both the stranger and yourself will never forget, and never cease to regret.
Why it is that the feeling of shame which follows upon such mishaps attaches itself exclusively to the innocent sufferers, rather than to those who are the cause of the suffering, I never could understand. This kind of diversion betrays a want of humane consideration in the contriver. It is infinitely more cruel and unamiable than Spanish bull-baitings, or the gladiatorial shows of the ancients, inasmuch as a shock to the finest feelings of human nature is harder to bear, and longer in duration, than the momentary pang induced by witnessing a merely physical suffering.
[THE OLD SAILOR.]
In my school vacations I used occasionally to visit an old sailor friend, a man of uncommon natural gifts, and that varied experience of life which does so much to supply the want of other means of education. He must have been a handsome man in his youth, and though time and hardship had done their utmost to make a ruin of his bold features, and had made it needful to braid his still jetty black locks together to cover his bald crown, his was a fine, striking head yet, to my boyish fancy. I loved to sit at his feet, and hear him tell the events of sixty years of toil and danger, suffering and well-earned joy, as he leaned with both hands upon his stout staff, his body swaying with the earnestness of his speech. His labors and perils were now ended, and in his age and infirmity he had found a quiet haven. He had built a small house by the side of the home of his childhood, and his son, who followed his father's vocation, lived under the same roof. This son and two daughters were all that remained to him of a large family.
"An easterly bank and a westerly glim are certain signs of a wet skin!" said the fisherman, pointing to the heavy black masses of cloud that hung over the eastern horizon, one morning when I had risen at sunrise for a day's fishing. "'T won't do; don't go out to-day! There's soon such a breeze off shore, as, with the heavy chop, would make you sick enough! Besides, the old dory won't put up with such a storm as is coming. No fishing, my boy, to-day."