’Leaguered by another sea.”
It is somehow far simpler and less startling to examine a series of portraits of some other face and figure than one’s own. Perhaps it is most interesting to take those of some person whom the whole world knows, and whose traits and experiences are somewhat comprehended. You say to yourself, “This was Nelson before ever he fought one of his great sea battles; this was Washington, with only the faintest trace of his soldiering and the leisurely undemanding aspect of a country gentleman!” Human Documents—the phrase is Daudet’s, and tells its own story, with no need of additional attempts of suggestiveness.
It would seem to be such an inevitable subject for sermon writing, that no one need be unfamiliar with warnings, lest our weakness and wickedness leave traces upon the countenance—awful, ineffaceable hieroglyphics, that belong to the one universal primitive language of mankind. Who cannot read faces? The merest savage, who comprehends no written language, glances at you to know if he may expect friendliness or enmity, with a quicker intelligence than your own.
The lines that are written slowly and certainly by the pen of character, the deep mark that sorrow once left, or the light sign-manual of an unfading joy, there they are and will remain; it is at length the aspect of the spiritual body itself, and belongs to the unfolding and existence of life. We have never formulated a science like palmistry on the larger scale that this character-reading from the face would need; but to say that we make our own faces, and, having made them, have made pieces of immortality, is to say what seems trite enough. A child turns with quick impatience and incredulity from the dull admonitions of his teachers, about goodness and good looks. To say, “Be good and you will be beautiful,” is like giving him a stone for a lantern. Beauty seems an accident rather than an achievement, and a cause instead of an effect; but when childhood has passed, one of the things we are sure to have learned, is to read the sign-language of faces, and to take the messages they bring. Recognition of these things is sure to come to us more and more by living; there is no such thing as turning our faces into unbetraying masks. A series of portraits is a veritable Human Document, and the merest glance may discover the progress of the man, the dwindled or developed personality, the history of a character.
These sentences are written merely as suggestions, and from the point of view of morals; there is also the point of view of heredity, and the curious resemblance between those who belong to certain professions. Just what it is that makes us almost certain to recognize a doctor or a priest at first glance is too subtle a question for discussion here. Some one has said that we usually arrive, in time, at the opposite extreme to those preferences and opinions which we hold in early life. The man who breaks away from conventionalities, ends by returning to them, or out of narrow prejudices and restrictions grows towards a late and serene liberty. These changes show themselves in the face with amazing clearness, and it would seem also, that even individuality sways us only for a 18 time; that if we live far into the autumnal period of life we lose much of our individuality of looks, and become more emphatically members of the family from which we spring. A man like Charles the First was already less himself than he was a Stuart; we should not fail in instances of this sort, nor seek far afield. The return to the type compels us steadily; at last it has its way. Very old persons, and those who are dangerously ill, are often noticed to be curiously like their nearest of kin, and to have almost visibly ceased to be themselves.
All time has been getting our lives ready to be lived, to be shaped as far as may be by our own wills, and furthered by that conscious freedom that gives us to be ourselves. You may read all these in any Human Document—the look of race, the look of family, the look that is set like a seal by a man’s occupation, the look of the spirit’s free or hindered life, and success or failure in the pursuit of goodness—they are all plain to see. If we could read one human face aright, the history not only of the man, but of humanity itself, is written there.
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES TO ACCOMPANY THE “HUMAN DOCUMENTS” GIVEN IN THIS NUMBER.
General Lew Wallace was born in Brookville, Indiana, in 1827. After receiving a common school education, he studied law. He distinguished himself in the Civil War, and was made a brigadier-general. After the war he practised law in Crawfordsville, Indiana. A few years later he was for a time Governor of New Mexico. From 1878-81 he was Governor of Utah, and from 1881-85 Minister to Turkey. His first book, “A Fair God,” appeared in 1877. “Ben Hur,” published in 1880, has reached a sale of several hundred thousand copies. General Wallace’s home is in Crawfordsville, Indiana.
William Dean Howells was born in Martin’s Ferry, Ohio, March 11, 1837. His father was the editor of a country newspaper, and young Howells learned the printer’s trade. He began to write at an early age. At nineteen he was Columbus correspondent of the “Cincinnati Gazette,” and at twenty-two, news editor of the “Ohio State Journal.” A campaign “Life of Lincoln,” gained him the consulship at Venice, where he seriously devoted his leisure hours to literature. “Venetian Life” gave him reputation. On his return to America in 1865, he wrote for newspapers and magazines. In 1866 Mr. Howells joined the editorial staff of “The Atlantic.” In 1872 he became the editor. About this time the success of “Their Wedding Journey” determined his career as a novelist.
Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen was born at Frederiksværn, Norway, September 23, 1848. When twenty-one years of age he came to the United States. In 1874 he was appointed professor of German at Cornell University, and is now professor of Germanic languages and literature at Columbia College, New York. It was in the early seventies that Professor Boyesen’s name began to appear in the magazines. In 1873 he published his first long romance, “Gunnar,” and other novels followed, well known to the reading world.