Life and Literature Part 87

1202

AN OLD MAN OF ACUTE PHYSIOGNOMY.

An old man answering to the name of Joseph Wilmot, was brought before the police court. His clothes looked as if they had been bought second hand in his youthful prime.

"What business?"

"None; I'm a traveler."

"A vagabond, perhaps?"

"You are not far wrong: the difference between the two, is, that the latter travel without money, and the former without brains."

"Where have you traveled?"

"All over the continent."

"For what purpose?"

"Observation."

"What have you observed?"

"A little to commend, much to censure, and very much to laugh at."

"Humph! What do you commend?"

"A handsome women that will stay at home, an eloquent divine that will preach short sermons, a good writer that will not write too much, and a fool that has seen enough to hold his tongue."

"What do you censure?"

"A man who marries a girl for fine clothing, a youth who studies law while he has the use of his hands, and the people who elect a drunkard to office."

"What do you laugh at?"

"At a man who expects his position to command the respect which his personal qualities and qualifications do not merit."

He was dismissed.

1203

Every man is a volume, if you know how to read him.

--_W. E. Channing._

1204

As no man is born without faults, the best is he who has the fewest.

1205

Burns, the poet, when in Edinburgh one day, recognized an old farmer friend, and courteously saluted him, and crossed the street to have a chat; some of his new Edinburgh friends gave him a gentle rebuke, to which he replied:--"It was not the old great-coat, the scone bonnet, that I spoke to, but the man that was in them."

1206

MAN.

Man has been thrown naked into the world, feeble, incapable of flying like the bird, running like the stag, or creeping like the serpent; without means of defense, in the midst of terrible enemies armed with claws and stings; without means to brave the inclemency of the seasons, in the midst of animals protected by fleece, by scales, by furs; without shelter, when all others have their den, their hole, their sh.e.l.l; without arms, when all about him are armed against him. And yet he has demanded of the lion his cave for a lodging and the lion retires before his eyes; he has despoiled the bear of his skin, and of it made his first clothing; he has plucked the horn from the bull, and this is his first drinking-cup; then he has dug even into the bowels of the earth, to seek there the instruments of his future strength; from a rib, a sinew, and a reed, he has made arms; and the eagle, who, seeing him at first in his weakness and nakedness, prepares to seize him as his prey, struck in mid-air, falls dead at his feet, only to furnish a feather to adorn his head. Among animals, is there one, who under such conditions could have preserved life? Let us for a moment separate the workman from his work, G.o.d from nature. Nature has done all for this insect,--of which they had been discoursing,--nothing for man. It is that man should be the product of intelligence rather than of matter; and G.o.d, in granting him this celestial gift, this ray of light from the divine fire, created him feeble and unprotected, that he might make use of it, that he might be constrained to find in himself the elements of his greatness.

--_By X. B. Saintine, in Picciola; or, The Prison Flower._

1207

Wherever a man goes to dwell his character goes with him.

1208

Our acts make or mar us,--we are the children of our own deeds.

--_Victor Hugo._

1209

MAN--a.s.sUMPTIONS OF.

O, but man, proud man!

Dress'd in a little brief authority; Most ignorant of what he's most a.s.sured.

--_Shakespeare._

1210

I've learned to judge of men by their own deeds, I do not make the accident of birth The standard of their merit.

1211

MAN.