Lessons in Life Part 9

"_Castiglione_. Did I sigh?

I was not conscious of it. It is a fas.h.i.+on, A silly--a most silly fas.h.i.+on I have When I am _very_ happy. Did I sigh?"

POE.

There is a hill opposite to my window, up which, during all the long and weary day, horses are drawing heavy loads. The majority of them crawl patiently along, with their heads down and with reeking flanks and shoulders, pausing occasionally as the water-bars brace the wheels, and impatient only with the flies that vex their ears, and the insufficiency of their short and stumpy tails to protect their quivering sides. Some of these animals are not so patient, but are nervous and spasmodic and unhappy. I have noticed one among them particularly, that has a very bad time every morning with his first load. He is what the teamsters call "balky," though evidently an excellent horse. Much coaxing and not a little whipping seem necessary to get him started; and then he plunges into his work as if he were determined to tear his harness and his load all in pieces. I notice that there are certain unusual fixtures about his collar, and learn that the poor animal has a galled shoulder, so raw and inflamed that all his first efforts in the morning are attended by pain, and that he only works well after the flesh has become benumbed by pressure. I ask his driver why he does not turn the creature into the pasture, and let the ulcer heal, and am told that he has been treated thus repeatedly, but that it always returns when labor is resumed.

There is a livery stable that I visit frequently; and while I wait to be served I notice what the grooms are doing. I see that when the currycomb or brush touches a certain spot upon the horse's skin there is a cringe, and usually a kick and a squeal,-- possibly a harmless nip at the groom's shoulder. I learn, too, that there is a certain place upon the back of every horse that the grooms are not permitted to bathe with cold water.

These sore spots and tender spots and sensitive spots on horses have very faithful counterparts in the minds and characters of men. I do not know that I ever met a man who had not on him, somewhere, a sore spot, or a tender spot, or a sensitive spot--a spot that would either gall under the collar of labor, or bring on hysterics if harshly rubbed, or communicate a damaging shock to the nervous system when suddenly cooled. Very few men arrive at thirty-five years of age without getting galled, and very few entirely recover from the abrasion while they live. The spot never thoroughly heals, and the old collar only needs to be put on, even after the longest period of rest, to develop the ulcer in the same old place. I heard a young clergyman preach recently, and I instantly learned that he had a sore spot under his collar. He was a young man of fine powers, bold intellect, a strong love of freedom, and a will determined to do honor to his convictions. He had formed his own opinion upon certain points of doctrine, and had insisted upon it in the presence of his elders. The consequence was that he had been bitterly opposed, and was with great difficulty settled over his parish. The screws had been put tightly down upon him, and he had felt, in the very depths of his sensitive soul, that the liberty wherewith Christ had made him free had been tampered with. So he could neither pray nor preach without showing that he had a sore spot on him. He did not betray it by refusing to draw at all; but he drew violently, as if he had been hitched to the leg of an obtuse Doctor of Divinity, and intended to give all the other Doctors of Divinity notice to get out of the way. Now that sore spot on that young man's shoulder is sure to color all his efforts from this time henceforth, until he puts on another kind of collar. The same old sting will be in all his preaching--a tinge of personal feeling--that the ma.s.ses of those who hear him preach will not understand, and that he, at last, will become unconscious of. Ministers have more sore places under their harnesses than any cla.s.s of men I know of.

A minister who has adopted unpopular views, and, in his advocacy of them, has rubbed against the fixed opinions or prejudices of the people to which he is called to preach, is very sure to get sore; and he will either wince with the friction or oppose himself to it with violence. His soreness will always be calling attention to that which caused it, so that if his wound was procured in the advocacy of some infernal doctrine like "infant d.a.m.nation," why, infant d.a.m.nation will seem to become a very precious doctrine to him, and he will always be talking about it, and enforcing it. If he has preached against slavery, or intemperance, or any other public wrong or popular vice, and been fiercely and persistently opposed by any portion of his charge, he will betray the sore under his collar on all occasions, and very possibly become so fractious and violent that his flock will be obliged to turn him out to pasture. A minister who gets sore under the friction of any particular collar seems to feel that it is necessary for him to wear that particular collar all the time; and he fails to remember that the reason why he has so much feeling with this collar on, is that it has made him sore. Not unfrequently he becomes so sensitive and so nervous that he kicks out of the traces, and runs away with, and smashes up, the vehicle to which he is attached.

No small degree of the sourness and bitterness and violence of the advocates of special reforms comes from wearing too long the collar of the public apathy, or the public contempt. The men are very few, who, with the consciousness of being actuated by a good motive, can work against opposition a long time, without getting sore, and without betraying their soreness, either by stubbornness or violence. Touch them anywhere but upon the galled spot, and they will be as calm as clocks, and as good-natured as kittens; touch them there, and we are sure to get a kick and a squeal, and a nip at the shoulder. Heartless practical jokers understand where "the raw" is, and know exactly what to say to provoke a galled man to make a fool of himself.

The conscience is very liable to become sore with friction. One entire section of the American nation became sore, even to madness, with working in the collar of the world's condemnation.

The slave States of America were very comfortable with slavery so long as they could hold it with self-respect, and so long as the world regarded them rather with sympathy and pity than with condemnation. As the popular opinion against slavery strengthened and became intensified, both in this and other countries, they became sore and sensitive. First, they tucked a const.i.tutional rag between the collar and the skin; and as that did not seem to relieve them, they lined it with leaves from human philosophy; and philosophy soon wearing out, they tore their Bibles into pieces for materials with which to soften the cus.h.i.+on, and set the Christian church to making padding. Every thing failing to produce the desired result, and relieve them of their pain, they refused to draw their portion of the national load, kicked the Union in pieces, and ran away. They will never be happy again until slavery is abolished, or the att.i.tude of the nation and of the world towards slavery is changed. This sore under the collar will never heal, either in or out of the Union, until the cause shall in some way be removed.

It is the same with individuals as with peoples. A man cannot long wear a collar that presses upon his conscience, without getting through the skin--down upon the raw. When a man who sells liquor to his neighbors for drink, voluntarily apologizes to me for it, or justifies himself in it, I know very well that his conscience has a raw place upon it, and that it gives him trouble. When a woman takes particular pains to tell me that she is exceedingly economical, and that she really has had nothing for a year, I cannot but conclude that she has been making some expenditure, or some series of expenditures, that she knows she cannot afford, and that there is a raw place upon her conscience in consequence. In truth, I have never known a woman who wished to impress me with a sense of her rigid economy, who was not more anxious to convince herself of it than me. When a man undertakes to soften the character of any crime by apologies, and by arguments, it is invariably for the purpose of relieving its pressure upon a galled conscience, or shaping it to a different place. I am afraid the men are few who have escaped a galled spot upon their consciences.

Pride has had a terrible time of it in the world. It is, perhaps, the most sensitive spot in human nature. Collars, curry-combs, and cold water have alike served to torment it. A great mult.i.tude of men and women have been obliged to work in the collar of poverty, against a galled pride, during all their life. They never start in the morning without flinching, and never work without violence, until their pride has become entirely benumbed by pressure. Ah! if society could be unveiled, how few would be found with pride free from scars and raw places! I once heard a simple boy tell a young man that his legs were crooked; and though the lad was very innocent, and only supposed that he had made and announced a pleasant discovery, he had, alas! hit the man's pride on the very centre of its soreness and sensitiveness. One never knows, in large things, where he will hit the sensitive places in the pride of those he meets; but in little things he is pretty sure to learn it concerning everybody. It is always safe to suppose that a very small man is sore on the subject of bodily dimensions. It will never do for a tall man to propose to measure alt.i.tude with him in the presence of women. It is never safe to inquire the age of any lady whom one knows to be more than twenty-five years old. There is not one man or woman in a hundred who possesses an unpleasant personal peculiarity, without getting a galled spot upon personal pride in consequence. A long nose, a squint eye, a clumsy foot, a low forehead, a hump in the back--any one of these will not bear mention in the presence of its possessor.

It is quite amusing to witness the various methods resorted to for cheating the world with regard to these sore places in personal pride. Men who are conscious that they do not possess a particle of musical taste, and are really ignorant of the difference between Dundee and Yankee Doodle, will profess to be "very fond of music,"

and will not unfrequently convince themselves that they are so. Men who are exceedingly sensitive touching any eccentricities of person, will be constantly joking about their own long noses, or red hair, or big feet, and run on about them in the pleasantest sort of way, and persist in doing it on all occasions, as if the matter were exceedingly amusing to them, when the fact is that their pride is very sore in that particular spot. A woman who has pa.s.sed her hour of bloom, and feels with sensitive pain the creeping on of ancient maidenhood, will talk charmingly, and with superfluous iteration, about the usefulness of old maids, and the independence of their lot--determined to cover up the galled spot that burns upon the surface of her personal pride. The trick of keeping up the appearances of wealth, after wealth is departed, is a familiar one; and though if rarely deceives, it is likely to be persisted in to the end of time. It is often very pitiful to witness the ingenuity of the efforts that are made to cover from public observation the soreness of personal pride, caused by a change of circ.u.mstances.

The Hepsibah Pynchons abound in houses of less than seven gables.

There is probably no harness so apt to gall the shoulder of personal pride as that of ambition. The number of men in the world whose personal pride has a sore on it, inflicted by disappointed ambition, is sadly large. I have seen many a worthy man utterly spoiled by his failure to reach the political, social, or literary eminence at which he has aimed. Thenceforward, his hand has been against every man, and he has imagined that every man's hand has been against him.

All who contributed to his defeat, and all in any way a.s.sociated with them, have become the subjects of his hatred and his animadversion. He has retired into himself, sneering at every thing and everybody, doubtful of the sincerity of all friendly professions, and regarding himself as "a pa.s.senger," while the poor fools among whom he once so gladly numbered himself, chase the baubles by which his life has been so miserably cheated of its meed. It is very hard for a proud man, with a strong will, to feel that he has been baffled and beaten; and a really n.o.ble man, defeated in his objects by trickery and meanness, will sometimes become half insane with the wound which his pride has received. He will never forget it; and the old sore can never be touched, even in the most accidental way, without calling the fire into his eye, and the color into his cheek. In the domain of politics, "sore heads" notoriously abound, and I suppose they always will.

Literary life is probably as prolific of failures, and as full of "sore heads" as political. The number of men and women who are ambitious of literary distinction, and who make great efforts to win it, is very large--larger than the world outside of the publisher's private office dreams of. The number of ma.n.u.scripts rejected and never published is greater than the number published; and of those which are published, not one in ten satisfies, in its success, the ambition of its author. I suppose that it is within the bounds of truth to say that nine authors in every ten are disappointed men--men whose personal pride is wounded, who believe that the world has treated them unjustly, and who cherish a sore spot on their personal pride as long as they live. Some of these refuse to draw in any harness, and give themselves up to poverty and laziness, as the victims of the world's undiscriminating stupidity. Some become critics of the works of successful authors, and take their revenge in the hearty abuse of their betters.

Others enter into other departments of effort, but carry with them through life the belief that they are out of their place, and the conviction that if they had been born in a n.o.bler age they would have been recognized as the geniuses they imagine themselves to be.

There is still another cla.s.s which get sore with drawing in a harness that G.o.d puts upon them, and in the adoption of which they have had nothing to do. A man of poetic sensibilities finds himself engaged in the pursuit of some humdrum calling. He sees how beautiful poetry is; he feels its influence upon his soul; but he has no power to create it. Another feels something of the divinity of music, but muscular facility has been denied to him so that he cannot play, and his voice is harsh or feeble so that he cannot sing. He melts and glows under the sway of eloquence, and wors.h.i.+ps at a distance the power of the orator over the hearts and minds of men; but he knows that if he were in the orator's place, he would break down and become the object even of his own contempt. Great susceptibilities these people have--pa.s.sive spirits--open to all good impressions, appreciative of that which is best in nature and art, yet without the power to act. They must always be plates to receive the picture, and never suns and cameras to imprint it. They must always live within sight of great and beautiful powers, but never have the privilege of wielding them. Doomed to the att.i.tude of receptivity, they see that they can never change it; and that they can never be to others what others are to them. Thus they grow sore with the thought of their weakness, and a sense of the circ.u.mscription of their faculties.

They see wonderful things--they apprehend the grace and the glory of great actions--but they can achieve nothing. Many of these walk as in a dream through life--with a sense of wings upon their shoulders, clipped or lashed down. They see their companions rising, but they cling to the earth, and feel the difference as a humiliation. Alas! how many souls chafe against the consciousness of inferior powers, till even the fine susceptibilities with which nature endowed them are destroyed!

There would seem to be no end of the causes which produce sore and tender and sensitive spots upon the human soul. I have said nothing of grief and love and pity and anger, and a whole brood of powerful pa.s.sions, but they are all operative toward the results which we are discussing. The cure for these sensitive sores is obvious enough. I would prescribe for a man as I would for a horse--go out to pasture, or adopt another kind of collar, and never wear the old one again. If a man has become sore by working against the apathy, the misconceptions, the misconstructions, and the prejudices of the world, so that he feels the galling burden of the collar in all his actions, let him change his style of labor until the ulcer heal. If the conscience becomes sore, relieve it of that which made it sore, and never believe that padding can effect a cure. Even wounded pride will heal if we let it alone, and refrain from opening the wound on all occasions, and rubbing it against the causes which inflicted it. All the natural peculiarities of our const.i.tution which wound our pride may be happily got along with by ignoring them. If my neighbor is a lovable man, I do not love him any the less because he wears a long nose, and I should never think of it if he were not always joking about it, and trying to convince me that it did not offend him. A man who quarrels with his own const.i.tution, and questions the benevolence that adjusted it to its conditions, quarrels with, and questions, his Maker. I believe there are no sorenesses of the sort we are considering which time or change will not heal.

It seems to me a very melancholy thing for a man to carry a mental ulcer with him through life--to feel its p.r.i.c.k and pang in every effort--to be conscious of its presence every hour--to be engaged in covering it from sight, or in the attempt to deceive the world with regard to it. Life is altogether too good a thing to be spoiled by a little sore, or a large one, when there exists an obvious mode of cure. It is our immense and intense self-consciousness that stands in our way always in this matter. The truth is that the world does not think half so much about us as we imagine it does. A man may walk through the city of New York with a face "as homely as a hedge-fence," thinking about it all the time, and wondering what people think of it, and not a man of all the throng will even see it. It is so in the world at large. Our personal peculiarities, our personal failures, our personal weaknesses, our personal affairs generally possess very little interest for others. They have enough to do in taking care of themselves, and have weaknesses, and failures, and peculiarities enough of their own; and if the world should spurn our well-meant efforts in its behalf, why, let it go.

It mends nothing to get sore and sensitive over it. When a man truly learns how little important he is in the world, he is generally beyond the danger of becoming galled by his harness, whatever it may be.

LESSON XIX.

THE INFLUENCE OF PRAISE.

"Now I praise you, brethren, that ye remember me in all things, and keep the ordinances as I delivered them unto you."--ST. PAUL.

"O popular applause! What heart of man Is proof against thy sweet seducing charms?"

COWPER.

"_Arbaces_. Why now, you flatter.

"_Mardonius_. I never understood the word."

A KING AND NO KING.

"Praising what is lost Makes the remembrance dear." SHAKSPEARE.

It is pleasant to be praised. The man does not live who is insensible to honest praise. The love of approbation is as natural to every human soul as the love of offspring, or the love of liberty. It was planted there by G.o.d's hand, and it is as useful and important in its fruit, as it is fragrant and beautiful in its flower. I repeat that the man does not live who is insensible to honest praise. That great orator who seems to be a king in the world, independent of his race, holding dominion over human hearts, lifted far above the necessity of the plaudits of those around him, will pause with gratified and grateful ear, to listen to expressions of approval and admiration from the humblest lips.

The greatest mind drinks praise as a pleasant draught, if it be honest and deserved. Perhaps you think that Doctor of Divinity who weighs two hundred pounds more or less, and is clad in glossy broad-cloth, and lifts his s.h.i.+ning forehead above a white cravat, as Mont Blanc pierces a belt of cloud, and talks articulated thunder, and veils his wisdom behind gold-mounted spectacles, and moves among men with ineffable dignity, is above the need of, and the appet.i.te for, praise. Ah! you don't know the soft old heart under that satin waistcoat! It can be made as warm and gentle and grateful, with just and generous praise, as that of a boy. Nay, the barber who takes his reverent nose between his thumb and finger, and sweeps the beard from his benevolent chin, understands exactly what to say in order to draw from his pocket an extra sixpence. There is no head so high, there is no neck so stiff, there is no back so straight, that it will not bend to take the flowers which praise tosses upon its path.

"It's a sign of weakness, after all," sighs my friend, who is not praised quite as much as he would like to be. Begging your pardon, sir, it is no such thing. The strongest Being in the universe-- the G.o.d of the universe--is the one who demands, receives, and accepts the most praise. Listen for a moment to those marvellous ascriptions which rise to Him from the bosom of Christendom as ceaselessly and beautifully as clouds from the Heaven-reflecting ocean: "Thou art the King, immortal, invisible. Thou art the Source of all life, the Author of all being, the Fountain of all light and love and joy. Thou art Love itself; Thou art the Sum of all perfections. For what Thou art, we wors.h.i.+p Thee; for what Thou hast done for us, in Thy infinite loving-kindness, we praise Thee.

We bless Thy Holy Name. We call upon our souls and all within us to magnify Thy name forever and ever." The Bible itself has given us almost numberless forms of expression into which we may cast our divinest adoration, and the broadest outpourings of our hearts. The poets of all ages have been touched to their finest utterances in the rapture of wors.h.i.+p and of praise.

Now why should G.o.d want praise of us? It certainly is not because He is weak. Can it be because He wishes by means of it to produce some desired effect in us? Is there no hearing of this praise in Heaven? Are we who sing and shout mere brawlers, who get a little strength of lungs by the exercise? There are some poor souls, doubtless, who believe this, as they believe that prayer has significance only as a moral exercise, and effect only as it reacts upon the soul. I believe that praise is pleasant to Him who sits upon the throne--that the honest and sincere expressions of love and adoration, and grat.i.tude and praise, that rise to Him from the earth are at least s.h.i.+ning ripples upon the soundless ocean of His bliss. Out from Him proceed, through myriad channels of effluence, the expressions of His love for those whom He has made and endowed with intelligence; and I believe that it is requisite for His happiness that back along these lines of manifestation there should flow a tide of grateful recognition and adoring praise. Even a G.o.d would pine in loneliness and despair if there should come back no echoes to His loving voice--no refluent wave to the mighty bosom which makes all sh.o.r.es vocal with its breath and beating. G.o.d demands of all men that which all men owe to Him--that which His perfections and His acts deserve.

This love of approbation in men, then, is Heaven-born and G.o.dlike.

The desire for approbation is as legitimate as the desire for food. I do not suppose that it should be greatly a motive of action--perhaps it should never be; but when a man from a good motive does a good thing, he desires the approval of the hearts that love him, and he receives their expressions of praise with grateful pleasure. Nay, if these expressions of praise are denied to him, he feels in a certain sense wronged. He feels that justice has not been done him--that there is something due to him that has not been paid. I met a friend the other day who unveiled his heart to me; and I caught in the vision his heart's sense of the world's injustice. He had been a very poor boy, and had been bred under a poor boy's disadvantages; but a strong will, a good heart, fine talents, and a favoring fortune, brought to him gold, and lands, and equipage. They brought these not only, but they brought the power to be a benefactor of his native town. He won competence for himself, and then he became a public-spirited citizen, and did that for his home which no other man had done.

Now he felt that he had done for himself and for those around him n.o.bly; and it was natural that he should desire some response-- some expression of praise. He did not get it. People either envied him, or they misconstrued his actions; and he felt that his townsmen had been and were unjust---that they owed him something which they had failed to pay.

The world is so much accustomed to confound praise with flattery that if I were to go to a man with an honest tribute like this: "My friend, I admire you very much; I think you possess n.o.ble talents, fine tastes, and an excellent heart; and I regard your course of action and your life with the warmest approval," he would, nine times in ten, look into my face either with astonishment, or amus.e.m.e.nt, or offense. He would not know whether I intended to insult him or to practice a joke upon him. Praise between man and man is so rare that we neither know how to bestow it nor how to receive it. This is carried to such an extent that one-half of the family life of Christendom is deprived of it. The husbands who never have a word of praise for their wives, the wives who never have a word of praise for their husbands, and the parents who only find fault with their children, are, I fear, in the majority. I know that the women are numberless who devote themselves throughout all their life to the comfort, the happiness, and the prosperity of their husbands, and who lie down in their graves at last, thirsty for their praise. Their patient and ceaseless ministry is taken as a matter of course, without the slightest recognition of its value as the expression of a loving and devoted heart. Now I believe that praise is due to the love and unselfish devotion of a wife, just as really as it is to the loving-kindness and beneficent ministry of G.o.d, differing only in kind and degree. Husbands may die worth millions, and leave it all to their wives, (subject to the usual contemptible provision that they do not marry again,) and yet be shamefully indebted to them forever and forever.

Children are often spoiled because they get no credit for what they do. Of censure, they get their due; but of praise, never.

They do a thing which they feel to be praiseworthy, but it is not noticed. When a child takes pains to do well, it feels itself paid for every endeavor by praise; and the most unsophisticated child knows when praise is its due. It often comes to its mother's knee in natural simplicity, and asks for it. It is very well for men to say that "virtue is its own reward," and that the highest satisfactions are those which spring from a sense of duty accomplished; but praise is pleasant and precious to men who not only say this, but feel it. Many a n.o.ble and sensitive pastor is disheartened because no one of the mult.i.tude which he so carefully and constantly feeds, ever tells him, with an open, honest utterance, his good opinion of him, and his satisfaction with his labors. Many an excellent author toils over his work in secret distrust, and issues it in fear and trembling, feeling that a word of praise will exalt him into a grateful and fruitful joy, and that an unjust and unkind criticism will half kill him.

It is true that the mind is unhealthy which lives on praise; and it is just as true that he is mean and unjust who fails to award praise to those who earn it. The appet.i.te for praise may become just as morbid and greedy by improper stimulus and abuse, as any other natural and legitimate appet.i.te. It frequently does so, in those who a.s.sociate it very intimately with success and gain.

Actors and public singers, and all those whose success in life and whose pecuniary income depend upon the amount of popular praise they can win, are very apt to become greedy of praise, and will not unfrequently receive it in its most disgusting forms. There are lecturers and public speakers who depend upon praise for strength to speak an hour--men who, if their performances are repet.i.tions, wait at certain points for applause, as a horse, travelling over a familiar road, stops always at certain hills to rest and take breath, and at certain wayside cisterns to drink.

Many of these men demand praise, talking about themselves continually, and begging a.s.sent to their self-laudations. In these cases, praise becomes the dominant motive, and degrades and belittles its subjects always. The voluntary profanity and the impure jests that so often offend the ears of decent people at the theatre, are put forth to call out a cheer from groundlings whose praise is always essential disgrace. The jealousy and the quarrelsomeness of authors, actors, and singers, result from the fact that praise has become so much the motive of their life that they grudge the applause awarded to their fellows.

The difference between praise and flattery is as wide as that between praise and blame. Praise is a legitimate tribute to worth and worthy doing. It is entirely unselfish in its motive. It is the discharge of a debt. Flattery originates always in a selfish motive, and seeks by falsehood to feed an unhealthy desire for praise. A man whom it is proper to praise cannot be flattered, and a man who can be flattered ought not to be praised. It is always safe to praise a man who really deserves praise. Such a man usually knows how much he deserves, and will take only the exact amount. Indeed, he will be very particular to give back the right change. The flatterer is like the man who stands behind a bar to deal out poison to a debased appet.i.te for gain. The man who utters honest praise is n.o.ble; the man who receives it does so without humiliation, and is made strong by it. The flatterer is always a scoundrel, and the glad receiver of his falsehoods is always a fool--natural or otherwise.

The desire for praise is often very strong in those who never do any thing to deserve it, and who are never ready to award it to those who have earned it. There are men in every community who are universally recognized as supremely selfish, yet supremely greedy of praise. This desire does not arise from over-indulgence in the article, for they never had even a taste of it. They are known to be selfish and hard and mean, yet they long for praise and popularity, with a desire that is almost ludicrous. They never give a dollar to the poor, they never deny themselves for the good of others, they are shut up in themselves--without any good or great or generous qualities--yet they clutch at every word that sounds like praise as if they were starved. The only use of the desire in these men is to furnish the world with a nose by which to lead them.

It is a mistake to suppose that praise should be rendered directly in all cases to the persons to whom it is due, for the relations between debtor and creditor may be such as to forbid it. I may be a humble admirer of some great and good man, who has been the doer of great and good deeds, but my personal relations to him may be such that it is not proper for me to approach him, and pay my tribute into his hands. Men are often careful of the channels through which the response to their deeds, in the hearts of other men, reaches them; but I may discharge my debt, nevertheless, by sounding their praise in other ears. It is usually the work of those who stand next to a man, to gather up the tributes of a grateful and admiring community or people, and bear them to him to whom they belong. Because I may not approach a praiseworthy man, with the offering which I feel to be his due, it is none the less inc.u.mbent upon me to discharge the debt. Just and generous praise will come from every just and generous nature in some form, and will be deposited in some bosom subject to the draft of the owner.

It is not easy for any man to work alone, out of the sight of his fellows, and beyond the recognition of his deeds. However self-sufficient he may be, he is stronger, and he feels stronger, in the approbation of generous and appreciative hearts. We are very much in the habit of thinking that men of great minds and n.o.ble deeds and self-reliant natures do not need the approval of other minds, and do not care for it; but G.o.d never lifted any man so far above his fellows that their voices were not the most delightful sounds that reached him. If this be true of great natures, how much more evidently true is it of smaller natures! We, the people of the world, go leaning on each other; and we totter sometimes, even to falling, when a shoulder drops from underneath our hand.

We need encouragement with every step. In the path of worthy doing, we need some loving voice to witness with our approving consciences, that we have done that which becomes us as men and women. We long to hear the sentence, "well done, thou good and faithful servant," from day to day; and when we hear it, we are ready for further labor. We need also to give this daily meed of praise to those who deserve it, that we may keep ourselves unselfish, and root out from ourselves all n.i.g.g.ardliness. We owe it to ourselves to pay off every debt as soon as it is incurred, and never, under any selfish motive, to withhold it.

It is notorious that the finest spirits of the world, and the world's greatest benefactors, have gone through life unrecognized.

They have lain down in their graves at last without having received a t.i.the of the debt which their generation owed to them.

When the turf has closed over their bosoms, and the mean jealousies of their cotemporaries have been vanquished by death, then whole nations have thronged to do them honor. Songs have been sung to their memory; and the words of praise which would have done so much to cheer and strengthen them once, are poured out in abundance when the need of them is past. Stately monuments are erected to them, and their children are petted and caressed, and a tardy, jealous, and hypocritical world strives to win self-respect by the payment of a debt long overdue. "Speak nothing but good of the dead" is a proverb that had its birth in the world's sense of its own meanness,--the consciousness that it had not done justice to the dead while they were living. Many a man is systematically abused during all his active life, only to lie down in his grave amid the laudations of a nation. I know of nothing in all the exhibitions of human nature meaner than this. It amounts to a virtual confession of fraud. It is the acknowledgment of a debt, which, while the creditor could get any benefit from it, the world refused to pay. Posthumous fame may be a very fine thing; but I have never known a really worthy man, with a healthy nature and a healthy character, who did not prize far above it the love, the confidence, and the praise of the generation to which he gave his life.

It is the mark of a n.o.ble nature to be quick to recognize that which is praiseworthy in others, and ready on the moment to award to it its fitting meed. Such a nature looks for that which is good in men, sees it, encourages it, and gives it the strength of its indorsal. All that is n.o.ble in other men thrives in the presence of such a nature as this. It is suns.h.i.+ne and showers and healthful breezes to all that is amiable and laudable in the souls around it. Woman grows more womanly and lovable and happy in its presence. Men grow heroic and unselfish by its side. Children gather from it encouragement and inspiration, and impulse and direction into a beautiful life. What knows the charming wife whom we lay in the tomb, of the tears we shed above her, of the endearments we lavish upon her memory, and of the praises of her virtue with which we burden the ears of our friends? This same wife would have drunk such expressions during her life with satisfaction and gratification beyond expression. Why can death alone teach us that those whom we love are dear? Why must they be placed forever beyond our sight before our lips can be unsealed?

Why must it be that in our public, social, and family life we have penalties in abundance, but no rewards--censure in profusion, but no praise--fault-finding without stint of freedom, but approbation dealt out by constrained and n.i.g.g.ardly hands?

LESSON XX.

UNNECESSARY BURDENS.