The Golden Censer Part 29

No pa.s.sion has been more universally recognized than envy as the basest of all the traits that undermine the n.o.bility of man; and yet there is no obnoxious quality so universal in men's characters. In the life of the good man it reminds one of the mice, in our houses, which eat their way to our attention and their own destruction; for there are few men who have looked into their own hearts who have not seen the small but odious traces of this gnawing evil. Again, the mind of the bad man, who has given himself entirely up to envy, is

A WOLF'S DEN--

a howling pandemonium, where no quarter is given, and where the merits of the deserving rather than the lapses of the blameworthy are torn as the most toothsome morsel in a furious feast. The Bible says that envy is the rottenness of the bones, meaning that utter corruption which has finally reached the framework of the structure. Society as now organized is really making progress toward the extinction of this hideous blemish.

When, as in aesop's fables,

A TAILLESS FOX

is found advocating the disuse of tails, he is at once suspected, and his influence greatly limited. For the world is waking up to the meanness of envy. The world, in its better moments, is rising above it.

It is one of our princ.i.p.al duties, on entering the Temple of Life, to search our hearts for the little fox with the sharp tooth. When we find ourselves about to enter upon a course of action, either momentary or long continuous, which will be adverse to another of our fellow-creatures, let us ask: "Is there anything of envy in this act?"

If there be, let us refrain from acting--the soul is not yet pure, the body fragrant.

Let us see how ignorant this contemptible quality of envy becomes under the lenses of practical life. "Base envy withers at another's joy." What has caused it? In nine cases out of every ten, it is simply the one-sided view of an ignorant mind, which sees only the bare result of unceasing efforts. Envy sees Fame on the peak. Envy therefore hates Fame, and declares that there are no crags, or rifts, or snows, or storms on the way up--that, the path is an easy one, over which all who ever went that way traveled in preference to all other routes!

I lay upon a boarding-house bed day after day, one summer, sick of a fever. On the one side, a building was going up, and workmen filled the air with mighty din. On the other side, a young man sang

"DO, HOORAY, ME, FAH, SOLE, LAH, SE, DO!"

I thought: "The one will be a grand house, and the other will be a great tenor, but oh the way is long. The feet grow weary!"

It has often seemed to me that this was my first true view of life, and nowadays, when--I am tired, especially,--I do not envy the truly great in any avenue of distinction. The walker has walked, the builder has groaned, the fighter has fought, the scribe has scribbled, the statesman has lied and betrayed. Any one of them will tell you his pay has been sadly inadequate.

TAKE A MAN LIKE THEIRS.

Born in an age still drunk with the glory of Napoleon, but himself infused with ideas of popular liberty; chained to the chariot of circ.u.mstances, and made to swell the sawdust-magnificence of unpopular kings and the ridiculous success of Napoleon III., the greatest impostor of all history, this Marie Joseph Louis Adolphe Thiers went through a life the bare retrospect of which would actually tire the mind. In his old age this little lover and critic of greatness--this man who could show the weaknesses of Napoleon Bonaparte so clearly that one would feel the critic must be the superior of Napoleon--this squeak-voiced orator, must have felt that whatever greatness might come to him in history was well-earned--that the way had indeed been long!

THE SAME OF GLADSTONE.

Who in his sane mind would be Gladstone living any more than Homer living? Of course, he survives those horrible crises in which public duty has made him the most pitiable object, and in the most dreadful complication of great interests s.h.i.+nes forth as Venus fresh-lighted.

But I would not have Gladstone's fame for the boon of rest eternal, from fear that his retrospect of inconsistency and apostacy would be its accompaniment, its deeper shadow. Yet who shall blame Gladstone? He was the executor and administrator of the policy of a parvenu Jew, one of the very bad men of the earth. He

REAPED ANOTHER MAN'S WHIRLWINDS.

Forced into geographical relations with the Irish, an unwarlike people with indomitable tongues, England has in the middle ages, naturally done to this unwarlike people just what a warlike people would do in the middle ages--taken everything. With painful volubility the unwarlike people has for centuries sounded its fate over the world, touching the heart of Gladstone and other good Englishmen, and tempting him and them to many struggles. Behold him at the next step, then, in the role of warring upon the unwarlike, of oppressing the oppressed, of answering an Irish clack with a British click! Is it not pitiful? Gladstone fell ill from it. He paid there and then for his ill.u.s.trious name. And, next, of those brave Boers! G.o.d nerved their quick muscles and darted straight their wonderful eye; and when the single hand rose against the hundred hands of British Briarius they were not forsaken. Oh! how clearly that question seemed to an American! No geographical necessity was there--no race hatred, no hotbed to foment conspiracy against the sister country England. The independence of those Boers, if they desired it, ought to have been fought for by England, by Gladstone, willingly, irresistibly--in the very name of England's own love of liberty for herself. And finally Gladstone so saw it.

What a puzzle are those Hibernians!

HOW BITING THE WITTICISM OF CHIN LAN PIN,

the Chinese Amba.s.sador to the United States, that they are able to govern every other country save their own! Behold a statesman like Gladstone, forced to change his policy toward them the moment he has the responsibility of governing them! Oh! what an opportunity for the little foxes! How easily Envy spears him with its jest! How truly Envy s.h.i.+nes with the wings of that fly that pa.s.ses all the sounder parts of a man's body to dwell upon the sores! In this rapid glance across two of the trials of a great man, across the path up to the peak where one clambering must bind himself with strong ropes to his companions, that if one sink into a snow-covered abyss the others may bring him forth--we get, perhaps, a truer view of

THE MEANESS OF ENVY.

Let us look at Gladstone as the great, wise, good, learned man he is, whose wreath of laurel covers a crown of thorns. And if we find an a.s.sociate making those fatiguing efforts that ever precede the recognition of this cold world, let us glance rather at his efforts than at his fame, that no rust may gather on the brightness of our eye, and no withering cloud shut out the sunlight from our spirits.

I CANNOT CLOSE THIS CHAPTER

without imploring the reader to exterminate this characteristic of envy altogether. Because it is at first so little and so ridiculous, envy often escapes the hand of discipline. Yet the homely saying is a true one that "they which play with the devil's rattles will be brought by degrees to wield his sword," and the force of a nature given up to envy is truly a two-edged sword from the bottomless pit, cutting both the fiend who smites and the victim who smarts.

CONTENTMENT.

Mrs. Lofty keeps a carriage-- So do I.

She has dappled grays to draw it-- None have I.--Alma Calder.

Unquestionably, the baby-carriage of the poet, with contentment, was a far richer establishment than the gilded barouche and the dappled grays of childless Mrs. Lofty. Riches are often childless; poverty is often contented. Happiness is a golden spell inwoven with most of our lives at certain times, whether we be rich or poor. The first surprise of the newly-rich comes in the non-discovery of additional happiness. Additional cares and duties come thickly enough.

The greed of the envious, and the demands of the poor who are likewise needy in thoughtfulness for their more fortunate neighbors, fall upon the wealthy like a mist. There is no escaping it. As James Russell Lowell says of a Scotch fog--an umbrella will afford no protection. They must give all, or accept the hatred of those who believe it to be easier to give than to receive. "Contentment is natural wealth," says Socrates; "luxury is artificial poverty." Contentment is generally a sign of a high cla.s.s of character. "If two angels were sent down," says John Newton, "one to conduct an empire and the other to sweep a street, they would feel no inclination to change employments."

HUMAN GREATNESS

is at best such a little thing that wise men do not lament its absence in their own persons. Our main pleasures are free to rich as well as poor. What sight is so grand as the sun? What pleasure is greater than to breathe? What fluid is more grateful for all purposes than water?

What music is sweeter than the singing of birds, the ringing of free school bells and the hum of machinery? The extra pleasures which the rich man, if he be foolish, tries to buy, almost invariably

END IN HIS EARLY DEATH,

and in his hatred of the whole world. Those n.o.ble men of wealth who gain the plaudits of their fellows, have earned those plaudits just as poor men would earn them--by service to their fellow-creatures. Man is not const.i.tuted so that he can "take his ease" and be happy. The prisoner in solitary confinement is forced to take his ease, and we are told that he suffers terribly under the ordeal. Of course you have heard of

THE PRISONER IN THE DARK DUNGEON

who had three pins, and who gave himself employment by throwing them into the air and then beginning the long search which should finally secure them. Sometimes a pin would be hidden for years in a crevice. In this way the prisoner preserved his mind from utter decay, and was almost happy--nay, was really happy when his arduous labor would result in the discovery of all three of the objects of his pitiful quest.

Instances like this should impress upon us the fact that the princ.i.p.al sum of our happiness is inalienable. We cannot, in health, possibly lose it. The hale pauper is far better off than the invalid Duke. We breathe and eat and see and hear with ease. All of those offices of the body are unquestionably delightful, as is proven by the relative view we get when we are ill and can neither breathe nor eat nor see nor hear without great suffering. "There is scarce any lot so low," says Sterne, "but there is something in it to satisfy the man whom it has befallen." The reason of this lies in this same fact that when the tree of happiness loses superfluous wealth, it but loses its foliage.

THE POOR MAN CARRIES INTO HIS COTTAGE

all the great and marvelous blessings of life. He leaves outside only a lot of artificialities, the most of which are so-called pleasures, but are really miseries. If we cannot be contented without these artificialities, we certainly would not be satisfied with an addition so unimportant. "A tub was large enough for Diogenes," says Colton; "but a world was too little for Alexander." Alexander valued the true blessings of life as nothing, and the power of life and death over others as everything. His disappointment and the contentment of Diogenes, who viewed things more correctly, are matters of tradition. "Contentment,"

says Fuller, "consisteth not in adding more fuel, but

IN TAKING AWAY SOME FIRE."

Therefore, if you are spending so much money that you need more income, take away some of the fire. If you reduce your expenses two dollars a week, you have added nearly eighteen hundred dollars to your account in fifteen years. If you wear your boots one month after you could well persuade yourself to have a new pair, your new ones will not wear out a month sooner for that reason!