Part 10 (1/2)
3. Every collection of its inhabitants that comes together to listen to a stranger is invariably declared to be a ”remarkably intelligent audience.”
4. The climate of the place is particularly favorable to longevity.
5. It contains several persons of vast talent little known to the world.
(One or two of them, you may perhaps chance to remember, sent short pieces to the ”Pactolian” some time since, which were ”respectfully declined.”)
Boston is just like other places of its size;-only perhaps, considering its excellent fish-market, paid fire-department, superior monthly publications, and correct habit of spelling the English language, it has some right to look down on the mob of cities. I'll tell you, though, if you want to know it, what is the real offence of Boston. It drains a large water-shed of its intellect, and will not itself be drained. If it would only send away its first-rate men, instead of its second-rate ones, (no offence to the well-known exceptions, of which we are always proud,) we should be spared such epigrammatic remarks as that which the gentleman has quoted. There can never be a real metropolis in this country, until the biggest centre can drain the lesser ones of their talent and wealth.-I have observed, by the way, that the people who really live in two great cities are by no means so jealous of each other, as are those of smaller cities situated within the intellectual basin, or _suction-range_, of one large one, of the pretensions of any other.
Don't you see why? Because their promising young author and rising lawyer and large capitalist have been drained off to the neighboring big city,-their prettiest girl has been exported to the same market; all their ambition points there, and all their thin gilding of glory comes from there. I hate little toad-eating cities.
-Would I be so good as to specify any particular example?-Oh,-an example?
Did you ever see a bear-trap? Never? Well, shouldn't you like to see me put my foot into one? With sentiments of the highest consideration I must beg leave to be excused.
Besides, some of the smaller cities are charming. If they have an old church or two, a few stately mansions of former grandees, here and there an old dwelling with the second story projecting, (for the convenience of shooting the Indians knocking at the front-door with their tomahawks,)-if they have, scattered about, those mighty square houses built something more than half a century ago, and standing like architectural boulders dropped by the former diluvium of wealth, whose refluent wave has left them as its monument,-if they have gardens with elbowed apple-trees that push their branches over the high board-fence and drop their fruit on the side-walk,-if they have a little gra.s.s in the side-streets, enough to betoken quiet without proclaiming decay,-I think I could go to pieces, after my life's work were done, in one of those tranquil places, as sweetly as in any cradle that an old man may be rocked to sleep in. I visit such spots always with infinite delight. My friend, the Poet, says, that rapidly growing towns are most unfavorable to the imaginative and reflective faculties. Let a man live in one of these old quiet places, he says, and the wine of his soul, which is kept thick and turbid by the rattle of busy streets, settles, and, as you hold it up, you may see the sun through it by day and the stars by night.
-Do I think that the little villages have the conceit of the great towns?-I don't believe there is much difference. You know how they read Pope's line in the smallest town in our State of Ma.s.sachusetts?-Well, they read it
”All are but parts of one stupendous HULL!”
-Every person's feelings have a front-door and a side-door by which they may be entered. The front-door is on the street. Some keep it always open; some keep it latched; some, locked; some, bolted,-with a chain that will let you peep in, but not get in; and some nail it up, so that nothing can pa.s.s its threshold. This front-door leads into a pa.s.sage which opens into an ante-room, and this into the inferior apartments.
The side-door opens at once into the sacred chambers.
There is almost always at least one key to this side-door. This is carried for years hidden in a mother's bosom. Fathers, brothers, sisters, and friends, often, but by no means so universally, have duplicates of it. The wedding-ring conveys a right to one; alas, if none is given with it!
If nature or accident has put one of these keys into the hands of a person who has the torturing instinct, I can only solemnly p.r.o.nounce the words that Justice utters over its doomed victim,-_The Lord have mercy on your soul_! You will probably go mad within a reasonable time,-or, if you are a man, run off and die with your head on a curb-stone, in Melbourne or San Francisco,-or, if you are a woman, quarrel and break your heart, or turn into a pale, jointed petrifaction that moves about as if it were alive, or play some real life-tragedy or other.
Be very careful to whom you trust one of these keys of the side-door.
The fact of possessing one renders those even who are dear to you very terrible at times. You can keep the world out from your front-door, or receive visitors only when you are ready for them; but those of your own flesh and blood, or of certain grades of intimacy, can come in at the side-door, if they will, at any hour and in any mood. Some of them have a scale of your whole nervous system, and can play all the gamut of your sensibilities in semitones,-touching the naked nerve-pulps as a pianist strikes the keys of his instrument. I am satisfied that there are as great masters of this nerve-playing as Vieuxtemps or Thalberg in their lines of performance. Married life is the school in which the most accomplished artists in this department are found. A delicate woman is the best instrument; she has such a magnificent compa.s.s of sensibilities!
From the deep inward moan which follows pressure on the great nerves of right, to the sharp cry as the filaments of taste are struck with a cras.h.i.+ng sweep, is a range which no other instrument possesses. A few exercises on it daily at home fit a man wonderfully for his habitual labors, and refresh him immensely as he returns from them. No stranger can get a great many notes of torture out of a human soul; it takes one that knows it well,-parent, child, brother, sister, intimate. Be very careful to whom you give a side-door key; too many have them already.
-You remember the old story of the tender-hearted man, who placed a frozen viper in his bosom, and was stung by it when it became thawed? If we take a cold-blooded creature into our bosom, better that it should sting us and we should die than that its chill should slowly steal into our hearts; warm it we never can! I have seen faces of women that were fair to look upon, yet one could see that the icicles were forming round these women's hearts. I knew what freezing image lay on the white b.r.e.a.s.t.s beneath the laces!
A very simple _intellectual_ mechanism answers the necessities of friends.h.i.+p, and even of the most intimate relations of life. If a watch tells us the hour and the minute, we can be content to carry it about with us for a life-time, though it has no second-hand and is not a repeater, nor a musical watch,-though it is not enamelled nor jewelled,-in short, though it has little beyond the wheels required for a trustworthy instrument, added to a good face and a pair of useful hands.
The more wheels there are in a watch or a brain, the more trouble they are to take care of. The movements of exaltation which belong to genius are egotistic by their very nature. A calm, clear mind, not subject to the spasms and crises which are so often met with in creative or intensely perceptive natures, is the best basis for love or friends.h.i.+p.-Observe, I am talking about _minds_. I won't say, the more intellect, the less capacity for loving; for that would do wrong to the understanding and reason;-but, on the other hand, that the brain often runs away with the heart's best blood, which gives the world a few pages of wisdom or sentiment or poetry, instead of making one other heart happy, I have no question.
If one's intimate in love or friends.h.i.+p cannot or does not share all one's intellectual tastes or pursuits, that is a small matter.
Intellectual companions can be found easily in men and books. After all, if we think of it, most of the world's loves and friends.h.i.+ps have been between people that could not read nor spell.
But to radiate the heat of the affections into a clod which absorbs all that is poured into it, but never warms beneath the suns.h.i.+ne of smiles or the pressure of hand or lip,-this is the great martyrdom of sensitive beings,-most of all in that perpetual _auto da fe_ where young womanhood is the sacrifice.
-You noticed, perhaps, what I just said about the loves and friends.h.i.+ps of illiterate persons,-that is, of the human race, with a few exceptions here and there. I like books,-I was born and bred among them, and have the easy feeling, when I get into their presence, that a stable-boy has among horses. I don't think I undervalue them either as companions or as instructors. But I can't help remembering that the world's great men have not commonly been great scholars, nor its great scholars great men.
The Hebrew patriarchs had small libraries, I think, if any; yet they represent to our imaginations a very complete idea of manhood, and, I think, if we could ask in Abraham to dine with us men of letters next Sat.u.r.day, we should feel honored by his company.
What I wanted to say about books is this: that there are times in which every active mind feels itself above any and all human books.
-I think a man must have a good opinion of himself, Sir,-said the divinity-student,-who should feel himself above Shakspeare at any time.
My young friend,-I replied,-the man who is never conscious of a state of feeling or of intellectual effort entirely beyond expression by any form of words whatsoever is a mere creature of language. I can hardly believe there are any such men. Why, think for a moment of the power of music.