Chapter XXX (2)

Though "Sejanus" failed of theatrical success, its wealth of classic knowledge and solid thought made it the best of all answers to his opponents. It was as if they had questioned his capacity to build a ship, and he had confuted them with a man-of-war. To be sure, they might reiterate their old charge of "filching by translation," for the text of "Sejanus" is a mosaic; but it was one of Jonson's maxims that he deserved as much honor for what he made his own by _Jonsonizing_ the classics as for what he originated. Indeed, in his dealings with the great poets and historians of Rome, whose language and whose spirit he had patiently mastered, he acted the part, not of the pickpocket, but of the conqueror. He did not meanly crib and pilfer in the territories of the ancients: he rather pillaged, or, in our American phrase, "annexed" them. "He has done his robberies so openly," says Dryden, "that one sees he fears not to be taxed by any law. He invades authors like a monarch, and what would be theft in any other poet is only victory in him."

One incident connected with the bringing out of "Sejanus" should not be omitted. Jonson told Drummond that the Earl of Northampton had a mortal enmity to him "for beating, on a St. George's day, one of his attenders"; and he adds, that Northampton had him "called before the Councell for his Sejanus," and accused him there both of "Poperie and treason."

Jonson's relations with Shakespeare seem always to have been friendly; and about this time we hear of them as associate members of the greatest of literary and the greatest of convivial clubs,--the club instituted by Sir Walter Raleigh, and known to all times as the "Mermaid," so called from the tavern in which the meetings were held. Various, however, as were the genius and accomplishments it included, it lacked one phase of ability which has deprived us of all participation in its wit and wisdom. It could boast of Shakespeare, and Jonson, and Raleigh, and Camden, and Beaumont, and Selden, but, alas! it had no Boswell to record its words,

"So nimble, and so full of subtile flame."

There are traditions of "wit-combats" between Shakespeare and Jonson; and doubtless there was many a discussion between them touching the different principles on which their dramas were composed; and then Ben, astride his high horse of the classics, probably blustered and harangued, and graciously informed the world's greatest poet that he sometimes wanted art and sometimes sense, and candidly advised him to check the fatal rapidity and perilous combinations of his imagination,--while Shakespeare smilingly listened, and occasionally put in an ironic word, deprecating such austere criticism of a playwright like himself, who accommodated his art to the humors of the mob that crowded the "round O" of The Globe. There can be no question that Shakespeare saw Ben through and through, but he was not a man to be intolerant of foibles, and probably enjoyed the hectoring egotism of his friend as much as he appreciated his real merits. As for Ben, the transcendent genius of his brother dramatist pierced through even the thick hide of his self-sufficiency. "I did honor him," he finely says, "this side of idolatry, as much as any other man."

On the accession of James of Scotland to the English throne, Jonson was employed by the court and city to design a splendid pageant for the monarch's reception; and, with that absence of vindictiveness which somewhat atoned for his arrogance, he gave his recent enemy, Dekkar, three fifths of the job. About the same time he was reconciled to Marston; and in 1605 assisted him and Chapman in a comedy called "Eastward Hoe!" One passage in this, reflecting on the Scotch, gave mortal offence to James's greedy countrymen, who invaded England in his train, and were ravenous and clamorous for the spoils of office. Captain Seagul, in the play, praises what was then the new settlement of Virginia, as "a place without sergeants, or courtiers, or lawyers, or intelligencers, only a few industrious Scots perhaps, who indeed are dispersed over the whole earth. But as for them, there are no greater friends to Englishmen and England, when they are out on 't, in the world, than they are; and, for my own part, I would a hundred thousand of them were there, for we are all one countrymen now, ye know, and we should find ten times more comfort of them there than we do here." This bitter taunt, which probably made the theatre roar with applause, was so represented to the king, that Marston and Chapman were arrested and imprisoned. Jonson nobly insisted on sharing their fate; and as he had powerful friends at court, and was esteemed by James himself, his course may have saved his friends from disgraceful mutilations. A report was circulated that the noses and ears of all three were to be slit and Jonson tells us, that, in an entertainment he gave to Camden, Selden, and other friends after his liberation, his old mother exhibited a paper full of "lustie strong poison," which she said she intended to have mixed _in his drink_, in case the threat of such a shameful punishment had been officially announced. The phrase "his drink" is very characteristic; and, whatever liquid was meant, we may be sure that it was not water, and that the good lady would have daily had numerous opportunities to mix the poison with it.

The five years which succeeded his imprisonment carried Jonson to the height of his prosperity and glory. During this period he produced the three great comedies on which his fame as a dramatist rests,--"The Fox," "The Silent Woman," and "The Alchymist,"--and also many of the most beautiful of those Masques, performed at court, in which the ingenuity, delicacy, richness, and elevation of his fancy found fittest expression. His social position was probably superior to Shakespeare's. He was really the Court Poet long before 1616, when he received the office, with a pension of a hundred marks. We have Clarendon's testimony to the fact that "his conversation was very good, and with men of the best note." Among his friends occurs the great name of Bacon.

In 1618, when "Ben Jonson" had come to be familiar words on the lips of all educated men in the island, he made his celebrated journey on foot to Scotland, and was hospitably entertained by the nobility and gentry around Edinburgh. Taylor, the water poet, in his "Pennylesse Pilgrimage" to Scotland, has this amiable reference to him. "At Leith," he says, "I found my long approved and assured good friend, Master Benjamin Jonson, at one Master John Stuart's house. I thank him for his great kindness; for, at my taking leave of him, he gave me a piece of gold of two-and-twenty shillings' value, to drink his health in England." One object of Jonson's journey was to visit Drummond of Hawthornden. He passed three or four weeks with Drummond at Hawthornden, and poured out his mind to him without reserve or stint. The finical and fastidious poet was somewhat startled at this irruption of his burly guest into his dainty solitude; took notes of his free conversation, especially when he decried his contemporaries; and further carried out the rites of hospitality by adding a caustic, though keen, summary of his qualities of character. Thus, according to his dear friend's charitable analysis, Ben "was a great lover and praiser of himself; a contemner and scorner of others; given rather to losse a friend than a jest; jealous of every word and action of those about him (especiallie after drink, which is one of the elements in which he liveth); a dissembler of ill parts which raigne in him, a bragger of some good that he wanteth; thinketh nothing well bot what either he himself or some of his friends and countrymen have said or done; he is passionately kynde and angry; careless either to gaine or keep; vindictive, but, if he be well answered, at himself." It is not much to the credit of Jonson's insight, that, after flooding his pensively taciturn host with his boisterous and dogmatic talk, he parted with him under the impression that he was leaving an assured friend. Ah! your demure listeners to your unguarded conversation,--they are the ones that give the fatal stabs!

A literal transcript of Drummond's original notes of Jonson's conversations, made by Sir Robert Sibbald about the year 1710, has been published in the collections of the Shakespeare Society. This is a more extended report than that included in Drummond's works, though still not so full as the reader might desire. The stoutness of Ben's character is felt in every utterance. Thus he tells Drummond that "he never esteemed of a man for the name of a lord,"--a sentiment which he had expressed more impressively in his published epigram on Burleigh:--

"Cecil, the grave, the wise, the great, the good,
What is there more that can ennoble blood?"

He had, it seems, "a minde to be a churchman, and, so he might have favour to make one sermon to the King, he careth not what thereafter sould befall him; for he would not flatter though he saw Death." Queen Elizabeth is the mark of a most scandalous imputation, and the mildest of Ben's remarks respecting her is that she "never saw herself, after she became old, in a true glass; they painted her, _and sometymes would vermilion_ her nose." "Of all styles," he said, "he most loved to be named Honest, and hath of that one hundreth letters so naming him." His judgments on other poets were insolently magisterial. "Spenser's stanzas pleased him not, nor his matter"; Samuel Daniel was a good honest man, but no poet; Donne, though "the first poet in the world in some things," for "not keeping of accent, deserved hanging"; Abram Fraunce, "in his English hexameters, was a foole"; Sharpham, Day, and Dekkar were all rogues; Francis Beaumont "loved too much himself and his own verses." Some biographical items in the record of these conversations are of interest. It seems that the first day of every new year the Earl of Pembroke sent him twenty pounds "to buy bookes." By all his plays he never gained two hundred pounds. "Sundry tymes he hath devoured his bookes," that is, sold them to supply himself with necessaries. When he was imprisoned for killing his brother actor in a duel, in the Queen's time, "his judges could get nothing of him to all their demands but I and No. They placed two damn'd villains, to catch advantage of him, with him, but he was advertised by his keeper"; and he added, as if the revenge was as terrible as the offence, "of the spies he hath ane epigrame." He told a few personal stories to Drummond, calculated to moderate our wonder that Mrs. Jonson was a shrew; and, as they were boastingly told, we must suppose that his manners were not so austere as his verse. But perhaps the most characteristic image he has left of himself, through these conversations, is this: "He hath consumed a whole night in lying looking to his great toe, about which he hath seen Tartars and Turks, Romans and Carthaginians, feight in his imagination."

Jonson's fortunes seem to have suffered little abatement until the death of King James, in 1625. Then declining popularity and declining health combined their malice to break the veteran down; and the remaining twelve years of his life were passed in doing battle with those relentless enemies of poets,--want and disease. The orange--or rather the lemon--was squeezed, and both court and public seemed disposed to throw away the peel. In the epilogue to his play of "The New Inn," brought out in 1630, the old tone of defiance is gone. He touchingly appeals to the audience as one who is "sick and sad"; but, with a noble humility, he begs they will refer none of the defects of the work to mental decay.

"All that his weak and faltering tongue doth crave
Is that you not refer it to his brain;
That 's yet unhurt, although set round with pain."

The audience were insensible to this appeal. They found the play dull, and hooted it from the stage. Perhaps, after having been bullied so long, they took delight in having Ben "on the hip." Charles the First, however, who up to this time seems to have neglected his father's favorite, now generously sent him a hundred pounds to cheer him in his misfortunes; and shortly after he raised his salary, as Court Poet, from a hundred marks to a hundred pounds, adding, in compliment to Jonson's known tastes, a tierce of Canary,--a wine of which he was so fond as to be nicknamed, in ironical reference to a corpulence which rather assimilated him to the ox, "a Canary bird." It is to this period, we suppose, we must refer his testimony to his own obesity in his "Epistle to my Lady Coventry."

"So you have gained a Servant and a Muse:
The first of which I fear you will refuse,
And you may justly; being a tardy, cold,
Unprofitable chattel, fat and old,
Laden with belly, and doth hardly approach
His friends, but to break chairs or crack a coach.
His weight is twenty stone, within two pound;
And that 's made up, as doth the purse abound."

As his life declined, it does not appear that his disposition was essentially modified. There are two characteristic references to him in his old age, which prove that Ben, attacked by palsy and dropsy, with a reputation perceptibly waning, was Ben still. One is from Sir John Suckling's pleasantly malicious "Session of the Poets":--

"The first that broke silence was good old Ben,
Prepared before with Canary wine,
And he told them plainly he deserved the bays,
For his were called works where others were but plays.

*....*....*....*

Apollo stopped him there, and bade him not go on;
'T was merit, he said, and not presumption,
Must carry 't; at which Ben turned about,
And in great choler offered to go out."

That is a saucy touch,--that of Ben's rage when he is told that presumption is not, before Apollo, to take the place of merit, or even to back it!

The other notice is taken from a letter from Howel to Sir Thomas Hawk, written the year before Jonson's death:--

"I was invited yesternight to a solemn supper by B. J., where you were deeply remembered. There was good company, excellent cheer, choice wines, and jovial welcome. One thing intervened which almost spoiled the relish of the rest,--that B. began to engross all the discourse, to vapor extremely by himself, and, by vilifying others, to magnify his own Muse. For my part, I am content to dispense with the Roman infirmity of Ben, now that time has snowed upon his pericranium."

But this snow of time, however it may have begun to cover up the solider qualities of his mind, seems to have left untouched his strictly poetic faculty. That shone out in his last hours, with more than usual splendor, in the beautiful pastoral drama of "The Sad Shepherd"; and it may be doubted if, in his whole works, any other passage can be found so exquisite in sentiment, fancy, and expression as the opening lines of this charming product of his old age:--

"Here she was wont to go! and here! and here!
Just where those daisies, pinks, and violets grow:
The world may find the Spring by following her;
For other print her airy steps ne'er left:
Her treading would not bend a blade of grass,
Or shake the downy blow-ball from his stalk!
But like the soft west-wind she shot along,
And where she went the flowers took thickest root,
As she had sowed them with her odorous foot!"

Before he completed "The Sad Shepherd," he was struck with mortal illness; and the brave old man prepared to meet his last enemy, and, if possible, convert him into a friend. As early as 1606 he had returned to the English Church, after having been for twelve years a Romanist; and his penitent death-bed was attended by the Bishop of Winchester. He died in August, 1637, in his sixty-fourth year, and was buried in Westminster Abbey. The inscription on the common pavement stone which was laid over his grave still expresses, after a lapse of two hundred years, the feelings of all readers of the English race,--

"O RARE BEN JONSON!"

It must be admitted, however, that this epithet is sufficiently indefinite to admit widely differing estimates of the value of his works. In a critical view, the most obvious characteristic of his mind is its bulk; but its creativeness bears no proportion to its massiveness. His faculties, ranged according to their relative strength, would fall into this rank:--first, BEN; next, understanding; next, memory; next, humor; next, fancy; and last and least, imagination. Thus, in the strictly poetic action of his mind, his fancy and imagination being subordinated to his other faculties, and not co-ordinated with them, his whole nature is not kindled, and his best masques and sweetest lyrics give no idea of the general largeness of the man. In them the burly giant becomes gracefully _petite_; it is Fletcher's Omphale "smiling the club" out of the hand of Hercules, and making him, for the time, "spin her smocks." Now the greatest poetical creations of Shakespeare are those in which he is greatest in reason, and greatest in passion, and greatest in knowledge, as well as greatest in imagination,--his poetic power being

"Like to the fabled Cytherea's zone,
Binding all things with beauty."

His mind is "one entire and perfect chrysolite," while Jonson's rather suggests the pudding-stone. The poet _in_ Ben, being thus but a comparatively small portion _of_ Ben, works by effort, rather than efficiency, and leaves the impression of ingenuity rather than inventiveness. But in his tragedies of "Sejanus" and "Catiline," and especially in his three great comedies of "The Fox," "The Alchymist," and "The Silent Woman," the whole man is thrust forward, with his towering individuality, his massive understanding, his wide knowledge of the baser side of life, his relentless scorn of weakness and wickedness, his vivid memory of facts and ideas derived from books. They seem written with his fist. But, though they convey a powerful impression of his collective ability, they do not convey a poetic impression, and hardly an agreeable one. His greatest characters, as might be expected, are not heroes or martyrs, but cheats or dupes. His most magnificent cheat is Volpone, in "The Fox"; his most magnificent dupe is Sir Epicure Mammon, in "The Alchymist"; but in their most gorgeous mental rioting in imaginary objects or sense, the effect is produced by a dogged accumulation of successive images, which are linked by no train of strictly imaginative association, and are not fused into unity of purpose by the fire of passion-penetrated imagination.

Indeed, it is a curious psychological study to watch the laborious process by which Jonson drags his thoughts and fancies from the reluctant and resisting soil of his mind, and then lays them, one after the other, with a deep-drawn breath, on his page. Each is forced into form by main strength, as we sometimes see a pillar of granite wearily drawn through the street by a score of straining oxen. Take, for example, Sir Epicure Mammon's detail of the luxuries he will revel in when his possession of the philosopher's stone shall have given him boundless wealth. The first cup of Canary and the first tug of invention bring up this enormous piece of humor:--

"My flatterers
Shall be the pure and gravest of divines
That I can get for money."

Then another wrench of the mind, and, it is to be feared, another inlet of the liquid, and we have this:--

"My meat shall all come in in Indian shells,
Dishes of agate, set in gold, and studded
With emeralds, sapphires, hyacinths, and rubies."

Glue that on, and now for another tug:--

"My shirts
I 'll have of taffeta-sarsnet, soft and light
As cobwebs; and for all my other raiment,
It shall be such as might provoke the Persian,
Were he to teach the world riot anew."

And then, a little heated, his imagination is stung into action, and this refinement of sensation flashes out:--

"My gloves of fishes' and birds' skins perfumed
_With gums of Paradise and Eastern air_."

And now we have an extravagance jerked violently out from his logical fancy:--

"I will have all my beds blown up, not stuffed;
Down is too hard."

But all this patient accumulation of particulars, each costing a mighty effort of memory or analogy, produces no cumulative effect. Certainly, the word "strains," as employed to designate the effusions of poetry, has a peculiar significance as applied to Jonson's verse. No hewer of wood or drawer of water ever earned his daily wages by a more conscientious putting forth of daily labor. Critics--and among the critics Ben is the most clamorous--call upon us to admire and praise the construction of his plays. But his plots, admirable of their kind, are still but elaborate contrivances of the understanding, all distinctly thought out beforehand by the method of logic, not the method of imagination; regular in external form, but animated by no living internal principle; artful, but not artistic; ingenious schemes, not organic growths; and conveying the same kind of pleasure we experience in inspecting other mechanical contrivances. His method is neither the method of nature nor the method of art, but the method of artifice. A drama of Shakespeare may be compared to an oak; a drama by Jonson, to a cunningly fashioned box, made of oak-wood, with some living plants growing in it. Jonson is big; Shakespeare is great.

Still we say, "O rare Ben Jonson!" A large, rude, clumsy, English force, irritable, egotistic, dogmatic, and quarrelsome, but brave, generous, and placable; with no taint of a malignant vice in his boisterous foibles; with a good deal of the bulldog in him, but nothing of the spaniel, and one whose growl was ever worse than his bite;--he, the bricklayer's apprentice, fighting his way to eminence through the roughest obstacles, capable of wrath, but incapable of falsehood, willing to boast, but scorning to creep, still sturdily keeps his hard-won position among the Elizabethan worthies as poet, playwright, scholar, man of letters, man of muscle and brawn; as friend of Beaumont and Fletcher and Chapman and Bacon and Shakespeare; and as ever ready, in all places and at all times, to assert the manhood of Ben by tongue and pen and sword.

UNCHARITABLENESS.

I hold society responsible for a great deal.

I wondered once where all the disconsolate came from,--where all the human wrecks tossed up by the waves of misfortune received their injuries, and what became of those who sailed from port in early youth and were never heard of more. I marvelled, too, that there were so many unhappy bachelors, so many forlorn maids, so many neither wife nor maid; but at all these things I wonder no longer. I have solved the problem I set myself. Society makes them all.

I am not going to analyze society to please any one. I make mine own. Hyacinth, I dare swear, makes his. Why shall I paint it? It is you, it is I, it is both of us, and many more. Can I sketch the figures in a kaleidoscope ere they change? If I could, I might say what society is or was. To-day members of circles marry, or are given in marriage. Disease comes and war decimates; foul tongues asperse, and the unity that was perfect is so no longer. The whole world is society, and I believe there was not so much confusion at the Tower of Babel after all. Men speak in different tongues, but their motives are the same in all climes.

I love or I hate my Celtic friend. The sea rolls between us, but from afar the same sun warms us. If he does a good deed, I shall applaud it; or, if he is mean, shall I not smite him? The world looks on, and puts us all to the test alike. We love or we hate.

Are there no Procrustean couches in these days? If my neighbor is too short, what shall I do but stretch him? if he is too long, I am the one who shall hack off his superfluous inches.

Ah! believe me, sceptic, there is a mote in thine eye, but in mine there is no beam. It is I who am immaculate. "The king can do no wrong." I am a king unto myself; but, whether king or commoner, how lenient I am to my own faults,--how intensely alive to my neighbor's!

If Kubla Khan decide to build his pleasure dome,--nay, if he but hint at it,--I set myself to wonder where he can possibly have obtained the funds. Not in commerce surely. Not in that vulgar little furnishing-store in which he has toiled early and late for twenty years. He is doubtless a spy of the government,--a detective of some kind; and, now that I recall it, he certainly was away some time during the Rebellion. In short, there are many ways by which he may have procured this money dishonestly. Rather than believe my neighbor quite honest and beyond reproach, I discuss the topic of his supposed fall from virtue with our mutual neighbors, until at last I bring them to the conclusion I have long ago arrived at, which is, if the truth were known, that Kubla Khan is no better than the law compels him to be.

I do this, of course, solely from a regard for virtue, from a sense of duty. The times, I say in my discussions, are such that one must know his associates thoroughly; and so I believe, or profess to believe, K. K. to be a rogue rather than an honest, upright man.

I have a right to my opinion, have I not? Most unquestionably. While this tongue and beard can wag, I will assert the privilege of free speech. But have I a right to traduce my neighbor? What business is it of mine if he has money, and sees fit to build a house with it? Am I his banker, that I give heed to his concerns? Why cannot I look on with delight, and even help select the site of the future edifice? All of his previous life has been blameless and without reproach; but now I suddenly discover that my neighbor is not trustworthy. Is this charity?

Perhaps I do not touch upon Kubla Khan and his prospective chateau at all. My neighbors in the house adjoining engross my attention. Come! let us watch for the butcher and the baker, that we may see what our neighbors' fare is. I will engage that I can fix to a shilling the amount of their weekly bills. Such meanness are some people guilty of, that they live upon a sum that would not keep my boy in tarts. I am certain that our neighbors take ice but every other day in the summer, and if the milk they buy is not swill-fed, then I am no judge. The steaks are not porter-house, but rump-steaks. Last Saturday night I saw Pater-familias bring home a smoked shoulder,--not a _ham_, because that is much dearer; and--will it be believed?--the bonnets the girls wear are revamped from those of last year. Young Threadpaper dances attendance upon them, and I am sure of all low things a man milliner is the lowest. Two weeks ago Pater-familias rode down town with me, and I saw upon his shoe an immense patch, while his hat was so shiny, with frequent caressings from a silk handkerchief, that it seemed to be varnished and polished.

His clothes are very unfashionable, too. He is invariably a year behind the style; and how can one respect a person who does not wear garments of the prevalent cut?

There must be something mysterious about this man. If there is, I am the one to ferret it out. Let me see. His manner is reticent. From this I deduce the fact that he has at some time been a convict. All men who have been incarcerated are just so quiet. I was once in a jail in Massachusetts, with other persons, and one poor fellow, taking advantage of our presence, whispered to his neighbor, whereat the jailer swore awfully, and punished him; but the rest were very quiet, just like my neighbor. It is certainly suspicious.

He is economical, too. Ah! that follows quite naturally. Remorse has seized him, and he is now endeavoring to pay off his indebtedness, or do something else which I cannot fathom just now; thus making his family suffer doubly for his misdeed.

O, I cry in the pride of my heart, truly "the sins of the fathers are visited upon the children," and I not only fix the nature of my neighbor's transgression, but the very jail in which he was incarcerated.

Fool and blind that I am! If I had but a tithe of that intuition I boast, I might have discerned that my neighbor was one of those rare individuals we sometimes read of in tracts, but seldom meet in the flesh,--one of those heroes who fight daily battles with trial, temptation, suffering, and privation in many shapes, that he may live honorably before men, and leave a heritage of honor to his children when he goeth to his long home. I might have seen that this man worked early and late without complaint, that he might pay debts his dead father incurred for his education, and that the poor decrepit old lady whom no physician can cure is his mother. She costs him a pretty penny for her support, I warrant me, and accuses him in her dotage with harboring a desire to get rid of her. What wonder if he is reticent to the world? Look in his eye. It is the eye of an honest man. Take his hand. 'T is a true palm, and many a beggar shall be refused at Dives's door, but not at his.

But he is poor; he looks downcast. Come, let us beslime him with the breath of suspicion. Let us gossip about him. Let us look askance at him, and direct our children to avoid his,--when they play their little hour, to run swiftly past that wretched abode of silence.

Silence! said I. Ah! that is a queer silence which reigns in my neighbor's dwelling. When he comes to his family there are shouts and laughter, and rosy-mouthed roisterers stand ready to pillage the plethoric pockets laden to the flaps with bananas and oranges he has starved himself to procure. I do not hear that he discusses his neighbor's affairs, or that he distils into his oolong one drop of bitter scandal by way of flavor. Nay, I am certain that I might lose five hundred dollars per diem, and the world would be none the wiser through him.

So much for externals.

How sharply we see things which have no existence! How quickly we discern faults in our neighbors, but how slow we are to find out our own!

Now I look at it, there is a grievous rent in my neighbor's doublet; but look at mine own. How it fits! Is it not immaculate? I have a suit of character in which I am triply armed,--a coat of mail of reputation which I defy slander to pierce. The man who wrote

"He that is down need fear no fall,
He that is up no pride,
He that is humble ever shall
Have God to be his guide,"

knew nothing about human nature. I fancy I could teach that genius a thing or two. The springs of human action are not concealed to me. Ah, no! I see them all, in my own conceit, and no mean motive of other people escapes me.

But how shall my neighbor fare at my hands in argument? Well, I trust, if he agree with me. That is, provided he sees things as I do. If he sees the shield to be gold, and I see it so also, what sagacity he has! what judgment! "A man of fine talents," I say to my son. "See that you emulate him. Mark how quickly he grasps the same points that I did,--with what nice discrimination he avoids irrelevant matters, and treats only the main idea." Next to myself, I say in my heart, there is no one but my neighbor who could have solved this riddle so quickly.

But let him dare to disagree with me,--let him say the shield is gold when I say it is silver, or brass if I like,--and what depth of stultification is too deep for him,--what pit of error too dark for him to stumble in? He is a sophisticator, a casuist; he chases every paltry side-issue until his brains are so muddled that he cannot tell what he does think; he is a mole, an owl, a bat; he is a blockhead, to boot.

What! differ from _me_?--the idiot! I say the shield _is_ silver; how can it be gold? Is it not white? doth it not glisten? hath it not lustre? what else can it be?

My neighbor suggests sportively that it is tin; whereupon I impugn my neighbor's good-sense; and that is a logical conclusion of the controversy. It does not occur to me that a man may differ in opinion from his fellows, and yet not be a convicted felon or a disturber of the peace. His views are his; foolish, perhaps, from my standpoint; yet, because he is not so wise as I, is he any the less entitled to courtesy, to consideration and charity,--is he the less a fond father, a patriot, or an honorable man? Why insist that of all the world I am sagest and always right?

Why shall I break the images men set up? Iconoclast that I am, reflection would show me what long years ago my copy-book told me, _Humanum est errare_,--and that violence, intolerance, and discourtesy are poor weapons to fight prejudice and bigotry with. Come! let us throw them aside hereafter; let none be persecuted or derided in social circles for their opinions' sake. There are more forcible arguments than vituperation and personality, and if we cannot convince, let us be content.

The world is made for all. When my Uncle Toby took the fly and let him out, he did as men should to others who differ in opinion. Go! I say to the sceptic, the world is wide enough for thee and me.

At the commencement of this paper, I said it was no mystery where the disconsolate came from,--society made them; and I reassert it as my conviction that the supply is far ahead of the demand. I say too many in society are hollow and false, and not true to themselves, nor to the instinct planted in every human breast.

By word or deed I convey to my _vis-a-vis_ in the crowded _salon_ my opinion that our host's daughter is a failure; the money spent upon her education is thrown away. She has no air, no manner, no tone. My _vis-a-vis_ understands me, and, taking her cue, goes to the cherished of her heart, and straightway repeats the slander, and we smile and smile and are villains.

"Vanity of vanities, all is vanity, saith the Preacher," and I say after him, Is there nothing but nettles in the world's garden,--nothing but noxious weeds? Have we no traits and sentiments which are lofty and ennobling? Why cannot we see these and talk about them? But whoever went to a party where the guests talked of virtue?

Here is Straitlace. His wife is in the country; he will therefore bear watching. Come! let us invent and suppose, let us pry and peek. Ah, ha! I see a letter,--a _billet-doux_, a delicately scented one, and he is so close to me in the cars that, by the merest accident I assure you, I am able to read the beginning,--"Dearest of my soul."

There, that is quite enough. Dearest of her soul, indeed! Do wives begin letters in that way? Not many. Shocking! Dreadful! And then my comrades and I roll the sweet morsel under our tongues, when, after all, the model husband was only reading his model wife's letter.

Or look at this phase of uncharitableness. What a happy faculty my countrymen have for finding out each other's business. I move into some country village, where a small but select community meet and agitate various topics for the moral regeneration of all. I am from the city, and therefore have some ways easily noticed. I am unquestionably "stuck up," and am hardly settled in my place before a tea-party is held, not to do me honor, but to sit in inquest upon me and my family.

Are our virtues discussed at the inquest? Have we any good qualities? Are we not almost outcasts? How we drawl our words, for example. We wear white skirts, when balmorals are good enough for most folks. We starve our children, too, because they get only bread and milk for tea, and no pies or cakes. In short, how very far below our neighbors we are in social standing!

Go to, ye shallow dissemblers, retailers of scandal, disturbers of the peace! Leave _us_ in peace, and possess your souls in patience. We are human, and frail even as you are. We have faults and virtues. Why not extend the hand of friendship to us? Why not be courteous, instead of making us detest your presence,--instead of souring our tempers, and making us feel as though every one's hand was against us?

There is that Abigail, whom I have often seen lounging at the next door below. She snuffeth scandal from afar. She heareth the whisperings and innuendoes of them that traffic in reputations, and she loseth little time ere she adorns the secret meetings of the conspirators with her presence. Away with her to the scaffold! she is chiefest among the malefactors. Offer her up a sacrifice to charity, and let none say nay!

Suppose I stand by when the tale-bearer begins his monotonous song, what am I to lose by keeping silent, as he tears my neighbor to pieces?

There were two maidens, saith the fable, one of whom was lovely to look upon, while the other was plain; but when the former spake, toads and serpents fell from her lips, while from the unlovely lips came diamonds and pearls. I know which I should have wooed, and I hope won, for I value more a quiet life than false lips and a tongue that speaketh lies.

"Speech is silvern, but silence is golden." I shall be silent when the detractor begins his tale.

"Teach me to hide the faults I see,
And feel for others' woe,"

saith the poet, and, though he may be accused of uttering a platitude, I subscribe to it. I am willing to forgive and forget, instead of enlarging upon all the flaws, all the weaknesses, of human nature. I shall not thunder on the roof of some hapless wretch who has stumbled, fallen by the wayside, and cry, "Come out! come out! thou villain, and do penance for thy sin." I will rather give him my hand and help him arise. I will set him up again, and I will back him against all takers that he never slips again.

"One touch of nature makes the whole world kin," saith another poet; but he meant good, not bad nature, for he knew full well how to set communities by the ears with his sharp sayings.

To-day it is the sister against her brother, the son against his father, and the world is so full of evil, if we might believe the scandal-mongers, that no good will ever exist again in it.

"Let those who dance pay the piper," says Worldly-mindedness, and he chuckles as he says it for a sharp thing. But there are some who like dancing that have not the wherewithal, and to those I offer my purse. If a man fall down, I am not going to jump upon his back and jeer him. He has danced, and cannot pay now; but what of that? Some day he will.

Here is one hand and one heart that shall never betray. Come to me, ye scandal-torn and society-ridden. Come to me, ye whom venomous tongues have harried, and ye whose characters hang in shreds about you, come also. Ye have faults, and so have I. Somewhere ye have good traits, and these are what I respect.

Let us defy the "they-says," and as for those whose shibboleth is, "I have it upon good authority," we will give them the go-by.

We will laugh to see the tribulation of them that sit in council, and hold foul revelry over their neighbors' shortcomings; they shall read of our resolutions, and there shall be no comfort in the cup of tea any more which Tabbies sip delectably, while they tear Miss Bright-eyes to pieces. There shall lurk a maggot in the shreds of dried beef which these modern ghouls rend, as they rend my fair name; and may the biscuits be as heavy upon their stomachs as tale-bearing shall one day be upon their consciences.

_Thou shalt not bear false witness._

If I am unlike you, gentle reader, guiltless of this crying sin, I know you will not condemn me, will not decry me, make little of me, or seek to poison men's minds against me. You will have that charity for me which is not puffed up; and where I err, or you are ignorant of my motive, hold your peace.

To-day there are dear ones in exile, or in the bonds of sin, for this very practice. There are lives hopelessly lost to virtue, and others imbittered forever. Families are separated, and high hopes and aspirations crushed, while the fountains of affection which should be filled to the brim afford only a trickling stream, or, worse still, foul lees which never will subside. There are shadows in many homes, and empty chairs that never will be filled. The child on the floor misses its playfellow, the wife her husband, the mother her son, the betrothed her lover, and still the tale-bearers go upon their rounds, and their feet never, never rest.

THE ROSE ROLLINS.