Chapter XI (2)

But to conquer the rebellion is not to subjugate the South. This is a distinction of the utmost importance in attempting to estimate the consequences of the great struggle. So far from the subjugation of the Southern people resulting, in any contingency, the success of the Union arms must be their regeneration and redemption. To overthrow the confederate government will be only to relieve the people from its grasp, and to reinstate them in the rights and liberties which they have hitherto enjoyed. A combination of force, fraud, and self-delusion has sustained the power of the rebel dynasty, and enabled it to wield the influence and authority of the whole people of the seceding States, with some few remarkable exceptions. To break up this combination will do more than merely defeat a hostile power: it will, in effect, annihilate the whole vicious organization, and leave its elements free to engage in other combinations, more in accordance with right, and better calculated to secure success and prosperity. It is not unreasonable to anticipate that they will eventually resume their former relations with the Federal Government, as most conducive to these ends. There are some men, perhaps one whole class, who can never escape the responsibility of all the overwhelming evils and calamities which the war has brought upon the South. The cordial acquiescence of these can hardly be anticipated; but their power will be completely destroyed, and the people may well be expected to disregard their murmurs and complaints. Indeed, it is not altogether unlikely that an injured and exasperated people may turn on the authors of their ruin, and wreak upon them a fearful vengeance, so far, at least, as to ostracize and banish them forever from the land they have blighted and destroyed. The masses of the people, holding few or no slaves, though involved in the war by force of the general delusion into which they have been artfully inveigled, will not consider themselves responsible for its consequences; they will rather look on themselves as the victims of designing men, who, for selfish purposes, have partly seduced and partly impelled them into the perils and disasters of a gigantic but fruitless rebellion. This state of feeling will leave the minds of the Southern people in a condition to estimate fairly their own relations to the rebellion, and their obligations to the Union, which again calls them, with paternal tenderness, to its generous confidence and magnanimous protection. They will have no cause for apprehension that their restoration to good fellowship and perfect equality will not be complete and free from all unfriendly reservations.

But this influence will not operate on those alone who have few or no slaves, comprehending the great mass of whites: it will exert itself more notably on the large body of slaves themselves. This is an element in the calculation which, humble though it be, cannot be overlooked without great error in the results. A fundamental change will take place in the condition of the blacks. They will be emancipated, either gradually and safely, or with violent precipitation, with all its evils and disasters. Yet, however the decree may come, whether by the sudden blow of military power, or by the free and cheerful cooperation of the States and their people, the measure itself will be plainly the result of the rebellion, as met by the firm and noble stand assumed by the Federal Government, and maintained at so great a cost of treasure and of precious lives. The Government which, out of civil war and chaotic strife, brings such advantages--out of calamity and danger educes such blessings of security and progress will be entitled to the unbounded gratitude of those who will be the chief gainers by its policy. But experience will soon teach the whites that they will be equal gainers in the end; and, in time, we may justly expect not only their cheerful acquiescence, but their renewed allegiance and ardent support to the Federal authorities.

MOTTOES FOR CONTRACTORS.

When you contract for boots and shoes,
Be not contracted in your views.

When you agree to clothe the body,
Expand your soul and flee from shoddy.

No soul the difference can see
'Twixt chico-rye and chicoree.

'Tis wise to feed the soldier well:
For reason _why_--see Dante's 'Hell.'

SUNSHINE IN THOUGHT.[3]

The genial pen of Mr. Leland has found an attractive theme in the title of this curious and suggestive volume. Without the formality of an inexorable system, it is written from the impulses of a large and sympathetic nature, more accustomed to the acute observation of details than to exact and rigid generalizations, but sending free and penetrating glances beneath the surface of social life, and presenting a variety of sagacious hints and comments, often admirable for their quaint, original illustrations, and seldom destitute of an important ethical bearing and significance.

In the composition of this work, Mr. Leland has aimed at the defence of that view of life which combines a cheerful earnestness of purpose with manly energy of action, as opposed to the melancholic, whining, lachrymose spirit, which has been affected by certain popular modern poets, and, through their vicious example, has been cherished as one of the essential qualities of genius. Of this style of character Mr. Leland has not the slightest degree of tolerance. Its manifestations are all abominable in his eyes, and unsavory in his nostrils. He cannot endure its presence; he regards its exercise as a nuisance: its permission in the plan of a kindly Providence is a mystery.

The influence of a morbid melancholy, whether affected or genuine, in the literature of the United States, is justly a matter of surprise and lamentation with the author. The American mind, as he remarks, has doubtless a strong tendency to humor. It delights in the expression of a mischievous irony or good-natured sarcasm. The querulous wailings which are the stock in trade of a certain class of writers are unnatural and discordant sounds. We should expect rather a serene and cheerful melody from a young and brave-hearted race, which is in intimate relations with the external world. Instead of this, we have sucked in with the milk of our Puritan mothers a forlorn and sorrowful spirit. We celebrate our festivals with a sad countenance. We attempt to make merry by singing dismal psalms. We weave our woes into poetry, and expand our wretchedness in plaintive declamations.

This is a wide departure from the genius of Christianity, as well as from the healthy instincts of humanity. In the first ages after Christ, the newborn element of thought was a pure and beautiful spring, bubbling up from the moss-grown ruins of the temple of heathendom. A hopeful, joyous tone is indicated in the symbols of the early faith preserved in the Vatican. It contained the germ of republican freedom and of a benign and beneficent civilization. But it was driven by political convulsions toward the East, and returned in the melancholy robes of the dreamy and morbid oriental. It learned from Indian fakirs that laughter was a sin, that misery was meritorious, that the hatred of beauty and joy was a virtue in the sight of Heaven. The early Christians were imbued with the sentiment of moral grandeur and loveliness; they represented Christ our Lord as the fair ideal of humanity; but a darker age decreed that his form should be meagre and homely--misled by those pagan Syrian pictures, which still disfigure the churches in Russia, and whose original may be found in the avatars of violence, modified by old Persian influence. From the seventh to the twelfth century, the tendency to asceticism was rampant. Beauty was proscribed as a temptation of the devil; deformed and crooked limbs were ranked among the beatitudes; even dirt was apotheosized, and, as a consequence, millions of men were mowed down by unheard-of forms of disease. Humanity did not submit to this rule of austerity and torture without a struggle. There was often a brave, vigorous resistance. A lively protest was uttered in the joyous strains of the troubadours and minnesingers. The glad spirit of nature could not be wholly suppressed, and from amid the social oppressions of the times sweet voices fell upon the ear, celebrating the praises of woman, the love of beauty, and the joyousness of life.

But, according to our author, none of the great names in literature have ever proclaimed the evangel of cheerfulness in all its health and purity. The world as yet has never been fit to receive it. Years may pass before it will be fully unfolded. Society is still in its earliest March spring. The fresh winds which blow are still wild and chill; the nights are long and dreary; and during these gloomy hours, the ancient crone still relates horrible legends to believing ears. If the elder or wiser ones only half believe them, most of the listeners still shiver at their weird, grotesque poetry, and when they make new songs for themselves, the old demoniac strains still linger on the air, showing the origin of their earliest lays.

In order to illustrate the lack of true joyousness in the literature of the world, Mr. Leland takes a rapid survey of some of the most distinguished writers in ancient and modern times. Aristophanes, he maintains, did not possess the genuine element in question. Allowing the claims of the great satirist to genius, he had not reached the perennial springs of cheerfulness in the depths of the human soul. In his gayest arabesques, we trace the eternal line of life, but the deep, monotonous echo of death is always nigh. He still had the sorrows which grieve the strong humorist of every age. He could not escape the deep woe of seeing social right and human happiness trodden under foot by tyranny; and folly and ignorance, pain and sorrow were the great foundation stones on which the gay temple of Grecian beauty was built. For every free citizen who wandered through the groves of the Academy, holding high converse with Plato, and revelling in the enjoyment of the divinest beauty in nature and art, there was an untold multitude of slaves and barbarians, into whose lives was crowded every element of bitterness.

But surely, the great sage of humor, glorious Father Rabelais, of later days, was an exception to the prevailing rule of joyousness in literature? Not at all, contends our author. To the young mind which hungers for truth and joy, there is something irresistibly fascinating and persuasive in the jolly philosophy and reckless worldly wisdom of Rabelais. But after all, it will not do. It is anything but attainable by most of the world. It demands good cheer and jovial company. But it dies out in the desert, and is stifled among simple, vulgar associates. Rabelais believed that he sacrificed to freedom, when he only worshipped fortune. He went through the world, familiar with the ways of princes and peers, priests and peasants, travelling in many lands, exhausting the resources of art and learning, seeing through the sins and shams and sorrows of life, and laughing at everything, like a good-natured, large-hearted Mephistopheles. But he had never learned the true philosophy of joyousness in the sincere love of nature, the deep phases of humanity, and the affluence and purity of strong affection.

Nor do we find a better specimen in the renowned English humorists, Sterne and Swift. The former closely follows his French prototype in grotesque fancies: he abounds in tender and delicate pathos, though in the highest degree artificial and forced; but do we ever arise from reading him, like a giant refreshed by wine? Sterne, in fact, has even less of the true philosophy of life than Rabelais. He affords no stimulant to joyous, healthy action, awakens no impulse to gladden life, or to make sorrow less and hope greater. It may be all very touching, very comic, very ingenious, but it is not healthy or joyous. And Swift? An immense fund of laughter, doubtless, had the witty Irish dean; but as little claim to be a joyous writer as the prophet Jeremiah, or the author of 'Groans from the Bottomless Pit.' The men who have been spoken of dealt largely in satire and humor; but joyousness deals in infinitely more. Mirth and laughter are all very well, but they are not all in all. Cheerfulness requires something more than a well-balanced Rabelaisian nonchalance in adversity and a keen relish for all pleasure.

The relation of Christianity to the theme of the volume presents a delicate, and, it may be thought, a dangerous topic of discussion, for a so decidedly secular pen as Mr. Leland's; but he touches upon it with freedom and boldness, though with frankest sympathy and reverence for the great Spirit, whose religion is the most significant fact in the history of the world. 'I must confess,' says he, 'that even regarded from a material and historical point alone, that is a poor, cowardly soul, which does not feel the deepest earnestness of truth in acknowledging the Wonderful One, Jesus Christ, as the Lord and Saviour of the whole world.' His sublime soul, profound, universal, loving beyond all power of human conception, introduced a new era for humanity. Under his teaching, philosophy became indeed truly divine, for it became infinite, and was thrown open to all. He first of all opened the consolations of free thought, of freedom from old superstition, of love, and strength, and inward joy, to the whole race of mankind. No narrow limits of sect or caste or nationality cramped him, the first great Cosmopolite. We cannot sufficiently admire the infinite adaptability, the universal knowledge of humanity, the boundless sympathy with man, which are everywhere manifest in the original Christian philosophy of life. What a depth of meaning in the symbolic bread and wine, typical of the life which flows through eternity and all its changes, of human love and birth and death, of bounteous, beautiful nature, with its continually renewed strength--the whole given, not in funereal guise, not with sombre fasting, but as a joyous feast.

The New Testament abounds in symbols, parables, and proverbs, taken from ancient tradition, but beautifully woven into a purer faith, which taught that the healthy joys of life, and all knowledge of divine truth, should be given not to a few kings or priests, a few favored with initiation into divine mysteries, as of old, but to the whole world; for the spirit of Christianity was identical with the genius of republicanism. As taught by our Lord Jesus Christ, it was eminently healthy, brave-hearted, and joyous. It did not commend celibacy, nor excess of fasting, nor too long prayers, nor righteousness overmuch. It did not approve of a plethora of outward goods, while the culture of our highest faculties was neglected. It condemned all excess of care, even in our daily duties, at the expense of that 'better part' which distinguishes us from mere ants or bees. It gave no warrant for the dismal dirges and melancholy groans which are raised in its name, by men whom Jesus would have been the first to reprove. 'It was a religion of life and of beauty, of friendship and temperate mirth, of love, truth, and manliness; one which opposed neither feasting at weddings nor "going a fishing."'

The temptation to find a refuge from the evils of life in active exertion, instead of cultivating the sources of joy in our own nature, is the subject of an ingenious and striking chapter. In a land, where enjoyment in many minds is connected with a sense of sin, it is doubtless better that the overflowing energy of character, which is a trait of the population, should seek vent in the excitements of labor, than in poisonous liquors, horse races, politics, and the gaming table. Where the natural support of life is wanting, partial methods of relief may be employed. He who can no longer swallow, may gain an imperfect nourishment by means of baths, or artificial transmission. So, the grim and hardened soul, which has lost the support of inward cheerfulness, may find strength in work, merely for the sake of work. But it is a fraud upon humanity to educate men solely as industrious animals. Hives are beautiful, honey is sweet, and wonderful is the cunning structure of the cell; but society is not a hive, nor the people bees. The day is dawning when it will be understood that cheerful songs are as essential to genuine manhood as work; that labor is not to be borne as a curse, with sighs and groans; but combined with mental culture, will become capable of self-support, and will supply its own enthusiasm.

The great problem of the age is the union of beauty with practical uses. In their highest forms, art and science blend and become identical, just as the Beautiful and the Good assimilate, as we trace them to their source in Truth. While art becomes more practical, it loses none of its beauty. In the infancy of science, it was mainly devoted to the illustration of the fanciful and ornamental. Even architecture, in the early ages, looked less to permanent comfort than to artistic effect. But everything now tends to realization. Poetry and art fall in with this influence of the age. Science is every day taking man away from the purely ideal, the morbid and visionary; from the fond fancies of old eras, and leading him to facts and to nature.

Mr. Leland never becomes formal or spiritless in the treatment of his favorite topics, and often rises to a high degree of enthusiastic eloquence. Witness the following noble appeal in behalf of a cheerful earnestness in the cultivation of literature and art:

Young writer, young artist, whoever you be, I pray you go to work
in this roaring, toiling, machine-clanking, sunny, stormy,
terrible, joyful, commonplace, vulgar, tremendous world in
_downright earnest_. By all the altars of Greek beauty themselves,
I swear it to you; yes, by all that Raphael painted and Shakspeare
taught; by all the glory and dignity of all art and of all Thought!
you will find your most splendid successes not in cultivating the
worn-out romantic, but in _loving_ the growing Actual of life.
Master the past if you will, but only that you may the more
completely forget it in the present. He or she is best and bravest
among you who gives us the freshest draughts of reality and of
Nature. It lies all around you--in the foul smoke and smell of the
factory, amid the crash and slip of heavy wheels on muddy stones,
in the blank-gilt glare of the steamboat saloon, by the rattling
chips of the faro table, in the quiet, gentle family circle, in the
opera, in the six-penny concert, the hotel, the watering-place, on
the prairie, in the prison. Not as the poor playwright and little
sensation-story grinder see them, not as the manufacturers of
Magdalen elegies and mock-moral and mock-philanthropical tales skim
them, but in their truth and freshness as facts, around and through
which sweep incessantly the infinite joys and agonies, the dreams
and loves and despair of _humanity_. Heavens! is not LIFE as
earnest and as mysterious and as well worth the fierce grapple of
GENIUS, here and _now_, in this American nineteenth century, as it
ever was under the cedars of Italy, the olives of Greece, or the
palms of Morning Land? Are there not as much, or more vigor and
raciness in the practical souls of the multitude and in their
never-ending strife with Nature, as among the spoiled and dainty
darlings of fortune and among the nerveless, mind-emasculated
Victims of Society who sing us their endless Miserere from the
Sistine chapels of fashionable novels? You know there is, and if
you watch the time, you may see that it is the warm truth from real
life, which is most eagerly read and which goes most directly to
the hearts of all. Never yet in history was there an age or a
country so rich in great ideas, in great developments, or which
offered such copious material to the writer as these of ours. Be
bold and seize it with a strong hand. Those who are to live after
us will wonder as we now do of the great eras of the past, that
there were so few on the spot to picture them. Yet, why speak of
_great_ scenes, when humanity and Nature are always great--great in
small things even, far beyond our utmost power of apprehension?
Forget the spirit of the past, live in the present, and thus--and
thus only--you will secure a glorious and undying reward in the
future.

The fault of this volume, in the eyes of many readers, will be a certain confusion in the arrangement of the matter, and the want of sufficient expansion in the development of some of its leading suggestions. But it must be judged as the earnest utterances of a poet, rather than a grave didactic treatise. With the purpose which the author had in view, a spice of rhapsody is no defect. He presents a beautiful example of the smiling wisdom of which he is such an eloquent advocate. He has an intuitive sense of the genial and joyous aspects of life, and has no sympathies to waste on the victims of 'carking care' or morbid melancholy. A more complete exposition of the conditions of cheerfulness in the nature of man, would furnish materials for an interesting volume; but it belongs more properly to an ethical or philosophical discourse. We will not complain of the author for not doing what he has not attempted--for what he had no inward call or outward occasion; what he could not have accomplished but at the sacrifice of much which constitutes the charm and grace of the present work; while we cordially thank him for this endeavor to speak a cheering word in behalf of the joyousness of life, and to spread 'sunshine in the shady place.'

R.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 3: SUNSHINE IN THOUGHT. By CHARLES GODFREY LELAND. 12mo, pp. 197. New York: Geo. P. Putnam.]

HOW THEY JESTED IN THE GOOD OLD TIME.

There is nothing which contributes so much to ease social intercourse as the jest. In comparison with it, the proverb is only a humble subordinate, and song itself, with all its power, but a weak influence. Yet the song and the proverb boast a critical literature, while the brief compendiums of merriment which never die, which, once written, live through every age, and force their way through every penetrable language, are undoubtedly less studied than any other popular medium of feeling.

What is a jest? It is as little worth the while to try to define its nature, as it is to analyze wit. We all know that the world laughs, and what it laughs at, and what the droll saws, anecdotes, rhymes, quips, and facetiae are, which give fame to a Bebel, or a Frischlin, a Tom Brown, and a Joseph Miller. Leave labored analysis to the philosophers, contenting ourselves with remarking that a jest is a laugh candied or frozen in words, and thawed and relished in the reading or utterance. And laughter? When a man is too lazy to think out an idea, and yet too active to dreamily _feel_ it, he laughs. When he catches its leading points, and yet realizes that behind them remains the incomprehensible or incongruous, he settles it for the nonce with a smile. Hence it comes that we laugh so seldom with all our heart, a second time over a jest. It has been _comprehended_; the mystery, the sense of contradiction and incongruity, has vanished--we may revive it in others, and laugh electrically with them; but the first piquant gusto of _its_ spice is gone forever.

Yet the jest, like the proverb, acquires a value by becoming current. It often illustrates an opinion or an experience, and when it is much worn, it may still gain a new point, by being brought into illustrative relation with some event or idea. Esop's fables, or any fables, are, after all, only good jokes in a narrative form, which owe their fame simply to their boundless capacity for application. Sidney Smith's story of Mrs. Partington, who tried to mop out the Atlantic, was a jest, and so too was Lady Macbeth's 'cat i' the adage,' who wanted fish, yet would not wet her paws, and let 'I dare not' wait upon 'I would.' _Something_ of our old enjoyment of a joke for the first time, always lingers around it, and we gladly laugh again--for, 'old love never quite rusts out.' And there are many jests, which, owing to their boundless variety of application, always come before us in a new light. Such are those which illustrate character. Woe to the man among the vulgar, who once becomes the scape-goat of a story on the subject of a joke-anecdote which 'shows him up.' Woe in truth, if it grow to a nickname--for then he, of all persons, learns that there are jests which never lose their sting.

Some jests have been progressive--they have been re-made to suit the times. Diogenes, when asked which wine he preferred, replied, 'That of other people.' An Englishman answered to the same question, 'The O. P. brand,' referring the initials not only to Other People, but also to the far-famed Old Particular stamp which marked certain rare varieties--or, as others explain it, to 'Old Port.' The Scholastikos of Hierocles, having a house for sale, carried a brick around as a sample--a modern story says that a commander when asked of what material his fortifications were built, called up his troops, and said: 'There!--every man's a brick.' Here we have the 'living walls' of the Romans--two old stories blended into one, and the whole greatly strengthened by a modern slang expression. When thus changed to suit the times, jests, instead of growing old, rather grow new again. Not unfrequently, a single joke becomes, in this manner, the parent of scores of others. I think that it is Mr. Wendell Phillips, who, in a lecture on Lost Arts, declares that there were never yet more than twenty-five original 'good stories,' and that all of those now current may be traced back to them. In a certain sense, the assertion is true; but it is a mistake to confound the result of a cause with the cause itself, and an error to declare the descendant to be one and the same with the ancestor. Max Muller has proved that hundreds of words of the most different meanings descend from the same root, and, in like manner, we might show, if the traditional links were supplied, that the last 'good one' current at Washington, originated at the court of King Pharaoh. Let no one laugh, for Chaucer's Clerke of Oxforde's Tale was for years told, with Daniel Webster and Henry Clay as the heroes, and we have even met with a bold Southron who '_knew_ that it was true of them!'

In this connection it is worth while to observe that even the slang phrases of the day, which are popular, partly because they _save trouble in thinking_, and partly because the vulgar mind, like the vulgar ear, finds a relief or pleasure in monotony--are not unfrequently of ancient origin. The current expression, 'a high old time,' occurs in a Latin jest, given in an old German-Latin jest-book, which, as its preface asserts, consists entirely of a reprint from still older works. 'Henricus,' it says, 'was begged to make at a wedding (_Hoch zeit_--literally, 'high time') a wedding song, and complied with the following:

'Iste vetus Juvenis Socius prius ad stationem arripit
Atque _altum tempus_ habere cupit.'[4]

The expression is better in its old form, since _altum_ means both high and old. Those who have laughed at the instance in 'Ferdinand Count Fathom,' of the Dutchman, who boasted that his brother had written a great book of poetry as thick as a cheese, may find its original 'motive' in an anecdote given in the same work.

'A peasant going to a lawyer, begged him to undertake a case for
him, to which the man of law assenting, began to refer to and read
in a very small book. But the peasant, who saw many large folios in
the study, touched the advocate on the arm and said:

'Sir--please read some in a _great_ book also, for this is
certainly a big case which I have brought to you.'

Everybody knows the story of the fortune hunter who commanded his servant to duplicate in the affirmative, when he should be in conversation, all his assertions. 'I have a fine farm,' said he. 'Faith, ye mane ye have two on thim,' interpolated his Irishman; and so it went on, until the master admitted that he had a cork leg. '_Two_ false ligs, _an' ye know it_,' cried out the man. This is somewhat varied and enlarged from the old story as given in the _Facetiae_ of Bebel, in which the nobleman, remarking to his lady-love that he was 'a little out of sorts,'--'_dixit ille, se pallidulum parumque infirmum_,' was interrupted by his servant with: 'And no wonder, since you suffer with such a terrible and incurable quotidian disease!'[5]

If all stories and jests are to be traced to a few originals, perhaps the many eccentric tales of Jack on horseback may be found in a very old anecdote of a certain _Venetus insuetus ac nescius equitare_--a Venetian unaccustomed to and ignorant of riding, who, when mounted on horseback, having inadvertently spurred the animal, exclaimed, as it reared and plunged:

'Lord! the waves of the sea are nothing to those on land,'--thinking that the leaping of his steed was caused by a sudden storm! The anecdotes of absent-mindedness may find a prototype in a very old monk-Latin anecdote of a certain doctor who went riding '_cum Palatino Rheni_,' with the Prince Palatine, and who, on being told that he had no breeches on, replied: '_Credebam, o princeps, mihi famulum ea induisse._' 'I thought, oh prince, that my valet had put them on!' Domine Sampson and the magistrate who appeared un-breeched before General Washington, are both anticipated in these absent small-clothes.

Many of the capital extravagances contained in 'Baron Munchausen' are borrowed literally from the old Latin jest-books. The incident of the wild pig which led about by its tail a blind wild boar, so that when the former was slain the latter was taken home by simply giving it the tail to hold, is of very respectable antiquity--as is also the story of the horse cut in two--attributed by Bebel to a locksmith. The locksmiths, he tells us in the parenthesis, are the boldest of Major Longbows.

There are many jests current in all languages, quizzing the vanity of humble persons suddenly raised to some small dignity. 'Neebors, I am still but a mon,' remarked the Scotchman, who became mayor.[6] Perhaps their type is latent in the '_De rustica praefecti uxore_--the village magistrate's wife,--which runs as follows:

'When a certain man had been made a prefect of a small village, he
bought his wife a new fur garment (_melotam_). She, proud of her
finery and full of her new honor, entered church, _capite elato et
superbo_, with her head raised, just as all the congregation rose
to their feet, when the Gospel was to be read. When she, thinking
it to be in her honor, and recollecting her former condition, said:
Sit still! I have not forgotten that I was once poor!'

A very great proportion of the shrewd retorts and witty replies attributed to great men are very old. 'What do you think of soldiers who can endure such wounds?' remarked Napoleon, when, showing a frightfully scarred grenadier to an Englishman. 'What does your majesty think of the men who gave the wounds?' was the reply. It is essentially the remark of Louis the Bavarian, who, on enlisting four soldiers famed for incredible bravery, and observing that they were scarred from head to foot, said to them: 'Ye are brave fellows; but I had rather see the men _a quibus tot vulnera accepistis_--from whom ye received so many wounds.' The number of witty retorts and droll stories associated with the names of Talleyrand, Piron, Voltaire--in fact, to a certain degree, of almost all great men--is so great as to almost persuade the reader who wanders in the neglected field of ancient humor, that no man of the later centuries was ever capable of a single witty and original thought. It is not long since I met with an anecdote, stating that Alexandre Dumas, who had a very unattractive wife, one day surprised a gentleman in the act of tenderly embracing her. In a compassionate and astonished tone the novelist exclaimed: 'Poor man! why do you act so? I am sure that nobody could have compelled you to it against your will.' '_Eh! monsieur, qui est-ce qui vous y obligeait?_' The jest is 'old as the hills'--it was old before Dumas was born. So, too, with the amusing bit of naivete attributed to an English duchess, who, to express her deeply-seated religious prejudices, declared that she would sooner have a dozen Protestant husbands than one Catholic. The same point is expressed as follows, in a very witty but extremely wicked collection of facetiae of the seventeenth century:[7]

Displicet, insignis, mihi Clericus ordo puella
Inquit et est valde gens odiosa mihi.
Malo decem certe me consociare colonis,
Unicum Clero quam coiisse velim.

Sir Isaac Newton, and I know not how many other philosophers, have been made to learn by a current story how to bear coals--literally. A learned man, it is said, being asked by a little girl for a live coal, offered to bring her a fire shovel. 'It is not necessary,' replied the child, and having laid cold ashes on her palm, she placed a glowing ember on them and bore it away safely. 'With all my wisdom,' said the sage, 'I should never have thought of that!' The jest is of mediaeval antiquity--possibly pre-Latin--it was in later days, however, versified by Schurrias--an extremely aged and dying woman being substituted for the learned man.

'Nam nuda poteris ignea ferre manu?
Parva puella refert: mater, perizomate prunas
Portabo flammae ne nocuisse queant.
Quid facies igitur, Anus inquit? Serviet hicce
Mi cinis, illa refert; quo super hasce feram.
Mox exclamat Anus: disco, moriorque profecto.
En disco moriens quae latuere senem:
_O, ich lern und stirb_!'

A very great number of the 'good stories' current at the present day with new names and faces, are to be found in the works of Rabelais, and in the _Moyen Parvenir_, now generally attributed to him. It is almost needless to say that few of these were however original with the great French humorist. We find them in the Macaronics of Merlin Coccaius, and in scores of older authorities. Still it must be borne in mind that a similarity does not always establish an identity. There are few persons who cannot cite some droll instance of a sharper or greedy fellow, who, expecting an undeserved reward for some sham service, has found himself drolly overreached. So Rabelais dresses up for us anew the fable of the woodman, who, having lost his hatchet, and wearied Jupiter with prayers for its recovery, was tempted by Mercury with a golden hatchet, and asked if it were the missing article. He answering 'No,' received the precious one for reward. Which being made known, excited great hopes among his neighbors of becoming rich by the same means:

'Ha, ha! said they--was there no more to do but to lose a hatchet
to make us rich? Now for that; it is as easy as ----, and will
cost us but little. Are then at this time of the year the
revolutions of the heavens, the constellations of the firmament and
aspects of the planets such that whosoever shall lose a hatchet,
shall immediately grow rich? Ha, ha, ha! by Jove you shall even be
lost and it please you, my dear hatchet! With this they all fairly
lost their hatchets out of hand. The devil of a one that had a
hatchet left; he was not his mother's son that did not lose his
hatchet. No more was wood felled or cleared in that country,
through want of hatchets. Nay, the Aesopian apologue even saith,
that certain petty country gents of the lower class who had sold
the Woodman their little mill and little field to have wherewithal
to make a figure at the next muster, having been told that his
treasure was come to him by this only means, sold the only badge of
their gentility, their swords, to purchase hatchets to go lose
them, as the silly clodpates did, in hopes to gain store of chink
by that loss.

'You would have truly sworn they had been a parcel of your petty
spiritual usurers, Rome-bound, selling their all, and borrowing of
others to buy store of mandates,--a penny-worth of a new-made pope.

'Now they cried out and brayed, and prayed and bawled, and invoked
Jupiter: 'My hatchet! my hatchet! Jupiter, my hatchet! on this
side, my hatchet! on that side, my hatchet! ho, ho, ho, ho,
Jupiter, my hatchet!' The air round about rung with the cries and
howlings of these rascally losers of hatchets.

'Mercury was nimble in bringing them hatchets; to each offering
that which he had lost, as also another of gold, and a third of
silver.

'Every _he_ was still for that of gold, giving thanks in abundance
to the great giver Jupiter; but in the very nick of time, that they
bowed and stooped to take it from the ground, whip, in a trice,
Mercury chopped off their heads, as Jupiter had commanded; and of
heads thus cut off the number was just equal to that of the lost
hatchets.'

This is but a small portion of the fable as amplified by Rabelais; but what is cited illustrates the _accretive_ power of a jest when it involves a principle of general application. The same idea--that of roguery rewarded according to the letter--is involved in an anecdote, which tells us that a certain alchemist having dedicated to Pope Leo the Tenth a book containing the whole art of making gold, received as recompense a great empty purse, with the words: 'If thou canst make gold, thou art far richer than I; but herein is a purse wherein thou mayest put thy gold.'

In the German _Lallenbuch_, as well as other works, we find the story of the stupid fellow who, coming to the banks of a river, waited long and in vain until the water should all have rolled by. It is given in the following form in a very droll collection of jests:[8]

'Rustici cujusdam filius a patre in proximam urbem missus, quum ad
flumen aliquod pervenisset, diu dum integrum deflueret, sicque
transitum praeberet, expectans, tandem ubi continuo aquam fluere
vidit, domum reversus est, de eo quod sibi accidisset, parentibus
conquestus.'

But the story was old, centuries before the monks--for even Horace sums it up in two verses as one quotes a well-known popular proverb:

'Rusticus exspectat dum defluat amnis: at ille
Labitur et labetur in omne volubilis aevum.'

'The clown awaits until the flood be gone:
It glides and whirls for ages ever on.'

The reader has probably heard of the apocryphal twelfth commandment, 'Mind your own business.' Possibly its existence was suggested by the discovery of the _first_, told as follows in the _Democritus Ridens_.

'A certain soldier being asked by his pastor what was the first
commandment given by GOD, replied, 'Thou shalt not eat!' At which
answer the priest inquiring what he meant, received for reply that
this was the first command to our first parents relative to the
apple. _Quo audito, Pastor conticuit!_ Which having heard, the
priest was silent.'

Of the same family or parentage is the modern story of the clergyman who, wishing to preach against the extravagant head-dresses worn by the women of his congregation, took for a text, 'Top knot come down!' referring for his authority to Matthew xxiv. 17. In like manner a not over-learned brother is said to have expounded Genesis, chap. xxii. v. 23, as follows: 'These eight Milcah bear.' This shows us, my brethren, what hard times they had of old, when it took eight on 'em to milk a bar (and I 'spose get mighty little at that), when nowadays my darter kin milk a cow with nary help, as easy as look at her.'

Every one has heard of the Irishman crossing the brook. 'Sure, Paddy, if ye carry me, don't I carry the barrel of whiskey, an' isn't that fair and aiquil?' It is differently told in one of the old Latin jest books, where a certain Piero, pitying his weary jackass, which bore a heavy plough, took the latter on his own shoulders, and mounting the donkey, said: '_Nune procedere poteris, non enim tu sed ego aratrum fero_,'--'Now you may go along, for not you but I now bear the plough.' Not a few of the jokes given to modern Irishmen originated centuries ago in other countries than theirs. The reader may recall the advice given by an Emeralder to another at a tavern, when the latter found that his boiled egg was ready to hatch. 'Down wid it, Murphy, ye divil, before the landlord comes in and charges ye for a _chicken breakfast_!' The same occurs as an old Latin joke, with this difference, that, in the latter, the companion, when the breakfast was over, required that the chicken eater should pay the reckoning for both. '_Ni facis, dicam cauponi de pullo quem pro ovo absumpsisti, et solves largius._' 'Unless you do, I will tell the landlord of the chicken which you ate for an egg, and _then_ see what a bill you'll have to pay.'

The Germans of the present day have a story of a certain Englishman who, on being told that his coat was burning, politely replied: 'What the devil business is that of yours? I have seen your coat burning this half hour, and never bothered myself about it.' Tom Brown tells us of a roguish boy who said to a traveller, warming his feet at a fire: 'Take care, sir, or you'll burn your spurs!' 'My boots! you mean,' quoth the traveller. 'No, sir, I mean your spurs; your boots be burned already.' But the best form of the joke is given by Erasmus in his Adages, as follows:

'A certain traveller in Holland lay so near the fire that his cloak
was scorched. Which being observed by a guest, he said to the
sleeper, 'Here--I want to tell you something!' To which the other
replied: 'If it is bad news, put it off, for I don't wish to hear
any in company where all should be jolly. _Post convivium, inquit,
seria_--'save up the sorrow until after supper.' And when they had
merrily supped, 'Now,' said he, 'I am ready to hear it.' Then the
other showed him and immense hole in his cloak, and he began to
rage that he had not been warned of it in time. 'I wished to do
so,' replied the guest meekly, 'but you forbade me.'

The witty sayings of men about to be executed are numerous, but are in many cases far from being original or authentic. During the horrors of the French Revolution, when men 'became so accustomed to death that they lost all respect for it,' it became the fashion to make a jest with the last breath, and it is said that a volume of these sayings was collected and published. In the _Democritus Ridens_, already referred to, under the head of _Jocus sub necem_, the author gives several anecdotes, more than one of which has been attributed in modern times to some noted criminal:

'Those condemned to death are not infrequently so excited and
confused as to lose their wits and joke most improperly. As an
example, take that man who, when standing on the scaffold, said
with a smile to the judge who was present: 'I wonder, old fellow,
that you with such a turned-up nose can see anything!'

'Another when about to die asked for a parting cup. A goblet of
beer was brought, from which he carefully blew away the froth,
saying that it was 'unhealthy and conducive to the gravel.'

'Another on the way to the gallows, seeing a crowd hastening
forward, said to them: 'There is no need of hurrying, children;
even though you go as slowly as I, for depend upon it, the thing
will not come off till I get there.'

'Another on quitting the prison, turning to his jailor, said
privately: 'You needn't keep the house open beyond the usual time
this evening on my account, for I shall not return.''

'Another is said, when about to be shipwrecked, to have called for
salt meat. And being asked why? replied: 'Because I shall soon have
to drink more than I ever did in all my life.' _O ridiculos et o
insanos homunculos!_ adds the old writer: 'O foolish and mad worms
of men who could thus joke at the very opening instant of
eternity!''

This last instance of dying recklessness has been used by Rabelais as one of the jests of Panurge. Much like it is the anecdote to the effect that in a storm at sea, when the sailors were all at prayers, expecting every moment to go to the bottom, a passenger appeared quite unconcerned. The captain asked him how he could be so much at his ease in this awful situation. 'Sir,' said the passenger, 'my life is insured.'

Somewhat allied to this spirit of blindness was the remark of the Greek to his slave during a terrible storm at sea. Seeing the latter weeping, he exclaimed, 'Why are you so troubled--I give you your freedom?' And allied to it is the well-known epigram:

'It blew a hard storm and in utmost confusion
The sailors all hurried to get absolution;
Which done, and the weight of the sins they confessed
Was conveyed, as they thought, from themselves to the priest:
To lighten the ship and conclude their devotion,
They tossed the poor parson souse into the ocean.'

One of the coarse jokes current with the last generation was that of a sailor who, when a duke with his lady was on board ship, and all expected soon to be lost, asked the mate if he had ever lain with a duchess? The other answering in fear and trembling, 'no,' was told by the reckless fellow: 'Well, we shall all have that pleasure soon.' The ship, however, was saved, and the sailor being asked by the duke what he meant by his insulting remark, replied: 'At the bottom of the sea, your grace, we all lie low in death together.' And he was pardoned. It is remarkable that in all ages wit has been suffered to save men when better qualities would perhaps be of no avail.

We may class with these jests of men _in articulo mortis_ the droll story told by Bebelius, to the effect that a certain duke having caught a miller in the act of stealing, asked his victim as he stood beneath the gallows, to swear by his faith if he believed that there was on earth a single man of his calling who was honest. To which the miller stoutly swore that to his knowledge there was not one who was not a greater thief than himself. 'If that be the case,' replied his judge, 'go in peace and live while you may, for I had rather be robbed by you than by some more rapacious rascal of your trade.'

An excellent illustration of the fact that old stories are frequently revamped to suit new times and men, may be found in the following 'original,' also given by Bebelius, as _Pulchrum factum cujusdam militis Tubigentis_--a fine deed of a certain soldier of Tuebingen:

'Conrad Buhel of Tuebingen, distinguished by his bravery among the
captains of Caesar Maximilian in the Hungarian campaign, was, once
in camp, lying on the straw and expecting no evil, when there
entered another soldier to whom Conrad had done an injury. Who,
when he found him thus lying on his back, said with that noble
magnanimity characteristic of the German mind: 'Wert thou not lying
helpless, I would stab thee with my sword!' To which Conrad
replied: 'Wilt thou do me no injury until I stand up and am ready
for fight?' 'Not I,' replied his foe, 'for I hold it base to strike
an unarmed man.' 'Then,' replied Conrad, 'I shall lie still all
night.' But on the next day he transfixed the other with his
spear.'

The same story is told of an eminent Irish lawyer, who had offended the client of a rival pleader. 'Will ye get up till I bate yees?' 'An' would ye strike a man lying down?' 'Divil a bit!' 'Then I'll jist go to slape again.' In the modern stories the foes are reconciled--in the old camp incident all is fierce and characteristic of the bloody feuds of the middle ages, and the final murder of the great-hearted enemy strikes us with a pang. The _sed postri die alterum cuspide transfixit_ seems brutal and ungenerous; but the event, whether literally true or feigned, had no such discord to the readers of those days. It was more essential to establish the thorough bravery of Conrad, than to reward the magnanimity of his foe. Truly, the history of jests is the history of civilization.

In relation to this transmission of the renown of stories of the olden times to lawyers of the later day, we may cite the well-known incident of the honest criminal who, travelling alone on foot, was met by Sir Matthew Hale, and in answer to the questions of the latter, admitted that he was going to a distant court to be tried for his life. The same noble truthfulness is beautifully set forth in the following, _Pulchra historia simplicis praetoris et furis_, or 'Fine Story of a Simple-hearted Superintendent and Thief.'

'My lord of Stoeffel, of that free and excellent nobility which
are called barons, had a superintendent of his serfs. And he, when
a certain man was accused of theft, and condemned by him to the
torture of the cross (_ad crucis tormentum damnasset_), with rustic
simplicity sent the criminal to the church that he might confess
his sins, first taking his word that he would return after
confession. So he entered the shrine, confessed, and not heeding
the privilege of ecclesiastical immunity (i. e., the right of
sanctuary), 'whereby he might have escaped, kept his faith with the
superintendent (_fidem praetori servavit_), and again returning
underwent extreme punishment. And this I knew from my boyhood, that
he went up to the place of punishment with such alacrity, that it
would seem as if he truly desired death. But many curses were
lavished on the priest to whom he confessed, because he did not
warn the imprudent man not to quit the bounds of ecclesiastical
freedom!'

There is a whole ballad--nay, a whole history of the middle ages in this story; for among thousands I can recall none as perfectly characteristic of the times. The absolute aristocratic control of the life of a white slave; its abuse by transferring it to the arbitrary will of an upper servant; the blind devotion to feudal service shown in the fidelity of the poor serf, the horrible cruelty of his punishment; and finally, the cowardly supple fawning of the local priesthood, who were always either worms or dragons in their relations to the nobility, are all set forth here in a few lines.

I have said that the eminent lawyers of modern times are greatly favored in the inheritance of old jokes. Judge Jeffries, we are told, in examining an old fellow with a long beard, told him he supposed he had a conscience quite as long as that natural ornament of his visage. 'Does your lordship measure consciences by beards?' said the man; 'that is strange, seeing you yourself are shaven.' Among the monk-Latin tales there is one to the effect that a certain _pater_, priding himself on his beard, was informed that in a convent of he-goats he certainly deserved to be abbot. The same story, re-made into a gross form, is current in this country, and attributed to an eminent Virginia politician. In the _Antidotum Melancholiae_ (Frankfort, 1667), it is given in the form of an evidently very old Latin rhyme:

'Si bene barbatum faceret sua barba beatum,
Nullus in hoc circo fuerit felicior hireo.'