Chapter 55
HARD SHELL CONSIDERATIONS.
The plumage of the robin red-breast, the mottled sides of the Saranac trout, the upholstery of a spider's web, the waist of the wasp fashionably small without tight lacing, the lustrous eye of the gazelle, the ganglia of the star-fish, have been discoursed upon; but it is left to us, fagged out from a long ramble, to sit down on a log and celebrate the admirable qualities of a turtle. We refer not to the curious architecture of its house--ribbed, plated, jointed, carapace and plastron divinely fashioned--but to its instincts, worthy almost of being called mental and moral qualities.
The tortoise is wiser than many people we wot of, in the fact that he knows when to keep his head in his shell. No sooner did we just now appear on the edge of the wood than this animal of the order Testudinata modestly withdrew. He knew he was no match for us. But how many of the human race are in the habit of projecting their heads into things for which they have no fittedness! They thrust themselves into discussions where they are almost sure to get trod on. They will dispute about vertebrae with Cuvier, or metaphysics with William Hamilton, or paintings with Ruskin, or medicine with Doctor Rush, and attempt to sting Professor Jaeger to death with his own insects. The first and last important lesson for such persons to learn is, like this animal at our foot, to shut up their shell. If they could see how, in the case of this roadside tortoise, at our appearance the carapace suddenly came down on the plastron, or, in other words, how the upper bone snapped against the lower bone, they might become as wise as this reptile.
We admire also the turtle's capacity of being at home everywhere. He carries with him his parlor, nursery, kitchen, bed-chamber and bathroom. Would that we all had an equal faculty of domestication! In such a beautiful world, and with so many comfortable surroundings, we ought to feel at home in any place we are called to be. While we cannot, like the tortoise, carry our house on our back, we are better off than he, for by the right culture of a contented spirit we may make the sky itself the mottled shell of our residence, and the horizon all around us shall be the place where the carapace shuts down on the plastron.
We admire still more the tortoise's determination to right itself. By way of experiment, turn it upside down, and then go off a piece to see it regain its position. Now, there is nothing when put upon its back which has such little prospect of getting to its feet again as this animal. It has no hands to push with and nothing against which to brace its feet, and one would think that a turtle once upside down would be upside down for ever. But put on its back, it keeps on scrabbling till it is right side up. We would like to pick up this animal from the dust and put it down on Broadway, if men passing by would learn from it never to stop exertion, even when overthrown. You cannot by commercial disasters be more thoroughly flat on your back than five minutes ago was this poor thing; but see it yonder nimbly making for the bushes. Vanderbilt or Jay Gould may treat you as we did the tortoise a few moments ago. But do not lie still, discouraged. Make an effort to get up. Throw your feet out, first in one direction and then in another. Scrabble!
We find from this day's roadside observation that the turtle uses its head before it does its feet: in other words, it looks around before it moves. You never catch a turtle doing anything without previous careful inspection. We would, all of us, do better if we always looked before we leaped. It is easier to get into trouble than to get out. Better have goods weighed before we buy them. Better know where a road comes out before we start on it. We caught one hundred flies in our sitting-room yesterday because they sacrificed all their caution to a love of molasses. Better use your brain before you do your hands and feet. Before starting, the turtle always sticks its head out of its shell.
But tortoises die. They sometimes last two hundred years. We read that one of them outlived seven bishops. They have a quiet life and no wear and tear upon their nervous system. Yet they, after a while, notwithstanding all their glow travel, reach the end of their journey. For the last time they draw their head inside their shell and shut out the world for ever. But notwithstanding the useful thoughts they suggest while living, they are of still more worth when dead. We fashion their bodies into soup and their carapace into combs for the hair, and tinged drops for the ear, and bracelets for the wrist. One of Delmonico's soup tureens is waiting for the hero we celebrate, and Tiffany for his eight plates of bone. Will we be as useful after we are dead? Some men are thrown aside like a turtle-shell crushed by a cart-wheel; but others, by deeds done or words spoken, are useful long after they quit life, their example an encouragement, their memory a banquet. He who helps build an asylum or gives healthful and cultured starting to a young man may twenty years after his decease be doing more for the world than during his residence upon it. Stephen Girard and George Peabody are of more use to the race than when Philadelphia and London saw them.
But we must get up off this log, for the ante are crawling over us, and the bull-frogs croak as though the night were coming on. The evening star hangs its lantern at the door of the night to light the tired day to rest. The wild roses in the thicket are breathing vespers at an altar cushioned with moss, while the fire-flies are kindling their dim lamps in the cathedral of the woods. The evening dew on strings of fern is counting its beads in prayer. The "Whip-poor-will" takes up its notes of complaint, making us wonder on our way home what "Will" it was that in boyhood maltreated the ancestors of this species of birds, whether William Wordsworth, or William Cowper, or William Shakspeare, so that the feathered descendants keep through all the forests, year after year, demanding for the cruel perpetrator a sound threshing, forgetting the Bryant that praised them and the Tennyson that petted them and the Jean Ingelow who throws them crumbs, in their anxiety to have some one whip poor Will.