Chapter 56
WISEMAN, HEAVYASBRICKS AND QUIZZLE.
We had muffins that night. Indeed, we always had either muffins or waffles when Governor Wiseman was at tea. The reason for this choice of food was that a muffin or a waffle seemed just suited to the size of Wiseman's paragraphs of conversation. In other words, a muffin lasted him about as long as any one subject of discourse; and when the muffin was done, the subject was done.
We never knew why he was called governor, for he certainly never ruled over any State, but perhaps it was his wise look that got him the name. He never laughed; had his round spectacles far down on the end of his nose, so that he could see as far into his plate as any man that ever sat at our tea-table. When he talked, the conversation was all on his side. He considered himself oracular on most subjects. You had but to ask him a question, and without lifting his head, his eye vibrating from fork to muffin, he would go on till he had said all he knew on that theme. We did not invite him to our house more than once in about three months, for too much of a good thing is a bad thing.
At the same sitting we always had our young friend Fred Quizzle. He did not know much, but he was mighty in asking questions. So when we had Governor Wiseman, the well, we had Quizzle, the pump.
Fred was long and thin and jerky, and you never knew just where he would put his foot. Indeed, he was not certain himself. He was thoroughly illogical, and the question he asked would sometimes seem quite foreign to the subject being discoursed upon. His legs were crooked and reminded you of interrogation points, and his arms were interrogations, and his neck was an interrogation, while his eyes had a very inquisitive look.
Fred Quizzle did not talk until over two years of age, notwithstanding all his parents' exertions toward getting him to say "papa" and "mamma." After his parents had made up their minds that he would never talk at all, he one day rose from his block houses, looked into his father's eyes, and cried out, "How?" as if inquiring in what manner he had found his way into this world. His parent, outraged at the child's choice of an adverb for his first expression instead of a noun masculine or a noun feminine indicative of filial affection, proceeded to chastise the youngster, when Fred Quizzle cried out for his second, "Why?" as though inquiring the cause of such hasty punishment.
This early propensity for asking questions grew on him till at twenty-three years of age he was a prodigy in this respect. So when we had Governor Wiseman we also had Fred Quizzle, the former to discourse, the latter to start him and keep him going.
Doctor Heavyasbricks was generally present at the same interview. We took the doctor as a sort of sedative. After a season of hard work and nervous excitement, Doctor Heavyasbricks had a quieting influence upon us. There was no lightning in his disposition. He was a great laugher, but never at any recent merriment. It took a long while for him to understand a joke. Indeed, if it were subtle or elaborate, he never understood it. But give the doctor, when in good health, a plain pun or repartee, and let him have a day or two to think over it, and he would come in with uproarious merriment that well-nigh would choke him to death, if the paroxysm happened to take him with his mouth full of muffins.
When at our table, the time not positively occupied in mastication he employed in looking first at Quizzle, the interlocutor, and then at Governor Wiseman, the responding oracle.
Quizzle.--How have you, Governor Wiseman, kept yourself in such robust health so long a time?
Wiseman.--By never trifling with it, sir. I never eat muffins too hot. This one, you see, has had some time to cool. Besides, when I am at all disordered, I immediately send for the doctor.
There are books proposing that we all become our own medical attendant. Whenever we are seized with any sort of physical disorder, we are to take down some volume in homeopathy, allopathy, hydropathy, and running our finger along the index, alight upon the malady that may be afflicting us. We shall find in the same page the name of the disease and the remedy. Thus: chapped hands--glycerine; cold--squills; lumbago--mustard-plasters; nervous excitement--valerian; sleeplessness--Dover's powders.
This may be very well for slight ailments, but we have attended more funerals of people who were their own doctor than obsequies of any other sort. In your inexperience you will be apt to get the wrong remedy. Look out for the agriculturist who farms by book, neglecting the counsel of his long-experienced neighbors. He will have poor turnips and starveling wheat, and kill his fields with undue apportionments of guano and bonedust. Look out just as much for the patient who in the worship of some "pathy" blindly adheres to a favorite hygienic volume, rejecting in important cases medical admonition.
In ordinary cases the best doctor you can have is mother or grandmother, who has piloted through the rocks of infantile disease a whole family. She has salve for almost everything, and knows how to bind a wound or cool an inflammation. But if mother be dead or you are afflicted with a maternal ancestor that never knew anything practical, and never ill, better in severe cases have the doctor right away. You say that it is expensive to do that, while a book on the treatment of diseases will cost you only a dollar and a half. I reply that in the end it is very expensive for an inexperienced man to be his own doctor; for in addition to the price of the book there are the undertaker's expenses.
Some of the younger persons at the table laughed at the closing sentence of Wiseman, when Doctor Heavyasbricks looked up, put down his knife and said: "My young friends, what are you laughing at? I see no cause of merriment in the phrase 'undertaker's expenses.' It seems to me to be a sad business. When I think of the scenes amid which an undertaker moves, I feel more like tears than hilarity."
Quizzle.--If you are opposed, Governor Wiseman, to one's being his own doctor, what do you think of every man's being his own lawyer?
Wiseman.--I think just as badly of that.
Books setting forth forms for deeds, mortgages, notes, and contracts, are no doubt valuable. It should be a part of every young man's education to know something of these. We cannot for the small business transactions of life be hunting up the "attorney-at-law" or the village squire. But economy in the transfer of property or in the making of wills is sometimes a permanent disaster. There are so many quirks in the law, so many hiding-places for scamps, so many modes of twisting phraseology, so many decisions, precedents and rulings, so many John Does who have brought suits against Richard Roes, that you had better in all important business matters seek out an honest lawyer.
"There are none such!" cries out Quizzle.
Why, where have you lived? There are as many honest men in the legal profession as in any other, and rogues more than enough in all professions. Many a farmer, going down to attend court in the county-seat, takes a load of produce to the market, carefully putting the specked apples at the bottom of the barrel, and hiding among the fresh ones the egg which some discouraged hen after five weeks of "setting" had abandoned, and having secured the sale of his produce and lost his suit in the "Court of Common Pleas," has come home denouncing the scoundrelism of attorneys.
You shall find plenty of honest lawyers if you really need them; and in matters involving large interests you had better employ them.
Especially avoid the mistake of making your own "last will and testament" unless you have great legal skillfulness. Better leave no will at all than one inefficiently constructed. The "Orphans' Court" could tell many a tragedy of property distributed adverse to the intention of the testator. You save twenty to a hundred dollars from your counsel by writing your own will, and your heirs pay ten thousand dollars to lawyers in disputes over it. Perhaps those whom you have wished especially to favor will get the least of your estate, and a relative against whom you always had especial dislike will get the most, and your charities will be apportioned differently from what you anticipated--a hundred dollars to the Bible Society, and three thousand to the "hook and ladder company."
Quizzle.--Do you not think, governor (to go back to the subject from which we wandered), that your good spirits have had much to do with your good health?
Wiseman.--No doubt. I see no reason why, because I am advancing in years, I should become melancholy.
One of the heartiest things I have seen of late is the letter of Rev. Dr. Dowling as he retires from active work in the ministry. He hands over his work to the younger brethren without sigh, or groan, or regret. He sees the sun is quite far down in the west, and he feels like hanging up his scythe in the first apple tree he comes to. Our opinion is that he has made a little mistake in the time of day, and that while he thinks it is about half-past five in the afternoon, it is only about three. I guess his watch is out of order, and that he has been led to think it later than it really is. But when we remember how much good he has done, we will not begrudge him his rest either here or hereafter.
At any rate, taking the doctor's cheerful valedictory for a text, I might preach a little bit of a sermon on the best way of getting old. Do not be fretted because you have to come to spectacles. While glasses look premature on a young man's nose, they are an adornment on an octogenarian's face. Besides that, when your eyesight is poor, you miss seeing a great many unpleasant things that youngsters are obliged to look at.
Do not be worried because your ear is becoming dull. In that way you escape being bored with many of the foolish things that are said. If the gates of sound keep out some of the music, they also keep out much of the discord. If the hair be getting thin, it takes less time to comb it, and then it is not all the time falling down over your eyes; or if it be getting white, I think that color is quite as respectable as any other: that is the color of the snow, and of the blossoms, and of the clouds, and of angelic habiliments.
Do not worry because the time comes on when you must go into the next world. It is only a better room, with finer pictures, brighter society and sweeter music. Robert McCheyne, and John Knox, and Harriet Newell, and Mrs. Hemans, and John Milton, and Martin Luther will be good enough company for the most of us. The cornshocks standing in the fields to-day will not sigh dismally when the buskers leap over the fence, and throwing their arms around the stack, swing it to the ground. It is only to take the golden ear from the husk. Death to the aged Christian is only husking-time, and then the load goes in from the frosts to the garner.
My congratulations to those who are nearly done with the nuisances of this world. Give your staff to your little grandson to ride horse on. You are going to be young again, and you will have no need of crutches. May the clouds around the setting sun be golden, and such as to lead the "weather-wise" to prophesy a dear morning!
Quizzle.--But, Governor Wiseman, does it not give you a little uneasiness in this day of so much talk about cremation as to what will become of your body after you leave this sphere?
At this point Doctor Heavyasbricks wiped his spectacles, as though he could not see well, and interrupted the conversation by saying, "Cremation! Cremation! What's that?" Sitting at the head of the table, I explained that it was the reduction of the deceased human body through fire into ashes to be preserved in an urn. "Ah! ah!" said Doctor Heavyasbricks, "I had the idea, from the sound of that word 'cremation,' it must be something connected with cream. I will take a little more of that delicious bovine liquid in my tea, if you please," said the doctor as he passed his cup toward the urn, adding, to the lady of the house, "I hope that urn you have your hand on has nothing to do with cremation." This explanation having been made, Governor Wiseman proceeded to answer the question of Quizzle:
No; I have no uneasiness about my body after I have left it. The idea you speak of will never be carried out. I know that the papers are ardently discussing whether or not it will be best to burn the bodies of the dead, instead of burying them. Scientific journals contend that our cemeteries are the means of unhealthy exhalations, and that cremation is the only safe way of disposing of the departed. Some have advocated the chemical reduction of the physical system.
I have, as yet, been unable to throw myself into a mood sufficiently scientific to appreciate this proposal. It seems to me partly horrible and partly ludicrous. I think that the dead populations of the world are really the most quiet and unharmful. They make no war upon us, and we need make no war upon them. I am very certain that all the damage we shall ever do this world, will be while we are animate. It is not the dead people that are hard to manage, but the living. Some whistle to keep their courage up while going along by graveyards; I whistle while moving among the wide awake. Before attempting this barbaric disposal of the human form as a sanitary improvement, it would be better to clear the streets and "commons" of our cities of their pestiferous surroundings. Try your cremation on the dogs and cats with extinct animation.
We think Greenwood is healthier than Broadway, and Laurel Hill than Chestnut street, Père la Chaise than Champs Elysées. Urns, with ashes scientifically prepared, may look very well in Madras or Pekin, but not in a Christian country. Not having been able to shake off the Bible notions about Christian burial, we adhere to the mode that was observed when devout men carried Stephen to his burial. Better not come around here with your chemical apparatus for the reduction of the human body. I give fair warning that if your philosopher attempts such a process on my bones, and I am of the same way of thinking as now, he will be sorry for it.
But I have no fear that I shall thus be desecrated by my surviving friends. I have more fear of epitaphs. I do not wonder that people have sometimes dictated the inscription on their own tombstones when I see what inappropriate lines are chiseled on many a slab. There needs to be a reformation in epitaphiology.
People often ask me for appropriate inscriptions for the graves of their dead. They tell the virtues of the father, or wife, or child, and want me to put in compressed shape all that catalogue of excellences.
Of course I fail in the attempt. The story of a lifetime cannot be chiseled by the stone-cutter on the side of a marble slab. But it is not a rare thing to go a few months after by the sacred spot and find that the bereft friends, unable to get from others an epitaph sufficiently eulogistic, have put their own brain and heart to work and composed a rhyme. Now, the most unfit sphere on earth for an inexperienced mind to exercise the poetic faculty is in epitaphiology. It does very well in copy-books, but it is most unfair to blot the resting-place of the dead with unskilled poetic scribble. It seems to me that the owners of cemeteries and graveyards should keep in their own hand the right to refuse inappropriate and ludicrous epitaph.
Nine-tenths of those who think they can write respectable poetry are mistaken. I do not say that poesy has passed from the earth, but it does seem as if the fountain Hippocrene had been drained off to run a saw-mill. It is safe to say that most of the home-made poetry of graveyards is an offence to God and man.
One would have thought that the New Hampshire village would have risen in mob to prevent the inscription that was really placed on one of its tombstones descriptive of a man who had lost his life at the foot of a vicious mare on the way to brook:
"As this man was leading her to drink She kick'd and kill'd him quicker'n a wink."
One would have thought that even conservative New Jersey would have been in rebellion at a child's epitaph which in a village of that State reads thus:
"She was not smart, she was not fair, But hearts with grief for her are swellin'; All empty stands her little chair: She died of eatin' watermelon."
Let not such discretions be allowed in hallowed places. Let not poetizers practice on the tombstone. My uniform advice to all those who want acceptable and suggestive epitaph is, Take a passage of Scripture. That will never wear out. From generation to generation it will bring down upon all visitors a holy hush; and if before that stone has crumbled the day comes for waking up of all the graveyard sleepers, the very words chiseled on the marble may be the ones that shall ring from the trumpet of the archangel.
While the governor was buttering another muffin, and, according to the dietetic principle a little while ago announced, allowing it sufficiently to cool off, he continued the subject already opened by saying: I keep well by allowing hardly anything to trouble me, and by looking on the bright side of everything. One half of the people fret themselves to death.
Four months ago the air was full of evil prophecies. If a man believed one half he saw in the newspapers, he must have felt that this world was a failure, not paying more than ten cents on a dollar. To one good prophet like Isaiah or Ezekiel we had a thousand Balaams, each mounted on his appropriate nag.
First came the fearful announcement that in consequence of the financial depression we would have bread-riots innumerable and great slaughter. But where have been your riots? There was here and there a swinging of shillalahs, and a few broken heads which would probably have got broken anyhow; but the men who made the disturbance were found to be lounging vagabonds who never worked even when they had a chance.
Prophecy was also made that there would be a general starvation. We do not believe that in the United States there have been twenty sober people famished in the last year. Aware of the unusual stress upon the poor, the hand of charity has been more active and full than ever; and though many have been denied their accustomed luxuries, there has been bread for all.
Weather prophets also promised us a winter of unusual severity. They knew it from the amount of investment the squirrels had made in winter stock, and from the superabundance of wool on the sheep's back, and the lavishness of the dog's hair. Are the liars ready to confess their fault? The boys have found but little chance to use their skates, and I think the sheep-shearing of the flocks on celestial pasture-fields must have been omitted, judging from the small amount of snowy fleece that has fallen through the air. I have not had on my big mittens but once or twice, and my long-ago frost-bitten left ear has not demanded an extra pinching. To make up for the lack of fuel on the hearth, the great brass handiron of the sun has been kept unusually bright and hot. And yesterday we heard the horn of the south wind telling that the flowery bands of spring are on the way up from Florida.
The necessity for retrenchment has blessed the whole land. Many of us have learned how to make a thousand dollars do what fifteen hundred dollars--
Quizzle broke in at the first opportunity and said, "No doubt, governor, it is easy for you to be placid, for everything has gone well with you since you started life, whereas my mother died when I was little, and I was kicked and cuffed about by a step-mother whose name I cannot bear to hear."
Ha! ha! said Governor Wiseman. It is the old story of step-mothers. I don't believe they are any worse than other people, taking the average. I have often wondered why it is that the novels and romances always make the step-mother turn out so very badly. She always dresses too much and bangs the children. The authors, if writing out of their own experience, must have had a very hard time.
In society it has become a proverb: "Cruel as a step-mother." I am disposed, however, to think that, while there may be marked exceptions, step-mothers are the most self-sacrificing beings in all the world. They come into the family scrutinized by the household and the relatives of the one who used to occupy the motherly position. Neighborly busybodies meet the children on the street and sigh over them and ask them how their new mother treats them. The wardrobe of the youngsters comes under the severe inspection of outsiders.
The child, haying been taught that the lady of the household is "nothing but a step-mother," screams at the least chastisement, knowing that the neighbors' window is up and this will be a good way of making publication. That is called cruelty which is only a most reasonable, moderate and Christian spanking. What a job she has in navigating a whole nursery of somebody else's children through mumps, measles, whooping-cough and chicken-pox! One of the things that I rejoice over in life is that it is impossible that I ever become a step-mother. In many cases she has the largest possible toil for the least reward.
Blessed be the Lord who setteth the solitary in families that there are glorious exceptions! The new mother comes to the new home, and the children gather the first day around her as the natural protector. They never know the difference between the first and second mother. They seem like two verses of the same hymn, two days of the summer, two strokes of the same bell, two blessings from the same God.
She is watchful all night long over the sick little one, bathing the brow and banishing the scare of the feverish dream. After a while those children will rise up to do her honor; and when her work is done, she will go up to get the large reward that awaits a faithful, great-hearted Christian step-mother in the land where the neighbors all mind their own business.