Chapter 2

One of the minor evils of loss of fortune has, I think, been exaggerated, and that is the idea that persons are frequently slighted, sometimes even cut, by their fashionable acquaintances; and connected with this is the other idea, that what some sneeringly call 'fashionable society,' is generally more heartless than any other. For the honor of human nature, I am glad to believe that the first is not the case, nor does the second exactly stand to reason. In every city, there is a class of persons, moneyed or not as the case may be, who, living only for selfish enjoyment, pay court to those that can yield it to them, and are sometimes rude enough to slight those who can not. Whether the companionship of such persons is very desirable, or their loss much to be deplored, each man must decide for himself. Persons who, when rich themselves, have been overbearing to others, are perhaps those who notice most difference when misfortunes overtake them. What is called fashionable society, generally comprises a good deal of the education and refinement of a city; with a portion of what is hollow and worthless, it includes much that is substantial and true. Certainly, the finer and more delicate feelings of our nature, and those which lead us to sympathize with the unfortunate, are partly the result of education, and we should naturally expect to find these in the higher rather than in the humbler walks of life. There is a vast deal of genuine charity in humble life, and the poor of every city derive a large part of their support from those but moderately blessed with worldly goods themselves; but many a well-meaning man will unintentionally make a remark that wounds your feelings and makes you uncomfortable for hours afterwards, while a person whose perceptions and sympathies have been more nicely trained would spare you the infliction. A certain fortune is indispensable to those who wish to keep with the party-going world, and those who have not this competence can not indulge much in this more expensive mode of life; but that they are forgotten is not because persons wish to neglect them, but because men naturally forget those they are not often in the habit of meeting. Might not the aged, even if wealthy, say they are forgotten, excepting by their immediate connection? They are forgotten because, in the rush and turmoil of life, every thing is soon forgotten. The dead, who were beloved and honored while living, are soon comparatively forgotten beyond their families and familiar circle. This is not exactly owing to the heartlessness of men, but rather to the fact that their minds are occupied with the persons and things they see every day around them, and this is probably as much the case with the poor as with the rich; but it seems to have become a sort of custom to speak of the heartlessness of society. It is rather owing to the imperfection of our constitution. Loss of fortune renders us more sensitive, and we are apt to fancy slights where none were intended; but we may be pretty certain that the better men and women of society do not make money the index of their treatment of others.

Persons sometimes speak lightly and hastily of reverses sustained by others as mere trifles, compared with loss of friends. I hold that these persons are wrong, and believe that to many, and those not particularly selfish and narrow-minded people either, loss of fortune may prove a greater and more lasting sorrow than loss of dear friends; nay, that a great reverse, such as a plunge from prosperity into utter poverty, (and many such instances can be cited,) is perhaps the heaviest trial that can be imposed on man. Let any one call up the instances he has known of the tenderest ties being severed, and except in those rare cases we sometimes meet with of persons pining away and following the beloved object to the grave, do we not see the overwhelming grief gradually subsiding into a gentler sorrow, and, as was intended by a merciful providence, other objects closing in, and though not entirely filling up the void, still furnishing other sources of happiness? This happens with the best and tenderest beings on earth. The departed one is not forgotten, nor have the survivors ceased to mourn him; but their feelings now cling more affectionately than before to the remaining members of the circle. This is not so in the case of a reverse such as I have imagined, and many of us have seen. Where, as in the failure of some great bank or 'Life and Trust Company,' reckoned perfectly impregnable, the fortune of delicate ladies, always accustomed to luxury, has been swept away; where there are no relatives able or willing to render much assistance, and daughters have to seek employment that will give themselves and an aged mother a bare competence, with all my disposition to bear things bravely and philosophically, I contend that human nature can hardly be visited with a heavier trial. For men, it is comparatively easy; but there are instances, in every large city, of ladies, once wealthy, now reduced to a sort of genteel beggary, that a man would shrink from, but that women can not very well avoid. Fancy the bitterness of such a life; the constant memory of happier days contrasted with the present condition, which has no prospect of improvement; the keenness of present sorrow rendered more acute by education and refinement; the necessity not merely of economy, for most of us can bear a large portion of this pretty cheerfully; but the difficulty, with close economy, of supplying the decent comforts of life, and tell me, as some who have never been visited by any trial of this kind would tell me, if it is selfish and sordid to compare this lasting sorrow with that great ordinance of death and separation which all must share alike? Alas! these are objects not generally reached by charitable societies; but not less deserving, and subjected to trials no less hard than those whose lot has always been one of poverty.

Having admitted that, under some circumstances, the loss of property may occasion grief so deep and lasting as to make it worthy of comparison even with loss of dear friends, I would say, on the other hand, that instances often occur where no comparison can be made between the two evils. We hear sometimes of dreadful calamities at sea, where entire families are swept away; where, as on the 'Austria,' the only alternative is the _mode_ of death, whether it shall be on the burning ship or beneath the cold, dark billow. What experience can be more awful, in the life of any man, than that which compelled this father to throw child after child into the sea, not with any hope of rescue, but merely to prolong for a few moments a life that could no longer be endured on the burning deck? Different, but scarcely less painful, the burial of hope in a father's breast, as in the death of the sons of Hallam. Industry may repair the wrecks of fortune; but the hopes and affections that have centered here must be laid aside forever.

Are there many of us, after all, who would care for a career of unbroken prosperity? Men of talent and worth have been crushed and hurried to their graves by the iron hand of poverty; but for one such, there have probably been ten who have passed through life with energies and talents never fully called forth; because easy circumstances have never demanded any great exertion from them. This leaves out a class larger probably in our country than in any other, of children of fortune, who have plunged headlong into ruin, finding an early and dishonored death, who, had they been compelled to work, would at least have acquitted themselves decently in life. Some of the most dreadful death-scenes on record are those of men who have had few earthly trials to bear, men of wealth, who have wrought their own ruin, and half of whose lives have been passed in efforts to work the ruin of the young and innocent of the other sex. If Chatterton and Otway are sad instances of genius subdued and crushed by adversity, Beckford and many others show where the too lavish gifts of fortune have perverted talent and rendered its possessor far worse than a merely useless member of society.

The world-wide Burns Celebration probably caused many humble men to think of the number of great minds who have been compelled to undergo this ordeal of poverty. How perfectly, in some instances, does the man's soul and intellect seem to have been separated from _the man himself_. It does seem a marvel that seventy years ago _this_ man should have been in want and harassed by fears for the family he was to leave behind him, when now so many hundred thousand men seem ready to worship him. How many envy fame! and how proud men are, for generations afterward, who can trace back their descent to one who, while on earth, may have suffered all the annoyances and discomforts of penury! The poet seemed to know that he would be more highly esteemed after he had left the world than while he was in it; but did this thought really afford him much consolation, or would he have been willing, if possible, to sacrifice a more prosperous present for a great posthumous fame? How many great men have languished long years in dungeons, as some languish in them even now. How many have borne years of bodily infirmity. How many have died just as they seemed about to realize the fruit of years of preparation and exertion. These reflections tend to make us contented with a comparatively humble lot, as all great trials tend to lessen our undue attachment to life.

Finally, it occurs to me that very few men have lost fortunes, without spending too much time in unavailing regrets that they should have lost them just in the manner they did. If they had only avoided this or that particular investment, all would have been well. This is nonsense. Undoubtedly, a great deal of money is lost very foolishly, but though no fatalist, I do not believe that all the care and prudence in the world will materially alter the great Scriptural law, that the riches of this world will often take wings to themselves and flee away. There is far too much recklessness, far too much of what is called in business circles 'expansion;' but the time will never come, in our country, when generation after generation, in one family, will keep on in the path of success. Great fortunes will still melt away, and the shrewdest maxims of those who built them up will fail sometimes. Nothing can be considered certain in regard to worldly goods, beyond the fact that industry, good principles, and average capacity will always, in the long run, secure a competence; but wealth will still be the prize that only a few need expect to draw.

I have endeavored to call up a few of the reflections that may console a man under adversity, remembering that drooping fortunes may revive, that many of the noblest men have suffered the same privations, and remembering how much lighter this form of affliction generally is than some others that Providence often sees fit to lay upon us. Trite as it is, I can not help echoing the remark, how vastly the sum of human happiness would be increased, if men could only learn to prize more highly the blessings they have. Those of us who are in moderate circumstances find it so much easier to envy our rich neighbors than to think with gratitude of our happy lot, contrasted with the many thousand of our needier brethren. We enjoy so many blessings, that we become unmindful of them. We rarely think at all about our health, until a few days' sickness reminds us of the boon we have been enjoying so unconsciously. In the darkest days of the great crisis, accounts reached us every week from India, telling us that refined and delicately-reared English men and women were being brutally slaughtered or exposed to the loathsome horrors of a lingering siege. What a paradise the humblest cottage at home would have seemed to these poor creatures, though some of them had been accustomed to 'stately homes.'

How beautifully this sentiment of gratitude for the common blessings of life has been expressed by Emile Souvestre, one of the purest and noblest writers of our time, and one whose early history presents an instance of great obstacles and trials nobly met and overcome!

'If a little dry sand be all that is left us, may we not still make it blossom with the small joys we now trample under foot. Ah! if it be the will of God, let my labor be still more hard, my home less comfortable, my table more frugal; let me even assume a workman's blouse, and I can bear it all willingly and cheerfully, provided I can see the loved faces around me happy, provided I can feast upon their smiles and strengthen myself with their joy. O holy contentment with poverty! it is thy presence I invoke. Grant me the cheerful gayety of my wife, the free, unrestrained laughter of my children, and take in exchange, if necessary, all that is yet left me.'

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THE MOLLY O'MOLLY PAPERS.

NO. III.

When Dogberry brought Conrade before Leonato, the only offense he seems to have had a clear idea of, was the one against himself: 'Moreover, sir, this plaintiff here, the offender, did call me ass. I beseech you, let it be remembered in his punishment.' Shakspeare has, by this 'one touch of nature,' made Dogberry kin to the whole world. It would be the most terrible of punishments to run the gauntlet of a company, every one of which you had called an ass; whatever may have been the original offense, this would be the one most remembered in your punishment, I don't think it would be possible to believe any thing good of one who had given you this appellation; on the contrary, the reputed long ears would be worse than the famous 'diabolical trumpet' for collecting and distorting the merest whispers of evil against him who planted them, or discovered them peeping through the assumed lion's skin. Apollo's music probably sounded no sweeter to Midas after he received his 'wonderful ear.'

But my object in introducing Dogberry was not to give a dissertation on this greatest of insults, but to illustrate our selfishness. Our patience will bear great _crimes_ against others, but how it gives way under the slightest _insult_ to ourselves. Now I am not going to denounce selfishness; I'd as soon think of denouncing gravitation. There is, in the best of us, an under-current of selfishness; indeed, selfishness and unselfishness are convertible terms; this is a higher kind of that, as the upper-current of the ocean is but the under-current risen to the surface.

Saint James says: 'The love of money is the root of all evil.' I am not exactly prepared to agree with him; it is a great branch, almost the trunk; but I think selfishness is the root. You know Hahnemann thought all diseases but a modification of one disease--_psora_. However it may be with his theory, the one moral disease is not an itching palm. This is but a modification of selfishness, which is not merely cutaneous.

But the form it is supposed to take in the system of Yankees, is the above-named plebeian form. The supposition may be correct. Don't we most feel our national troubles, the shock of the great national earthquake, when it causes an upheaval from the depths of the pocket? If Uncle Sam's sentiments are, as they are supposed to be, only a concentration of those of the majority, isn't his lamentation over his run-away South, who has changed her name without his consent, that of Shylock: 'My daughter! Oh! my ducats!'? Though not exactly connected with this branch of selfishness, I may as well, while speaking of our national difficulties, mention what struck me very forcibly: It is said, that on the eminence from which the spectators of the Bull Run battle so precipitately fled, were found sandwiches and bottles of wine; and that these refreshments actually lined the road to Washington. From this might be inferred that 'to-day's dinner' not only 'subtends a larger visual angle than _yesterday's_ revolution,' but that it also subtends a larger angle than _to-day's_ revolution. If one could ever forget one's own personal gratifications and comforts, it would be, I should think, in overlooking a nation's battle-field--_our_ nation's battle-field. But it is not for a humble lay member, whose business it is to practice rather than preach, to criticise. Are not the honorable members representatives of the people; and when they are cheered and refreshed, are not the 'dear people' through them cheered and refreshed? Besides, they may have so reluctantly dropped the wine and sandwiches because they were loth to leave them to 'give aid and comfort to the enemy.' There are always envious people to rail at those above them; pawns on the world's chess-board, they pride themselves on their own straightforward course; but let them push their way to the highest row, how soon do they exchange this course for the 'crooked policy of the knight,' or jump over principles with queen, castle, or bishop! Woe to the poor pawn in their way.

How I have skipped! what connection can there be between members of Congress and crooked policy, or jumping over principles? yet there must have been a train of association that led me off the track; doubtless it was purely arbitrary. Well, we'll let it go; poor pawn as I am, I have but stepped aside to nab an idea.

But to return to the Yankee. The form which selfishness takes in his system is not that of the most intensified exclusiveness. You know the story of Rosicrucius' sepulcher, with its ever-burning lamp, guarded by an armor-encased, truncheon-armed statue, which statue, on the entrance of a man who accidentally discovered the sepulcher, arose, and at his advance, raised its truncheon and shivered the lamp to atoms, leaving the intruder in darkness. On examination, under the floor springs were found, connecting with others within the statue. Rosicrucius wished thus to inform the world that he had reïnvented the ever-burning lamp of the ancients, but meant that the world shouldn't profit by the information. Had a Yankee reïnvented those lamps, he would have got out a patent, and some brother Yankee would have improved upon it, and invented one warranted to burn 'forever _and a day_.' They would probably have thus raked together a great deal of the 'filthy lucre;' _possibly_ this would have been their main object; but the world would have been benefited by them. All selfishness, to be sure, but exclusive selfishness benefits the world.

[Speaking of _filthy_ lucre, I begin to see why those who have lost it all are said to be '_cleaned_ out.' But this is only _par parenthèse_.]

But exclusiveness is not peculiar to the Rosicrucians; there is too much of it in even the religious sects of this enlightened age; it is too much, 'Lord, bless me and my sect;' 'Lord, bless us, and no more.' There are self-constituted mountain-tops that would extract all the mercy and grace with which the winds come freighted from the great ocean of Love, so that they would pass over beyond them hot, dry winds of wrath. But I am glad that this is impossible; that in the moral world there are no Andes, no rainless regions.

I fear that I have not stuck very closely to the text furnished me by thick-headed, thick-tongued Dogberry.

Allow me to compress into closing sentences, a few general remarks.... Those lakes that have no outlet, grow salt and bitter; we all know the ennui and bitterness of those souls that receive many blessings, sending forth none; better drain your soul out for others, than have it become a _Dead Sea_.... Black, that absorbs all rays, reflecting none, is an anomaly in nature; it is true, but one earthly character has reflected all the rays of goodness, absorbing none, making the common light 'rich, like a lily in bloom;' yet every man can reflect at least one ray to gladden the earth.... It is not necessary, even in the cold atmosphere of this world, to become contractedly selfish; cold expands noble natures as it does water.... Lastly ...

Yours, MOLLY O'MOLLY.

NO. IV.

The old trout knows enough to keep off the fisherman's hook; the squirrel never cracks an empty nut; the crow soon learns the harmlessness of the scarecrow. But man, though he may have twenty times wriggled off the hook, the patient angler catches him at last. He always cracks the empty shell, then cries: 'Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.' This cry he might be spared would he learn a lesson from the squirrel, who weighs his nuts and throws away the light, hollow shell.... And there are scarescrows, the harmlessness of which the human biped learns not in a a lifetime. How long is it since that horned, cloven-footed monster whom the monks made of Pan _theos_ and called him _Devil_, was an object of fear? How 'the real, genuine, no mistake' (savin' his presence) must have laughed at his own effigy! Then there is Grim Death, too, a creation of the Dark Ages, for in no age of light could this horror have been ever conceived. Unlike the _other_, against him no exorcism avails.... As if the soul about to be launched on the dim sea Eternity, after all lights and forms of the loved shore have become indistinct, must be cut loose from her moorings by this phantom. The idea that 'Death comes to set us free,' would hardly make us 'meet him cheerily, as our true friend,' were this his real shape. But were I disposed to enumerate our scarecrows, the list would be incomplete; as there are doubtless many that I have not the shrewdness to recognize as such.

The only humbugs are not those that work on our fears. There are humbugs that work on our hopes. These have been likened to bubbles that dance on the wave, burst, and are no more. They are too often like bomb-shells, that in exploding scatter ruin on all around. They have also been named air-castles, _chateaux en Espagne_, 'baseless fabrics of a vision.' The baseless fabric of a vision is built of 'airy nothingness;' but men found on a wish, structures that tower to heaven, put real, solid material into them, and when they fall, as fall they must--I'll not attempt to give an idea of the utter desolation they leave, of the _waste place_ they make of the heart, lest you should think I have thus humbugged myself; for _self-humbug_ it certainly is; and this is the most intensely _human_. Not a fish, or reptile, bird, or beast; not a thing crawling, swimming, flying, or walking, but the human creature, humbugs himself. 'Man was made to mourn,' I would change into, Man was made to be humbugged. It is better to be greatly gullible, than a 'cunning dog,' for gulled we will be. It is better to be caught at once, than to have our gills torn by wriggling off the hook the twenty times, to be caught at last. It is better to walk straight into the net than to fatigue ourselves by coming to it in a roundabout way. A Nova-Scotian once rallied a Down-Easter on the famous wooden hams. 'Yaas,' was the reply, 'and they say that one of you actilly _ate_ one and didn't know the difference.' Well, it is better to swallow our humbugs, as the Nova-Scotian did the Connecticut-cured ham, without detecting any thing peculiar in their flavor, than it is to find our mistake at the first cut or _saw_. By the way, saltpeter is so needed for other purposes, that probably the _Virginia cured_ will not now have as fine a flavor as formerly.