Part 2

Quite the reverse, my dear sir; I succeed in nothing. I have not the faintest recollection of having ever succeeded in any single thing, where success was of the least moment, in the whole course of my life. I have invariably failed in every thing I have tried. But what has been the consequence? Why, the consequence has been, that I now never _expect_ success in any thing I aim at; and this again has produced one of the most delightful states of feeling that can well be conceived. In fact, the reader can not conceive how delicious is the repose, the placidity of mind, the equanimity of temper, the coolness, the calmness, the comfort, arising from this independence of results--this delightful quiescence of the aspirations. It is a perfect paradise, an elysium. You recline on it so softly, so easily. It is like a down pillow; a bed of roses; an English blanket. I recollect the time when I used to fret and fume when I attempted any thing. How I used to be worried and tortured with hopes and fears, when I commenced any new undertaking, or applied for any situation! What folly! what absurdity!--all proceeding from the ridiculous notion that I had some chance of success!

Grown wiser, I save myself a world of trouble now. I know that I need not look for success in any thing I attempt, and therefore never expect it. It would do you good, gentle reader, to see with what calmness, with what philosophy, I now wait the result of any effort to better myself in life. It is truly edifying to behold.

Notwithstanding, however, this certain foreknowledge of consequences as regards the point in question, I deem it my bounden duty, both to myself and family, to make every effort I can for their and my own advancement; to try for every situation to which I think myself competent, and, therefore, I do so; but it is merely in compliance with this moral obligation, and from no hope whatever of succeeding; and the result has invariably shown, that to have given myself any uneasiness on the subject, to have entertained the most remote idea of success, would have been one of the most ridiculous things conceivable.

What a triumph is mine in such cases! I suffer nothing--no distress of mind, no uneasiness, not the least of either: I am calm and cool, and quite prepared for the result, and sure as fate it comes--“Dear Sir, I am sorry to say,” &c., &c. I never read a word beyond this.

Perhaps it would amuse the reader to give him one of those instances--I could give him five hundred--of what the generality of people call disappointments, which has induced the happy state of mind I now enjoy, which enables me to contemplate such crises as would throw any other person into the utmost agitation, with the most perfect equanimity.

About four or five years ago, a very intimate and dear friend suddenly burst in upon me while at breakfast one morning. He was almost breathless, and his look was big with intelligence.

“Well, Bob,” said he, with a gleeful smile, “here’s something at last that will do you good.”

I smiled, and shook my head.

“Well, well, so you always say,” said my friend, who perfectly understood me; “but you cannot miss this time. I have just heard from a confidential friend that Mr Bowman is about to retire from business, and that he is on the lookout for a respectable person to purchase his stock in trade, and the good will of his shop, privately. Now, Bob, that’s just the thing for you. You know the trade; you know, too, that Mr Bowman has realised a handsome fortune in it, and that his shop, where that fortune was made, has the best business in town.”

Now, all this that my friend said was true, perfectly true. Mr Bowman had made a fortune in the shop alluded to. It had by far the best run in town: it was crowded with customers from morning till night. But I felt quite confident that the moment _I_ took the shop there would be an end of its prosperity. However, my friends prevailed. To please them, and to show that I was willing to do any thing to better my circumstances, I took the shop. I bought the stock and good will of the business, and entered on possession. My friends all congratulated me, and declared that my fortune was made. I knew better.

However, to give the speculation fair play, a thing I thought due to it, I prevailed on Mr Bowman to forego the usual proceeding in such cases of advertising his retirement from business and recommending _me_ as his successor, because I knew that if he did so, all chance of my doing any good would be instantly knocked on the head. Recommend me! Why, the bare mention of my name--any allusion to it--would be certain and immediate destruction to me. I knew that if the public was made aware that _I_ had succeeded to the business, it would instantly desert the shop.

Impressed with this conviction, I had the whole matter and manner of the transfer of property and interest in the shop managed with the utmost privacy and secrecy, my object being to slip unperceived and unobserved, as it were, into my predecessor’s place, that the public might not have the slightest hint of the change.

In order further to secure this important secret, I would not permit the slightest alteration to be made, either on the shop itself, or on any of its multifarious contents. I would not allow a box, or an article of any kind, not even a nail, to be removed or shifted from its place, for fear of giving the public the slightest clue to the fact of the shop’s being now mine. As to my own appearance in it, which of course could not be avoided, I hoped that I might pass for a shopman of Mr Bowman’s.

All, however, as I expected, was in vain. The public by some intuitive instinct, as it seemed to me, discovered that I was now proprietor of the shop, and took its measures accordingly. On the very first day that I took my place behind the counter, I thought it looked shy at me. I was not mistaken. Day after day my customers became fewer and fewer, until hardly one would enter the shop.

Being quite prepared for this result, I felt neither surprise nor disappointment, but shortly after coolly disposed of the shop, and all that was in it, to another party, who, as I wish every body well, I am glad to say, did, according to his own account, amazingly well in it, he declaring to me himself that it fulfilled his most sanguine expectations.

It could not be otherwise, for, as I well knew would be the case, the moment _I_ quitted the counter, and this person took my place, the stream of public patronage returned; customers came thronging in faster than he and two stout active shopmen could serve them.

Now, in this affair, as in all others of a similar kind, my friends confessed that I had given the spec fair play, and that there was nothing on my part to which they could attribute the blame of failure. Unable to account for it, therefore, they merely shrugged their shoulders and said, “It was odd; they didn’t understand it.” Neither did I, good reader; but so it was.

One rather odd feature in my case I may mention. Although I never actually succeed in anything, I am always _very near_ doing so--very near getting every thing--within an ace, in almost every instance, of obtaining all I want. My friends are frequently _bitten_ by this will-o’-the-wisp in my fortunes, and have fifty times congratulated me on the strength of its deceptive promises or successes, which of course are never realised.

In reply to their congratulations on such occasions, I merely smile and shake my head; adding, perhaps, “Not so fast, my good friends; wait a bit and you’ll see. I have been as _near_ my mark a hundred times before.”

Perhaps the reader would like to glance at a case in point. I will present it to him: it is not yet three weeks old. I applied for a certain appointment in the gift of a certain board. Here is the reply of the secretary, who was my personal friend:--“My dear Sir, I am exceedingly happy to inform you that your application, which was this day read at the board, has been _most favourably received_. Indeed, from what has passed on the subject, I may assure you of success, and beg to congratulate you accordingly. Your success would not perhaps have been quite so certain had Mr S-- been at home, as he would probably support his friend B., who is the only person you had to fear. But Mr S--, who is on the continent (at Carlsbad), is not expected for a fortnight, and _cannot_ be here for a week at the soonest; so you are safe.”

“Well, then, _now_ surely, Bob,” said my friends to whom I showed this letter, “you cannot doubt of your success in this instance.”

“No, indeed!” exclaimed I, with the usual shake of the head and accompanying smile of incredulity; “never had less expectation from any thing in my life. Don’t you see, Mr S-- _will_ be home in time, and _will_ give his powerful interest to my rival?”

“Impossible, my dear sir; Mr S-- is at Carlsbad, and _cannot_ be home in less than a week. Neither steam-boat nor rail-road could enable him to accomplish such a feat.”

“No, but a balloon might; and depend upon it a balloon he will take, rather than I should get the situation. This he’ll certainly do, although he knows nothing of what is going on.”

* * * * *

“There’s the postman, my dear,” said I with gentleness and equanimity to my wife, on the morning of the third day after the conversation above alluded to had taken place. “It is a letter from my friend Secretary Wilkins, to inform me that I have lost the situation of ----; that Mr S--, performing miracles in the way of expedition, although not impelled by any particular motive, came home just in time to support his friend and, of course, to cut me out.”

It was precisely so. “My dear Sir,” began my friend’s letter, “I am truly sorry to inform you”----I read no more; not another word. It was quite unnecessary; I knew it all before. So, laying the letter gently on the table, I said with my wonted smile, “Exactly; all right!”

Now, does the reader think that, in this, or in any other similar case, I gave myself the smallest uneasiness about the result? Not I, indeed--not the smallest. I expected no success, and was not therefore disappointed.

C.

OLD TIMES.

BY J. U. U.

“My soul is full of other times!”

Where is that spirit of our prime, The good old day! Have the life and power of that honoured time All passed away! When old friendship breathed, and old kindness wreathed The cot and castle in kindred claim, And the tie was holy of service lowly, And Neighbour was a brother’s name,

And the streams of love and charity Flowed far and wide, And kind welcome held the portal free To none denied, And blessed from far rose that kindly star The high roof o’er the well-known hall, The cordial hearth, the genial mirth-- Has Time the tyrant stilled them all!

Ay, some are fallen--their courts are green; The cold calm sky Looks in on many a once-loved scene Of days gone by. And some stand on, but their lights are gone, Their manners are new and their masters strange; They know no trace of that frank old race Swept off by the tide of time and change.

These would’st thou mourn, go, trace the path, The far wild road, To some old hill where ruin hath Its lone abode-- Where morn is sleeping, and dank dews weeping-- Where the grey moss grows on the lintel stone-- Where the raven haunts, and the wild weed flaunts, And old remembrance broods alone:

There weep--for generous hearts dwelt there, To pity true-- Each light and shade of joy and care These old walls knew. With weary ray the eye of day Looks lifeless on their mouldering mound: Their pride is blighted!--but the sun ne’er lighted A happier home in his bright round.

There smiles, whose light hath passed away, Bound young hearts fast; And hope gilt many a coming day Now long, long past. There was beauty’s flower and manhood’s power-- The frail, proud things in which mortals trust; And yon hall was loud with a merry crowd Of breasts long mingled in the dust.

There too the poor and weary sought Relief and rest; His song the wandering harper brought, A welcome guest; There lay rose lightly, and young eyes shone brightly, And in sunshine ever life’s stream rolled on: And no thought came hither how time could wither-- Yet time stole by, and they are gone.

And there--the breast were cold indeed That would not feel, How with the same relentless speed Our seasons steal. The princely towers and pleasant bowers May scoff the hours with gallant show, In vain--they are what once these were, And in their turn must lie as low.

* * * * *

THE BEAUTIFUL IN NATURE AND ART.--In looking at our nature, we discover among its admirable endowments the sense or perception of beauty. We see the germ of this in every human being; and there is no power which admits greater cultivation: and why should it not be cherished in all? It deserves remark, that the provision for this principle of the creation which we can turn into food and clothes, or gratification for the body; but the whole creation may be used to minister to the sense of beauty. Beauty is an all-pervading presence; it unfolds the numberless flowers of the spring; it waves in the branches of the trees and the green blades of grass; it haunts the depth of the earth and sea, and gleams out in the hues of the shell and the precious stone; and not only these minute objects, but the ocean, the mountains, the clouds, the heavens, the stars, the rising and setting sun, all overflow with beauty. The universe is its temple, and those men who are alive to it cannot lift their eyes without feeling themselves encompassed with it on every side. Now, this beauty is so precious, the enjoyments it gives are so refined and so akin to worship, that it is painful to think of the multitude of men as living in the midst of it, and living almost as blind to it, as if, instead of this fair earth and glorious sky, they were tenants of a dungeon. An infinite joy is lost to the world by the want of culture of this spiritual endowment. Suppose that I were to visit a cottage, and to see its walls lined with the choicest picture of Raphael, and every spare nook filled with statues of the most exquisite workmanship, and that I were to learn that neither man, woman, nor child, ever cast an eye at these miracles of art, how should I regret their privation; how should I want to open their eyes; and to help them to comprehend and feel the loveliness and grandeur which in vain courted their notice? But every husbandman is living in sight of the works of a diviner artist; and how much would his existence be elevated, could he see the glory which shines forth in their forms, hues, proportions, and moral expression! I have spoken only of the beauty of nature; but how much of this mysterious charm is found in the elegant arts, and especially in literature? The best books have most beauty. The greatest truths are wronged if not linked with beauty, and they win their way most surely and deeply into the soul when arrayed in this their natural and fit attire. Now no man receives the true culture of a man in whom the sensibility to the beautiful is not cherished; and I know of no condition in life from which it should be excluded. Of all luxuries, this is the cheapest and most at hand; and it seems to be most important to those conditions where coarse labour tends to give a grossness to the mind. From the diffusion of the sense of beauty in ancient Greece, and of the taste for music in modern Germany, we learn that the people at large may partake of refined gratifications which have hitherto been thought to be necessarily restricted to a few.--_Channing._

A COMMON FROG!

“Come along; don’t stay poking in that ditch; it’s nothing but a common frog,” said a lively-looking fellow to his companion; who replied, “True, it is only a common frog, but give me a few minutes, and I will endeavour to show you that it better deserves attention than many a creature called rare and curious. The fact is, that the history of what we call common animals, and see every day, is often very imperfectly known, though possessing much to astonish and instruct us. Come, sit you down on this bank for a few minutes, instead of pursuing your idle walk, and I will endeavour to excite your curiosity and powers of observation. If I do so by means of so humble an instrument as a common frog, I do better service than if I were to fix your attention by accounts of the mightiest monsters of fossil or existing Herpetology, as the part of natural history which treats of reptiles is called. See! I have caught him, and a fine stout fellow he is, for I perceive from his swelling chops he is a male. Let us now consider his place in the creation: it is in the tailless section of the fourth order of reptiles called Batrachians, and distinguished from the other three orders by the absence of scales on the skin, and by the young undergoing the most extensive changes of form, organic structure, and habits of life. You know, I presume, that frogs are hatched from eggs, or as they are called in mass, spawn, which is laid early in the year in shallow pools, and resembles boiled sago. The peasantry believe that as it is laid in more or less deep water, so will the coming season be dry or wet. This, however, like many other instances of supposed prescience in animals, does not stand the test of observation, for spawn is frequently laid where, when the weather proves fine, the water is dried up. Nevertheless, its position does in some degree indicate the state of the atmosphere, as, under the low pressure of air which precedes and attends rain, the spawn, owing to bubbles of air entangled in it, floats more buoyantly, and is fitted for shallower water than it could swim in under other circumstances. But to our subject. The product of this spawn is in every thing unlike the perfect frog we now behold. He commenced life with some twelve hundred in family, a tiny, fish-formed creature, with curious external gills, which in a short time became covered with skin; and he then breathed by taking in water at the mouth, passing it over the gills, and out at orifices on each side, just as we see in ordinary fishes. The circulation of his blood was also similar to that of those animals. His head and body were then confounded in one globular mass, to which was appended a long, flattened, and powerful tail; his mouth was small, his jaws suited to his food, which was vegetable, and his intestines were four times longer in proportion than they are now. After some time of this fish-like life, two limbs began to bud near to the junction of his body and tail--then another pair under the skin near his gills. His tail absorbed in proportion as his limbs developed, until, casting away the last of his many tadpole skins, and with it his jaws and gills, he emerged from the water a ‘gaping, wide-mouthed, waddling frog,’ to seek on land his prey, in future to consist exclusively of worms, insects, and other small living beings; still retaining his power of swimming and diving, but accomplishing it by powerful exertions of his hinder legs, which serve him on land to effect his prodigious jumps, of which we may form an estimate by knowing that a man exerting as great a power in proportion could jump upwards of one hundred yards. He cannot, however, breathe under water; and though his skin, which possesses enormous absorbing powers, may contribute a portion of the necessary stimulus to his blood, yet he must breathe as we do by getting air into his lungs, and therefore, except when he is torpid from cold, he cannot continue any great length of time under water. Observe now his mode of breathing--see with what regularity his nostrils open and shut, while the skin under his throat falls and rises in the same order, for as he is without ribs or diaphragm, his mode of inspiration is not effected as ours is; but he takes air into his closely shut mouth through his nostrils, which he then closes, and by a muscular exertion presses the air into his lungs. Were you to keep his mouth open, he would be infallibly smothered. His tongue is one of his most striking peculiarities, for instead of being rooted, as in other animals, at the throat, it is fastened to his under lip, and its point is directed to his stomach. Nevertheless, this strange arrangement is well suited to his purposes, and his tongue as an organ of prehension is very effective. It is flat, soft, and long, and is covered with a very viscid fluid. When he wishes to use it, he lowers his under jaw suddenly, and ejects and retracts his tongue with the rapidity of a flash of light, snatching away a luckless worm or beetle attached, by the secretion before alluded to, to its tip. The insertion of the tongue in front of the lower jaw serves not only to aid mechanically in its ejection and retraction, just as we manage the lash of a whip, but it saves material in its construction, for it would require much greater volume of muscle to accomplish the same end posited as tongues usually are; and it has also the advantage of bringing the food into the proper place for being swallowed, without further exertion than that of its retraction.

Look now at the splendour of the golden iris of his eyes, and his triple eyelids; see, notwithstanding the meagre developement of his head, as a phrenologist would say, his great look of vivacity; though his brain is small, his nerves are particularly large, and his muscles are accordingly possessed of more than ordinary excitability, which property has subjected his race to very many cruel experiments, at the hands of physiologists, galvanists, &c. A favourite experiment was, by the galvanic action of a silver coin and a small plate of zinc, on the leg of a dead frog, to make it jump with more than the force of life. Should you be inclined to study his anatomy, you will find ample stores in the ponderous folios of old writers, who have so laboriously wrought out his story as to leave little to be accomplished by us. The frog, now abundantly dispersed over Ireland, was introduced into this country not much more than a century since by Doctor Gwythers of Trinity College; and in thus naturalizing this pretty creature, cold and clammy though it be, he did a service, for it contributes materially to check the increase of slugs and worms. I have often vindicated the frog from charges brought against him by gardeners. I have been shown a strawberry, and desired to look at the mischief he has done. I have pointed out, that the edge where he was accused of biting out a piece was not only dry, but smaller than the interior of the cavity, and it therefore could not be formed by a bite. I have then shown other strawberries with similar wounds, in which small black slugs were feeding; and I have cut up the supposed strawberry-devouring frog slain by the gardener, and shown in his stomach, with several earthworms, a number of little black slugs of the species alluded to, but not one bit of fruit: thus proving, I hope, that the cultivator of strawberries ought for his own sake to be the protector of frogs.