Around The Tea-Table Part 18

By all means let us culture physical energy. Let there be more gymnasiums in our colleges and theological seminaries. Let the student know how to wield oar and bat, and in good boyish wrestle see who is the strongest. The health of mental and spiritual work often depends on physical health. If I were not opposed to betting, I would lay a wager that I can tell from the book column in any of the newspapers or magazines of the land the condition of each critic's liver and spleen at the time of his writing.

A very prominent literary man apologized to me the other day for his merciless attack on one of my books, saying that he felt miserable that morning and must pitch into something; and my book being the first one on the table, he pitched into that. Our health decides our style of work. If this world is to be taken for G.o.d, we want more sanctified muscle. The man who comes to his Christian work having had sound sleep the night before, and the result of roast beef rare in his organism, can do almost anything.

Luther was not obliged to nurse his appet.i.te with any plantation bitters, but was ready for the coa.r.s.est diet, even the "Diet of Worms."

But while I advocate all sports, and exercises, and modes of life that improve the physical organism, I have no respect for bone, and nerve, and muscle in the abstract. Health is a fine harp, but I want to know what tune you are going to play on it. I have not one daisy to put on the grave of a dead pugilist or mere boat-racer, but all the garlands I can twist for the tomb of the man who serves G.o.d, though he be as physically weak as Richard Baxter, whose ailments were almost as many as his books, and they numbered forty.

At this last sentence the company at the table, forgetful of the presence of Doctor Heavyasbricks, showed some disposition at good humor, when the doctor's brows lifted in surprise, and he observed that he thought a man with forty ailments was a painful spectacle, and ought to be calculated to depress a tea-table rather than exhilarate it.

"But, Governor Wiseman," said Quizzle, "do you not think that it is possible to combine physical, mental and spiritual recreations?"

Oh yes, replied the governor; I like this new mode of mingling religion with summer pleasures. Soon the Methodists will be shaking out their tents and packing their lunch-baskets and buying their railroad and steamboat tickets for the camp-meeting grounds. Martha's Vineyard, Round Lake, Ocean Grove and Sea Cliff will soon mingle psalms and prayers with the voice of surf and forest. Rev. Doctor J.H. Vincent, the silver trumpet of Sabbath-schoolism, is marshaling a meeting for the banks of Chautauqua Lake which will probably be the grandest religious picnic ever held since the five thousand sat down on the gra.s.s and had a surplus of provision to take home to those who were too stupid to go. From the arrangement being made for that meeting in August, I judge there will be so much consecrated enthusiasm that there may be danger that some morning, as the sun strikes gloriously through the ascending mist of Chautauqua Lake, our friends may all go up in a chariot of fire, leaving our Sunday-schools in a bereft condition. If they do go up in that way, may their mantle or their straw hat fall this way!

Why not have all our churches and denominations take a summer airing? The breath of the pine woods or a wrestle with the waters would put an end to everything like morbid religion. One reason why the apostles had such healthy theology is that they went-a-fishing. We would like to see the day when we will have Presbyterian camp-meetings, and Episcopalian camp-meetings, and Baptist camp-meetings, and Congregational camp-meetings, or, what would be still better, when, forgetful of all minor distinctions, we could have a church universal camp-meeting. I would like to help plant the tent-pole for such a convocation.

Quizzle.--Do you not think, governor, that there are inexpensive modes of recreation which are quite as good as those that absorb large means?

Yes, said the governor; we need to cut the coat according to our cloth.

When I see that the Prince of Wales is three hundred thousand dollars in debt, notwithstanding his enormous income, I am forcibly reminded that it is not the amount of money a man gets that makes him well off, but the margin between the income and the outgo. The young man who while he makes a dollar spends a dollar and one cent is on the sure road either to bankruptcy or the penitentiary.

Next to the evil of living beyond one's means is that of spending all one's income. There are mult.i.tudes who are sailing so near sh.o.r.e that a slight wind in the wrong direction founders them. They get on well while the times are usual and the wages promptly paid; but a panic or a short period of sickness, and they drop helpless. Many a father has gone with his family in a fine carriage drawn by a spanking team till he came up to his grave; then he lay down, and his children have got out of the carriage, and not only been compelled to walk, but to go barefoot. Against parsimony and n.i.g.g.ardliness I proclaim war; but with the same sentence I condemn those who make a grand splash while they live, leaving their families in dest.i.tution when they die.

Quizzle.--Where, governor, do you expect to recreate this coming summer?

Wiseman.--Have not yet made up my mind. The question is coming up in all our households as to the best mode of vacation. We shall all need rest. The first thing to do is to measure the length of your purse; you cannot make a short purse reach around Saratoga and the White Mountains. There may be as much health, good cheer and recuperation in a country farmhouse where the cows come up every night and yield milk without any chalk in it.

What the people of our cities need is quiet. What the people of the country need is sightseeing. Let the mountains come to New York and New York go to the mountains. The nearest I ever get to heaven in this world is lying flat down on my back under a tree, looking up through the branches, five miles off from a post-office or a telegraph station. But this would be torture to others.

Independent of what others do or say, let us in the selection of summer recreations study our own temperament and finances. It does not pay to spend so much money in July and August that you have to go pinched and half mad the rest of the year. The healthiest recreations do not cost much. In boyhood, with a string and a crooked pin attached to it, I fished up more fun from the mill-pond than last summer with a five-dollar apparatus I caught among the Franconia Mountains.

There is a great area of enjoyment within the circ.u.mference of one dollar if you only know how to make the circuit. More depends upon ourselves than upon the affluence of our surroundings. If you are compelled to stay home all summer, you may be as happy as though you went away. The enjoyment of the first of July, when I go off, is surpa.s.sed by nothing but the first of September, when I come home.

There being a slight pause in the conversation, Doctor Heavyasbricks woke gradually up and began to move his lips and to show strong symptoms of intention to ask for himself a question. He said: I have been attending the anniversaries in New York, and find that they are about dead. Wiseman, can you tell me what killed them?

Governor Wiseman replied: It is a great pity that the anniversaries are dead. They once lived a robust life, but began some fifteen years ago to languish, and have finally expired. To the appropriate question, What killed them? I answer, Peregrination was one of the causes. There never has been any such place for the anniversaries as the Broadway Tabernacle. It was large and social and central. When that place was torn down, the anniversaries began their travels. Going some morning out of the warm sunshine into some cathedral-looking place, they got the chills, and under the dark stained gla.s.s everything looked blue. In the afternoon they would enter some great square hall where everything was formal.

It is almost impossible to have a genial and successful meeting in a square hall. When in former days the country pastor said to his congregation, "Meet me at the New York anniversaries," they all knew where to go; but after the old Broadway Tabernacle went down, the aforesaid congregation might have looked in five or six places and not found their minister. The New York anniversaries died on the street between the old Tabernacle and St. Paul's Methodist Cathedral.

Prolix reports also helped to kill the patient. Nothing which was not in its nature immortal could have survived these. The secretary would read till he got out of wind, and would then say that the remainder of the report would be found in the printed copies in the pews. The speakers following had the burden of galvanizing an exhausted meeting, and the Christian man who attended the anniversary on retiring that evening had the nightmare in the shape of a portly secretary sitting astride his chest reading from a huge scroll of doc.u.ments.

Diluted Christian oratory also helped to kill the anniversaries. The men whom we heard in our boyhood on the Broadway platform believed in a whole Bible, and felt that if the gospel did not save the world nothing ever would; consequently, they spoke in blood-red earnestness and made the place quake with their enthusiasm. There came afterward a weak-kneed stock of ministers who thought that part of the Bible was true, if they were not very much mistaken, and that, on the whole, religion was a good thing for most people, certainly if they had weak const.i.tutions, and that man could be easily saved if we could get the phrenologist to fix up his head, and the gymnasium to develop his muscle, and the minister to coax him out of his indiscretions. Well, the anniversaries could not live on pap and confectionery, and so they died for lack of strong meat.

But the day of resurrection will come. Mark that! The tide of Bible evangelism will come up again. We may be dead, but our children will see it. New York will be thronged with men and women who will come up once a year to count the sheaves of harvest, and in some great building thronged from the platform to the vestibule an aroused Christian audience will applaud the news, just received by telegraph, of a nation born in a day, and sing with more power than when Thomas Hastings used to act as precentor:

"The year of jubilee has come; Return, ye ransom'd sinners, home."

Quizzle.--You speak, governor, of the ruinous effect of prolixity in religious service. How long ought a public service continue?

Wiseman.--There is much discussion in the papers as to how long or short sermons and prayers ought to be. Some say a discourse ought to last thirty minutes, and others forty, and others an hour, and prayers should be three minutes long, or five, or fifteen. You might as well discuss how long a frock-coat ought to be, or how many ounces of food a man ought to eat. In the one case, everything depends upon the man's size; in the other, everything on the capacity of his stomach. A sermon or a prayer ought to go on as long as it is of any profit. If it is doing no good, the sermon is half an hour too long, though it take only thirty minutes. If the audience cough, or fidget, or shuffle their feet, you had better stop praying. There is no excuse, for a man's talking or praying too long if he have good eyesight and hearing.

But suppose a man have his sermon written and before him. You say he must go through with it? Oh no. Let him skip a few leaves. Better sacrifice three or four sheets of sermon-paper than sacrifice the interest of your hearers. But it is a silly thing for a man in a prayer-meeting or pulpit to stop merely because a certain number of minutes have expired while the interest is deepening--absurd as a hunter on the track of a roebuck, and within two minutes of bringing down its antlers, stopping because his wife said that at six o'clock precisely he must be home to supper. Keep on hunting till your ammunition gives out.

Still, we must all admit that the danger is on the side of prolixity. The most interesting prayers we ever hear are by new converts, who say everything they have to say and break down in one minute. There are men who, from the way they begin their supplications, indicate a long siege.

They first pray you into a good frame, and then pray you out. They take literally what Paul meant to be figurative: "Pray without ceasing."

Quizzle.--I see there was no lack of interest when the brewers' convention met the other day in Boston, and that in their longest session the attention did not flag.

Wiseman.--Yes; I see that speeches were made on the beneficial use of fermented liquors. The announcement was made that during the year 8,910,823 barrels of the precious stuff had been manufactured. I suppose that while the convention was there Boston must have smelt like one great ale-pitcher.

The delegates were invited to visit the suburbs of the city. Strange that n.o.body thought of inviting them to visit the cemeteries and graveyards, especially the potter's field, where thousands of their victims are buried.

Perhaps you are in sympathy with these brewers, and say that if people would take beer instead of alcohol drunkenness would cease. But for the vast majority who drink, beer is only introductory to something stronger.

It is only one carriage in the same funeral. Do not spell it b-e-e-r, but spell it b-i-e-r. May the lightnings of heaven strike and consume all the breweries from river Pen.o.bscot to the Golden Horn!

Quizzle.--I see, governor, that you were last week in Washington. How do things look there?

Wiseman.--Very well. The general appearance of our national capital never changes. It is always just as far from the Senate-chamber to the White House; indeed, so far that many of our great men have never been able to travel it. There are the usual number of pet.i.tioners for governmental patronage hanging around the hotels and the congressional lobbies. They are willing to take almost anything they can get, from minister to Spain to village postmaster. They come in with the same kind of carpet-bags, look stupid and anxious for several days, and having borrowed money enough from the member from their district to pay their fare, take the cars for home, denouncing the administration and the ungratefulness of republics.

I think that the two houses of Congress are the best and most capable of any almost ever a.s.sembled. Of course there is a dearth of great men. Only here and there a Senator or Representative you ever before heard of.

Indeed, the nuisances of our national council in other days were the great men who took, in making great speeches, the time that ought to have been spent in attending to business. We all know that it was eight or ten "honorable" bloats of the last thirty years who made our chief international troubles.

Our Congress is made up mostly of practical every-day men. They have no speeches to make, and no past political reputation to nurse, and no national fame to achieve. I like the new crop of statesmen better than the old, although it is a shorter crop. They do not drink so much rum, and not so large a proportion of them will die of delirium tremens. They may not have such resounding names as some of their predecessors, but I prefer a Congress of ordinary men to a group of Senators and Representatives overawed and led about by five or six overgrown, political Brobdingnagians.

While in Washington we had a startling occurrence. A young man in high society shot another young man, who fell dead instantly.

I wonder that there is not more havoc with human life in this day, when it is getting so popular to carry firearms. Most of our young men, and many of our boys, do not feel themselves in tune unless they have a pistol accompaniment. Men are locked up or fined if found with daggers or slung-shot upon their persons, but revolvers go free. There is not half so much danger from knife as pistol. The former may let the victim escape minus a good large slice, but the latter is apt to drop him dead. On the frontiers, or engaged in police duty, firearms may be necessary; but in the ordinary walk of life pistols are, to say the least, a superfluity. Better empty your pockets of these dangerous weapons, and see that your sons do not carry them. In all the ordinary walks of life an honest countenance and orderly behavior are sufficient defence. You had better stop going into society where you must always be ready to shoot somebody.

But do not think, my dear Fred, that I am opposed to everything because I have this evening spoken against so many different things. I cannot take the part of those who pride themselves in hurling a stout No against everything.

A friend called my attention to the fact that Sanballat wanted to hold consultation with Nehemiah in the plain of O-no. That is the place where more people stay, to-day, than in any other. They are always protesting, throwing doubt on grand undertakings; and while you are in the mountain of O-yes, they spend their time on the plain of O-no. In the harness of society they are breeching-straps, good for nothing but to hold back.

You propose to call a minister. All the indications are that he is the right man. Nine-tenths of the congregation are united in his favor. The matter is put to vote. The vast majority say "Ay!" the handful of opponents responded "O no!"

You propose to build a new church. About the site, the choice of architect, the upholstery, the plumbing and the day of dedication there is almost a unanimity. You hope that the crooked sticks will all lie still, and that the congregation will move in solid phalanx. But not so. Sanballat sends for Nehemiah, proposing to meet him in the plain of O-no.

Some men were born backward, and have been going that way ever since.

Opposition to everything has become chronic. The only way they feel comfortable is when harnessed with the face toward the whiffletree and their back to the end of the shafts. They may set down their name in the hotel register as living in Boston, Chicago, Savannah or Brooklyn, but they really have been spending all their lives on the plain of O-no. There let them be buried with their face toward the west, for in that way they will lie more comfortably, as other people are buried with their face to the east. Do not impose upon them by putting them in the majority. O-no!

We rejoice that there seems more liberality among good men, and that they have made up their minds to let each one work in his own way. The scalping-knives are being dulled.

The cheerfulness and good humor which have this year characterized our church courts is remarkable and in strong contrast with the old-time ecclesiastical fights which shook synods and conferences. Religious controversies always have been the most bitter of all controversies; and when ministers do fight, they fight like vengeance. Once a church court visiting a place would not only spend much of their own time in sharp contention, but would leave the religious community to continue the quarrel after adjournment. Now they have a time of good cheer while in convention, and leave only one dispute behind them among the families, and that arising from the fact that each one claims it had the best ministers and elders at their house. Contention is a child of the darkness, peace the daughter of the light. The only help for a cow's hollow horn is a gimlet-hole bored through it, and the best way to cure religious combatants is to let more gospel light through their antlers.

As we sat at the head of the table interested in all that was going on, and saw Governor Wiseman with his honorable name, and Quizzle and Heavyasbricks with their unattractive t.i.tles, we thought of the affliction of an awkward or ill-omened name.

When there are so many pleasant names by which children may be called, what right has a parent to place on his child's head a disadvantage at the start? Worse than the gauntlet of measles and whooping-cough and mumps which the little ones have to run is this parental outrage.

What a struggle in life that child will have who has been baptized Jedekiah or Mehitabel! If a child is "called after" some one living, let that one be past mid-life and of such temperament that there shall be no danger of his becoming an absconder and a cheat. As far as possible let the name given be short, so that in the course of a lifetime there be not too many weeks or months taken up in the mere act of signature. The burdens of life are heavy enough without putting upon any one the extra weight of too much nomenclature. It is a sad thing when an infant has two bachelor uncles, both rich and with outrageous names, for the baby will have to take both t.i.tles, and that is enough to make a case of infant mortality.

Quizzle.--You seem to me, governor, to be more sprightly at every interview.

Well, that is so, but I do not know how long it will last; stout people like myself often go the quickest.