Autocrat of the Breakfast Table Part 15

Men who exercise chiefly those faculties of the mind which work independently of the will,-poets and artists, for instance, who follow their imagination in their creative moments, instead of keeping it in hand as your logicians and practical men do with their reasoning faculty,-such men are too apt to call in the mechanical appliances to help them govern their intellects.

-He means they get drunk,-said the young fellow already alluded to by name.

Do you think men of true genius are apt to indulge in the use of inebriating fluids? said the divinity-student.

If you think you are strong enough to bear what I am going to say,-I replied,-I will talk to you about this. But mind, now, these are the things that some foolish people call _dangerous_ subjects,-as if these vices which burrow into people's souls, as the Guinea-worm burrows into the naked feet of West-Indian slaves, would be more mischievous when seen than out of sight. Now the true way to deal with those obstinate animals, which are a dozen feet long, some of them, and no bigger than a horse hair, is to get a piece of silk round their _heads_, and pull them out very cautiously. If you only break them off, they grow worse than ever, and sometimes kill the person who has the misfortune to harbor one of them. Whence it is plain that the first thing to do is to find out where the head lies.

Just so of all the vices, and particularly of this vice of intemperance.

What is the head of it, and where does it lie? For you may depend upon it, there is not one of these vices that has not a head of its own,-an intelligence,-a meaning,-a certain virtue, I was going to say,-but that might, perhaps, sound paradoxical. I have heard an immense number of moral physicians lay down the treatment of moral Guinea-worms, and the vast majority of them would always insist that the creature had no head at all, but was all body and tail. So I have found a very common result of their method to be that the string slipped, or that a piece only of the creature was broken off, and the worm soon grew again, as bad as ever. The truth is, if the Devil could only appear in church by attorney, and make the best statement that the facts would bear him out in doing on behalf of his special virtues, (what we commonly call vices,) the influence of good teachers would be much greater than it is. For the arguments by which the Devil prevails are precisely the ones that the Devil-queller most rarely answers. The way to argue down a vice is not to tell lies about it,-to say that it has no attractions, when everybody knows that it has,-but rather to let it make out its case just as it certainly will in the moment of temptation, and then meet it with the weapons furnished by the Divine armory. Ithuriel did not spit the toad on his spear, you remember, but touched him with it, and the blasted angel took the sad glories of his true shape. If he had shown fight then, the fair spirits would have known how to deal with him.

That all spasmodic cerebral action is an evil is not perfectly clear.

Men get fairly intoxicated with music, with poetry, with religious excitement, oftenest with love. Ninon de l'Enclos said she was so easily excited that her soup intoxicated her, and convalescents have been made tipsy by a beef-steak.

There are forms and stages of alcoholic exaltation which, in themselves, and without regard to their consequences, might be considered as positive improvements of the persons affected. When the sluggish intellect is roused, the slow speech quickened, the cold nature warmed, the latent sympathy developed, the flagging spirit kindled,-before the trains of thought become confused or the will perverted, or the muscles relaxed,-just at the moment when the whole human zoophyte flowers out like a full-blown rose, and is ripe for the subscription-paper or the contribution-box,-it would be hard to say that a man was, at that very time, worse, or less to be loved, than when driving a hard bargain with all his meaner wits about him. The difficulty is, that the alcoholic virtues don't wash; but until the water takes their colors out, the tints are very much like those of the true celestial stuff.

[Here I was interrupted by a question which I am very unwilling to report, but have confidence enough in those friends who examine these records to commit to their candor.

_A person_ at table asked me whether I "went in for rum as a steady drink?"-His manner made the question highly offensive, but I restrained myself, and answered thus:-]

Rum I take to be the name which unwashed moralists apply alike to the product distilled from mola.s.ses and the n.o.blest juices of the vineyard.

Burgundy "in all its sunset glow" is rum. Champagne, "the foaming wine of Eastern France," in rum. Hock, which our friend, the Poet, speaks of as

"The Rhine's breastmilk, gushing cold and bright, Pale as the moon, and maddening as her light,"

is rum. Sir, I repudiate the loathsome vulgarism as an insult to the first miracle wrought by the Founder of our religion! I address myself to the company.-I believe in temperance, nay, almost in abstinence, as a rule for healthy people. I trust that I practice both. But let me tell you, there are companies of men of genius into which I sometimes go, where the atmosphere of intellect and sentiment is so much more stimulating than alcohol, that, if I thought fit to take wine, it would be to keep me sober.

Among the gentlemen that I have known, few, if any, were ruined by drinking. My few drunken acquaintances were generally ruined before they became drunkards. The habit of drinking is often a vice, no doubt,-sometimes a misfortune,-as when an almost irresistible hereditary propensity exists to indulge in it,-but oftenest of all a _punishment_.

Empty heads,-heads without ideas in wholesome variety and sufficient number to furnish food for the mental clockwork,-ill-regulated heads, where the faculties are not under the control of the will,-these are the ones that hold the brains which their owners are so apt to tamper with, by introducing the appliances we have been talking about. Now, when a gentleman's brain is empty or ill-regulated, it is, to a great extent, his own fault; and so it is simple retribution, that, while he lies slothfully sleeping or aimlessly dreaming, the fatal habit settles on him like a vampyre, and sucks his blood, fanning him all the while with its hot wings into deeper slumber or idler dreams! I am not such a hard-souled being as to apply this to the neglected poor, who have had no chance to fill their heads with wholesome ideas, and to be taught the lesson of self-government. I trust the tariff of Heaven has an _ad valorem_ scale for them-and all of us.

But to come back to poets and artists;-if they really are more p.r.o.ne to the abuse of stimulants,-and I fear that this is true,-the reason of it is only too clear. A man abandons himself to a fine frenzy, and the power which flows through him, as I once explained to you, makes him the medium of a great poem or a great picture. The creative action is not voluntary at all, but automatic; we can only put the mind into the proper att.i.tude, and wait for the wind, that blows where it listeth, to breathe over it. Thus the true state of creative genius is allied to _reverie_, or dreaming. If mind and body were both healthy and had food enough and fair play, I doubt whether any men would be more temperate than the imaginative cla.s.ses. But body and mind often flag,-perhaps they are ill-made to begin with, underfed with bread or ideas, overworked, or abused in some way. The automatic action, by which genius wrought its wonders, fails. There is only one thing which can rouse the machine; not will,-that cannot reach it; nothing but a ruinous agent, which hurries the wheels awhile and soon eats out the heart of the mechanism. The dreaming faculties are always the dangerous ones, because their mode of action can be imitated by artificial excitement; the reasoning ones are safe, because they imply continued voluntary effort.

I think you will find it true, that, before any vice can fasten on a man, body, mind, or moral nature must be debilitated. The mosses and fungi gather on sickly trees, not thriving ones; and the odious parasites which fasten on the human frame choose that which is already enfeebled. Mr.

Walker, the hygeian humorist, declared that he had such a healthy skin it was impossible for any impurity to stick to it, and maintained that it was an absurdity to wash a face which was of necessity always clean. I don't know how much fancy there was in this; but there is no fancy in saying that the la.s.situde of tired-out operatives, and the languor of imaginative natures in their periods of collapse, and the vacuity of minds untrained to labor and discipline, fit the soul and body for the germination of the seeds of intemperance.

Whenever the wandering demon of Drunkenness finds a ship adrift,-no steady wind in its sails, no thoughtful pilot directing its course,-he steps on board, takes the helm, and steers straight for the maelstrom.

-I wonder if you know the _terrible smile_? [The young fellow whom they call John winked very hard, and made a jocular remark, the sense of which seemed to depend on some double meaning of the word _smile_. The company was curious to know what I meant.]

There are persons-I said-who no sooner come within sight of you than they begin to smile, with an uncertain movement of the mouth, which conveys the idea that they are thinking about themselves, and thinking, too, that you are thinking they are thinking about themselves,-and so look at you with a wretched mixture of self-consciousness, awkwardness, and attempts to carry off both, which are betrayed by the cowardly behaviour of the eye and the tell-tale weakness of the lips that characterize these unfortunate beings.

-Why do you call them unfortunate, Sir?-asked the divinity-student.

Because it is evident that the consciousness of some imbecility or other is at the bottom of this extraordinary expression. I don't think, however, that these persons are commonly fools. I have known a number, and all of them were intelligent. I think nothing conveys the idea of _underbreeding_ more than this self-betraying smile. Yet I think this peculiar habit as well as that of _meaningless blushing_ may be fallen into by very good people who met often, or sit opposite each other at table. A true gentleman's face is infinitely removed from all such paltriness,-calm-eyed, firm-mouthed. I think t.i.tian understood the look of a gentleman as well as anybody that ever lived. The portrait of a young man holding a glove in his hand, in the Gallery of the Louvre, if any of you have seen that collection, will remind you of what I mean.

-Do I think these people know the peculiar look they have?-I cannot say; I hope not; I am afraid they would never forgive me, if they did. The worst of it is, the trick is catching; when one meets one of these fellows, he feels a tendency to the same manifestation. The Professor tells me there is a muscular slip, a dependence of the _platysma myoides_, which is called the _risorius Santorini_.

-Say that once more,-exclaimed the young fellow mentioned above.

The Professor says there is a little fleshy slip called Santorini's laughing muscle. I would have it cut out of my face, if I were born with one of those const.i.tutional grins upon it. Perhaps I am uncharitable in my judgment of those sour-looking people I told you of the other day, and of these smiling folks. It may be that they are born with these looks, as other people are with more generally recognized deformities. Both are bad enough, but I had rather meet three of the scowlers than one of the smilers.

-There is another unfortunate way of looking, which is peculiar to that amiable s.e.x we do not like to find fault with. There are some very pretty, but, unhappily, very ill-bred women, who don't understand the law of the road with regard to handsome faces. Nature and custom would, no doubt, agree in conceding to all males the right of at least two distinct looks at every comely female countenance, without any infraction of the rules of courtesy or the sentiment of respect. The first look is necessary to define the person of the individual one meets so as to avoid it in pa.s.sing. Any unusual attraction detected in a first glance is a sufficient apology for a second,-not a prolonged and impertinent stare, but an appreciating homage of the eyes, such as a stranger may inoffensively yield to a pa.s.sing image. It is astonishing how morbidly sensitive some vulgar beauties are to the slightest demonstration of this kind. When a lady walks the streets, she leaves her virtuous-indignation countenance at home; she knows well enough that the street is a picture-gallery, where pretty faces framed in pretty bonnets are meant to be seen, and everybody has a right to see them.

-When we observe how the same features and style of person and character descend from generation to generation, we can believe that some inherited weakness may account for these peculiarities. Little snapping-turtles snap-so the great naturalist tells us-before they are out of the egg-sh.e.l.l. I am satisfied, that, much higher up in the scale of life, character is distinctly shown at the age of -2 or -3 months.

-My friend, the Professor, has been full of eggs lately. [This remark excited a burst of hilarity which I did not allow to interrupt the course of my observations.] He has been reading the great book where he found the fact about the little snapping-turtles mentioned above. Some of the things he has told me have suggested several odd a.n.a.logies enough.

There are half a dozen men, or so, who carry in their brains the _ovarian eggs_ of the next generation's or century's civilization. These eggs are not ready to be laid in the form of books as yet; some of them are hardly ready to be put into the form of talk. But as rudimentary ideas or inchoate tendencies, there they are; and these are what must form the future. A man's general notions are not good for much, unless he has a crop of these intellectual ovarian eggs in his own brain, or knows them as they exist in the minds of others. One must be in the _habit_ of talking with such persons to get at these rudimentary germs of thought; for their development is necessarily imperfect, and they are moulded on new patterns, which must be long and closely studied. But these are the men to talk with. No fresh truth ever gets into a book.

-A good many fresh lies get in, anyhow,-said one of the company.

I proceeded in spite of the interruption.-All uttered thought, my friend, the Professor, says, is of the nature of an excretion. Its materials have been taken in, and have acted upon the system, and been reacted on by it; it has circulated and done its office in one mind before it is given out for the benefit of others. It may be milk or venom to other minds; but, in either case, it is something which the producer has had the use of and can part with. A man instinctively tries to get rid of his thought in conversation or in print so soon as it is matured; but it is hard to get at it as it lies imbedded, a mere potentiality, the germ of a germ, in his intellect.

-Where are the brains that are fullest of these ovarian eggs of thought?-I decline mentioning individuals. The producers of thought, who are few, the "jobbers" of thought, who are many, and the retailers of thought, who are numberless, are so mixed up in the popular apprehension, that it would be hopeless to try to separate them before opinion has had time to settle. Follow the course of opinion on the great subjects of human interest for a few generations or centuries, get its parallax, map out a small arc of its movement, see where it tends, and then see who is in advance of it or even with it; the world calls him hard names, probably; but if you would find the _ova_ of the future, you must look into the folds of his cerebral convolutions.

[The divinity-student looked a little puzzled at this suggestion, as if he did not see exactly where he was to come out, if he computed his arc too nicely. I think it possible it might cut off a few corners of his present belief, as it has cut off martyr-burning and witch-hanging;-but time will show,-time will show, as the old gentleman opposite says.]

-Oh,-here is that copy of verses I told you about.

SPRING HAS COME.

_Intra Muros_.

The sunbeams, lost for half a year, Slant through my pane their morning rays For dry Northwesters cold and clear, The East blows in its thin blue haze.

And first the snowdrop's bells are seen, Then close against the sheltering wall The tulip's horn of dusky green, The peony's dark unfolding ball.

The golden-chaliced crocus burns; The long narcissus-blades appear; The cone-beaked hyacinth returns, And lights her blue-flamed chandelier.

The willow's whistling lashes, wrung By the wild winds of gusty March, With sallow leaflets lightly strung, Are swaying by the tufted larch.

The elms have robed their slender spray With full-blown flower and embryo leaf; Wide o'er the clasping arch of day Soars like a cloud their h.o.a.ry chief.

-[See the proud tulip's flaunting cup, That flames in glory for an hour,- Behold it withering,-then look up,- How meek the forest-monarch's flower!-

When wake the violets, Winter dies; When sprout the elm-buds, Spring is near; When lilacs blossom, Summer cries, "Bud, little roses! Spring is here!"]

The windows blush with fresh bouquets, Cut with the May-dew on their lips; The radish all its bloom displays, Pink as Aurora's finger-tips.

Nor less the flood of light that showers On beauty's changed corolla-shades,- The walks are gay as bridal bowers With rows of many-petalled maids.

The scarlet sh.e.l.l-fish click and clash In the blue barrow where they slide; The horseman, proud of streak and splash, Creeps homeward from his morning ride.

Here comes the dealer's awkward string, With neck in rope and tail in knot,- Rough colts, with careless country-swing, In lazy walk or slouching trot.

-Wild filly from the mountain-side, Doomed to the close and chafing thills, Lend me thy long, untiring stride To seek with thee thy western hills!