The Potiphar Papers Part 14

Accustomed from my youth to breathe the scented air of Sennaar saloons, and to lounge in listless idleness with young Sennaar, I am weary of the simple purity of manners that distinguishes this people, and long for the pleasing, if pointless frivolities of your court.

Coming, as you commanded, to observe and report the social state of the metropolis of a people who, in the presence of the world, have renounced the feudal organization of society, I have found them, as you antic.i.p.ated, totally free from the petty ambitions, the bitter resolves, and the hollow pretences, that characterize the society of older states.

The people of the first fashion unite the greatest simplicity of character with the utmost variety of intelligence, and the most graceful elegance of manner. Knowing that for an American the only n.o.bility is that of feeling; the only grace, generosity; and the only elegance, simplicity; they have achieved a society which is a blithe Arcadia, ill.u.s.trating to the world the principles they profess, and making the friend of man rejoice.

We, who are reputed savages, might well be astonished and fascinated with the results of civilization, as they are here displayed. The universal courtesy and consideration--the gentle charity, which does not consider the appearance but the substance--the republican independence, which teaches foreign lords and ladies the worthlessness of mere rank, by obviously respecting the character and not the t.i.tle--the eagerness with which foreign habits are subdued, by the positive nature of American manners--the readiness to a.s.sist--the total want of coa.r.s.e social emulation--the absence of ignorance, prejudice and vulgarity, in the selecter circles--the broad, sweet, catholic welcome to all that is essentially national and characteristic, which sends the young American abroad only that he may return eschewing European habits, and with a confidence in man and his country, chastened by experience--these have most interested and charmed me in the observation of this pleasing people.

It is here the pride of every man to bear his part in the universal labor. The young men, instead of sighing for other inst.i.tutions, and the immunities of rank, prefer to deserve, by earning, their own patents of n.o.bility. They are industrious, temperate, and frugal, as becomes the youth to whom the destinies of so great a nation, and the hopes of the world, are committed. They are proud to have raised themselves from poverty, and they are never ashamed to confess that they are poor. They acknowledge the equal dignity of all kinds of labor, and do not presume upon any social differences between their baker and themselves. Knowing that luxury enervates a nation, they aim to show in their lives, as in their persons, that simplicity is the finest ornament of dress, as health best decorates the body. They are cheerfully obedient to those who command them, and gentle to those they command. Full of charity, and knowing that if every man has some sore weakness, he has also a human soul latent in him, they trust each man as if that soul might, at any moment, look out of his eyes, and acknowledge with tears, the sympathy that unites them.

They show in all this social independence and originality, the shrewd common-sense which we have so often heard ascribed to them. For if, by some fatal error, they should undertake a social rivalry, in kind, with the old world and all its splendid accessories of antiquity, wealth and hereditary refinement, the observer would see, what now is never beheld, foolish parvenus frenzied in the pursuit of an elegance which, in its nature, is inaccessible to them. We should see lavish and unmeaning displays. We should see a gaudy ostentation,--serving only as a magnificent frame to the vanity of the subject. We should see the grave and thoughtful, the witty and accomplished, the men and women whose genius fitted them for society, withdrawing from its saloons, and preferring privacy to a vulgar and profuse publicity. We should see society become a dancing school, and men and women degenerated into dull and dandified boys and girls, content with (pardon me, sable sir, but it would be the truth) "style." We should see, as if in an effete civilization, marriages of convenience. We should hear the heirs, or the holders, of great fortunes, called "gentlemanly," if they were dull, and "a little wild" if they were debauched. We should see parents panting to "marry off" their dear daughters to the richest youths, and the richest youths affecting a "jolly" and "stunning" life,--reputed to know the world because they are licentious, and to have seen life because they have tasted foreign dissipation. We should hear insipidity praised as good-humor, and nonchalance as ease. We should have boorishness accounted manliness, and impudence wit. We should gradually lose faith in man as we a.s.sociated with men, and soon perceive that the only safety for the city was in its constant recruiting from the simplicity and strength of the country.

The sharp common-sense of this people prevents so melancholy a spectacle. In fact, you have only to consider that this society does not remind you of the best characteristics of any other, to judge how unique it is.

But, for myself, as milk disagrees with my const.i.tution, and my mind tires of this pastoral sweetness, I am too glad to obey your summons. In my younger days when I loved to press the stops of oaten pipes, and--a plaintive swain--fancied every woman what she seemed, and every man my friend,--I should have hailed the prospect of a life in an Arcadia like this. How gladly I should have climbed its Pisgah-peaks of hope, and have looked off into the Future, flowing with milk and honey. I would grieve (if I could) that my sated appet.i.te refuses more,--that I must lay down my crook and play the shepherd no longer. Yet I know well enough that in the perfumed atmosphere of the circle to which I return, I shall recur often, with more than regret, to the humane, polished, intelligent, and simple society I leave behind me,--shall wonder if Miss Minerva Tattle still prattles kindly among the birds and flowers,--if Mrs. Potiphar still leads, by her innate n.o.bility, and not by the accident of wealth, the swarm of gay, and graceful, and brilliant men and women that surround her.

I humbly trust, sable son of midnight, my lord and master, that my present report and summary will be found worthy of that implicit confidence immemorially accorded to diplomatic communications. I could ask for it no other reception.

Your slave,

KURZ PACHA.

VII. -- FROM THE REV. HENRY DOVE TO MRS. POTIPHAR.

(PRIVATE.)

EDENSIDE.

MY DEAR MRS. POTIPHAR:

I am very anxious that you should allow me to receive your son Frederic as a pupil, at my parsonage, here in the country. I have not lived in the city without knowing something about it, despite my cloth, and I am concerned at the peril to which every young man is there exposed. There is a proud philosophy in vogue that everything that _can_ be injured had better be destroyed as rapidly as possible, and put out of the way at once. But I recall a deeper and tenderer wisdom which declared, "A bruised reed will he not break."

The world is not made for the prosperous alone, nor for the strong.

We may wince at the truth, but we must at length believe it,--that the poor in spirit, and the poor in will, and the poor in success, are appointed as pensioners upon our care.

In my house your son will miss the luxuries of his home, but he will, perhaps, find as cordial a sympathy in his little interests, and as careful a consultation of his desires and aims. He will have pure air, a tranquil landscape, a pleasant society; my books, variously selected, my direction and aid in his studies, and a neighborhood to town that will place its resources within his reach. A city, it seems to me, is mainly valuable as a gallery of opportunities. But a man should not live exclusively in his library, nor among his pictures. Letters and art may well decorate his life. But if they are not subsidiary to the man, and his character, then he is a sadder spectacle than a vain book or a poor picture. The eager whirl of a city tends either to beget a thirst that can only be sated by strong, yet dangerous excitement, or to deafen a man's ear, and harden his heart, to the really n.o.ble attractions around him.

It is well to know men. But men are not learned at the billiard table, nor in the barroom, nor by meeting them in an endless round of debauch, nor does a man know the world because he has been to Paris.

It is a sad thing for a young man to seek applause by surpa.s.sing his companions in that which makes them contemptible. The best men of our own time have little leisure, and the best of other days have committed their better part to books, wherein we may know and love them.

There is nothing more admirable than good society, as there is nothing so fine as a n.o.ble man, nor so lovely as a beautiful woman. And to the perfect enjoyment of such society an ease and grace are necessary, which are hardly to be acquired, but are rather, like beauty and talent, the gift of Nature. That ease and grace will certainly run great risk of disappearing, in the embrace of a fashion unchastened by common sense; and it is observable that the sensitive _gaucherie_ of a countryman is more agreeable than the pert composure of a citizen.

I do not deny that your son must lose something, if you accede to my request, but I a.s.suredly believe that he will gain more than he will lose. My profession makes me more dogmatic, probably, than is strictly courteous. But I have observed, in my recent visits to town, that Courtesy, also, is getting puny and unmanly, and that a counterfeit, called Compliment, is often mistaken for it. You will smile, probably at my old-fashioned whims, and regret that I am behind my time. But really, it strikes me, that the ineffectual imitation of an exploded social organization is, at least, two centuries behind my time. The youth who, socially speaking, are termed Young America, represent, in character and conduct, anything but their own time and their own country.

I will not deny that the secret of my interest in your son, is an earlier interest in yourself--a wild dream we dreamed together, so long ago that it seems not to be a part of my life. The companion of those other days I do not recognize in the glittering lady I sometimes see. But in her child I trace the likeness of the girl I knew, and it is to the memory of that girl--whose lovely traits I will still believe are not destroyed, but are somewhere latent in the woman--that I consecrate the task I wish to undertake. I am married, and I am happy. But sometimes through the sweet tranquillity of my life streams the pensive splendor of that long-vanished summer, and I cannot deny the heart that will dream of what might have been.

Madame, I can wish you nothing more sincerely than that as your lot is with the rich in this world, it may be with the poor in the world to come.

Your obedient servant,

HENRY DOVE.