“Age is a matter of feeling, not of years.”
My grandfather Titbottom instantly advanced, and, moving
briskly, reached the top of the plank at the same moment, and with the
old tassel of his cap flashing in the sun, and one hand in the pocket
of his dressing-gown, with the other he handed the young lady
carefully down the plank. That young lady was afterwards my
grandmother Titbottom.
"For, over the gleaming sea which he had watched so long, and which
seemed thus to reward his patient gaze, came his bride that sunny
morning.
"'Of course, we are happy,' he used to say to her, after they were
married: 'For you are the gift of the sun I have loved so long and so
well.' And my grandfather Titbottom would lay his hand so tenderly
upon the golden hair of his young bride, that you could fancy him a
devout Parsee, caressing sunbeams.
"There were endless festivities upon occasion of the marriage; and my
grandfather did not go to one of them in his dressing-gown. The gentle
sweetness of his wife melted every heart into love and sympathy. He
was much older than she, without doubt. But age, as he used to say
with a smile of immortal youth, is a matter of feeling, not of years.
"And if, sometimes, as she sat by his side on the piazza, her fancy
looked through her eyes upon that summer sea, and saw a younger lover,
perhaps some one of those graceful and glowing heroes who occupy the
foreground of all young maidens' visions by the sea, yet she could not
find one more generous and gracious, nor fancy one more worthy and
loving than my grandfather Titbottom.
"And if, in the moonlit midnight, while he lay calmly sleeping, she
leaned out of the window, and sank into vague reveries of sweet
possibility, and watched the gleaming path of the moonlight upon the
water, until the dawn glided over it--it was only that mood of
nameless regret and longing, which underlies all human happiness; or
it was the vision of that life of cities and the world, which she had
never seen, but of which she had often read, and which looked very
fair and alluring across the sea, to a girlish imagination, which knew
that it should never see that reality.
"These West Indian years were the great days of the family," said
Titbottom, with an air of majestic and regal regret, pausing, and
musing, in our little parlor, like a late Stuart in exile, remembering
England.
“It is not observed in history that families improve with time.”
This is the true pride of ancestry. It is founded in the tenderness
with which the child regards the father, and in the romance that time
sheds upon history.
"Where be all the bad people buried?" asks every man, with Charles
Lamb, as he strolls among the rank grave-yard grass, and brushes it
aside to read of the faithful husband, and the loving wife, and the
dutiful child.
He finds only praise in the epitaphs, because the human heart is kind;
because it yearns with wistful tenderness after all its brethren who
have passed into the cloud, and will only speak well of the departed.
No offence is longer an offence when the grass is green over the
offender. Even faults then seem characteristic and individual. Even
Justice is appeased when the drop falls. How the old stories and plays
teem with the incident of the duel in which one gentleman falls, and,
in dying, forgives and is forgiven. We turn the page with a tear. How
much better had there been no offence, but how well that death wipes
it out.
It is not observed in history that families improve with time. It is
rather discovered that the whole matter is like a comet, of which the
brightest part, is the head; and the tail, although long and luminous,
is gradually shaded into obscurity.
Yet, by a singular compensation, the pride of ancestry increases in
the ratio of distance. Adam was valiant, and did so well at Poictiers
that he was knighted--a hearty, homely country gentleman, who lived
humbly to the end. But young Lucifer, his representative in the
twentieth remove, has a tinder-like conceit because old Sir Adam was
so brave and humble. Sir Adam's sword is hung up at home, and Lucifer
has a box at the opera. On a thin finger he has a ring, cut with a
match fizzling, the crest of the Lucifers. But if he should be at a
Poictiers, he would run away. Then history would be sorry--not only
for his cowardice, but for the shame it brings upon old Adam's name.
So, if Minim Sculpin is a bad young man, he not only shames himself,
but he disgraces that illustrious line of ancestors, whose characters
are known.
“The new year begins in a snow-storm of white vows.”
well-regulated citizen of the world is interested, and more
vitally interested with every closing year, that upon the point of age
all men shall be left to their merits, and shall not be measured
arbitrarily by that Procrustean standard of years. It is notorious that
men grow wiser every year, and it is observable that the more years they
have, the more they look with doubt and questioning upon the Family
Record. Those leaves of births following the doubtful books of
Scripture, registered with such painful and needless particularity of
dates, partake of the doubtfulness of their neighborhood. They are mere
intercalations, new books of the Apocrypha. Yet they often cause young
fellows of seventy to be accused and convicted of being old men.
Since, then, we cannot stop the flight of Time, let him pass. But he
must not calumniate as he passes. He must not be allowed to stigmatize
vigor and health and freshness of feeling and the young heart and the
agile foot as old merely because of a certain number of years. This is
the season of good resolutions. The new year begins in a snow-storm of
white vows. So be it. But let our whitest vow be, after that for a
whiter life, that age shall no longer be measured by this arbitrary
standard of years, and that those deceitful and practical octogenarians
of thirty shall not escape as young merely because they have not yet
shown the strength to carry threescore and ten with jocund elasticity.
Then Happy New Year shall not mean Good-night, but Good-morrow.
THE PUBLIC SCOLD.
The Easy Chair was lately asked whether it thought the office of public
scold an agreeable one. There was a certain tartness in the question, as
if its real purpose was to learn from the Easy Chair whether _It_
enjoyed that position, and upon looking further it appeared that the
question had been suggested by a remark of the Easy Chair's to the
effect that a certain class of our fellow-creatures seemed to be
disposed to do their duty in a manner that might be improved. But what
is an Easy Chair but a kind of _censor morum!_ Would the kind critic of
its conduct have it say to the gentleman whose hands are soiled that
they are as pure as the morning, and to the tactless dame who makes all
her neighbors uncomfortable that her manners are charming?
“Nature makes woman to be won and men to win.”
We looked forward to manhood as
island-poets look across the sea, believing that the whole world
beyond is a blest Araby of spices.
The months went by, and the young love continued. Our cousin and
Flora were only children still, and there was no engagement. The
elders looked upon the intimacy as natural and mutually beneficial. It
would help soften the boy and strengthen the girl; and they took for
granted that softness and strength were precisely what were wanted. It
is a great pity that men and women forget that they have been
children. Parents are apt to be foreigners to their sons and
daughters. Maturity is the gate of Paradise, which shuts behind us;
and our memories are gradually weaned from the glories in which our
nativity was cradled.
The months went by, the children grew older, and they constantly
loved. Now Prue always smiles at one of my theories; she is entirely
sceptical of it; but it is, nevertheless, my opinion, that men love
most passionately, and women most permanently. Men love at first and
most warmly; women love last and longest. This is natural enough; for
nature makes women to be won, and men to win. Men are the active,
positive force, and, therefore, they are more ardent and
demonstrative.
I can never get farther than that in my philosophy, when Prue looks at
me, and smiles me into scepticism of my own doctrines. But they are
true, notwithstanding.
My day is rather past for such speculations; but so long as Aurelia is
unmarried, I am sure I shall indulge myself in them. I have never made
much progress in the philosophy of love; in fact, I can only be sure
of this one cardinal principle, that when you are quite sure two
people cannot be in love with each other, because there is no earthly
reason why they should be, then you may be very confident that you are
wrong, and that they are in love, for the secret of love is past
finding out. Why our cousin should have loved the gay Flora so
ardently was hard to say; but that he did so, was not difficult to
see.
He went away to college. He wrote the most eloquent and passionate
letters; and when he returned in vacations, he had no eyes, ears, nor
heart for any other being.
“Happiness lies, first of all, in health.”
“It is not the ship so much as the skillful sailing that assures the prosperous voyage.”
“I walked beside the evening sea and dreamed a dream that could not be; the waves that plunged along the shore said only: Dreamer, dream no more!”
“While we read history we make history.”
“A mans country is not a certain area of land, of mountains, rivers, and woods, but it is a principle; and patriotism is loyalty to that principle.”
“A bird sang sweet and strongIn the top of the highest tree,He said, I pour out my heart in songFor the summer that soon shall be.But deep in the shady wood,Another bird sang, I pourMy heart on the solemn solitudeFor the springs that return no more.”
“The sure foundations of the state are laid in knowledge, not in ignorance; and every sneer at education, at culture, at book learning, which is the recorded wisdom of the experience of mankind, is the demagogues sneer at intelligent liberty, inviting national degeneracy and ruin.”
“The test of civilization is the estimate of woman. Among savages she is a slave. In the dark ages of Christianity she is a toy and a sentimental goddess. With increasing moral light, and greater liberty, and more universal justice, she begins to deve”
“Anger, even when it punishes the faults of delinquents, ought not to precede reason as its mistress, but attend as a handmaid at the back of reason, to come to the front when bidden. For once it begins to take control of the mind, it calls just what it does cruelly.”
“The big mistake that men make is that when they turn thirteen or fourteen and all of a sudden theyve reached puberty, they believe that they like women. Actually, youre just horny. It doesnt mean you like women any more at twenty-one than you did”
“Books are the ever burning lamps of accumulated wisdom.”
“Romance like a ghost escapes touching; it is always where you are not, not where you are. The interview or conversation was prose at the time, but it is poetry in the memory.”
“Every great crisis of human history is a pass of Thermopylae, and there is always a Leonidas and his three hundred to die in it, if they can not conquer.”
“The fragrance always stays in the hand that gives the rose.”
“He is so old that his blood type was discontinued.”
“The test of civilization is its estimate of women.”
