LETTER L.
Dear Charles,—Of course I rejoice with you at the
completion of your “New Church;” but, alas! dominie!
what a narrow-minded Puritan I am becoming! I cannot
cordially approve your “contemplated Fair.”
Not that I am always wise; for, like the good old vicar
of Goldsmith, I do swim now and then with the flood. I
have eaten pound-cake, and swallowed oysters, and peeped
into funny little show-boxes filled with wax dolls, for the
good of poor orphans and weak churches; but still, I have
never, in imitation of the London alderman, who imbibed
turtle-soup by the ladle and danced at a charity-ball—I have
never—at the religio-politico squeezes and jams, rubbed my
hands in the fatness of my worldly heart “and thanked God
there were so many poor!”
Friend Charles! expedients are hateful, where there is a
path of duty straight, open, plain. It is humiliating either
to take a bribe ourselves or offer one to others “to do justice
and love mercy!” Piety is, forsooth, laced tight enough,
when she requires a piece of ginger-bread, or a stick of taffy,
or some saccharine confection, to relax her sympathies and
coax out her niggardly sixpences and coppers. Alas! there
is a fashionable piety, which after having thus doled out its
pittances, will, at the completion of its herculean labors of
benevolence, turn in and treat itself to a more special jollification,
and eat and drink, if not to the glory of God, yet
with a proud satisfaction that its former labors that way built
a church or bought an organ. However, this is the era of
great inventions. If we have machinery for praying, why
not a labor-saving method of “eating and drinking to the
glory of God!”
Eating goodies is not, indeed, always the fashionable
road; but buying trinkets and gewgaws, and making noisy
and gabbling bazars and places of rendezvous, do not hush
my qualms, and do away my secret scruples and misgivings.
Nay, even if all was strictly honest at a fair—but all is not
fair even at a fair—there is no small quantum of whitish
mendacity—hem!—and not a little very clever humbugging
and usurial screwing! Yes, yes; the end, the understanding,
and all that! But lying is lying, all the world over, and
cheating is cheating. A holy cause needs no such ally, even
in fun.
A large number of folks, and very clever folks too, care
no more for the sacred or charitable object, than they do for
your humble servant, Charles. They crack it up as a favorable
pretext or occasion for a little frolic, and good fellowship
extra. Not a few tolerably good sort of people will
also uphold, in this way, doubtful men, places, and doings—
why yes, they will fiddle and dance in a Sabbath concert,
for the benefit of a half-orphan society! Numbers will raffle
and draw lots for holy purposes, calling down an occasional
thunder from the religious press; as if an abuse of a trick,
however, and not as if the whole trick itself were an abuse!
Far from me any double-refined morality, such as refusing
voluntary gifts from our worldly friends, generously bestowed
for religious uses: but, Charles, I do most earnestly
contend that such gifts ought to be wholly voluntary—they
must not be wormed out by tortuous and torturing expedients.
On the other hand, let our worldly friends be explicitly
and honestly told that money spent for our own sensual
gratification, although a
part may find its way into a charity
box, is, in no good and legitimate sense, Charity.
A facetious, and, perhaps, rather malicious writer, once
sent forth an essay on “milking the goats:” now, it does seem
to me as much like that felicitous manipulation as possible,
when we, by trick and expedient, get at the cash snugly
hoarded in unwilling purses. At least it is akin to udder-greasing;
which, before the era of chemical agriculture
and scientific milking, was found promotive of more easy
flowing lacteal streams from obstinate dugs.
Many most excellent reasons of a worldly nature may
be urged in behalf of any moral or religious object for which
we desire donations; why, therefore, may not men be asked
and exhorted to give on these grounds, supposing spiritual
reasons are kept out of view? Neutral ground does not,
indeed, exist; but there is undoubtedly a common ground
where all may meet. And while worldly persons may give
for one proper reason, heavenly persons may give for that
and the spiritual reason also. Separate action is in few
things possible, and, indeed, not even benevolent, politic, or
desirable.
Why not appeal, therefore, to men's good judgment and
conscience, and, if you please, interest and policy? If our
spiritual schemes aid their temporal ones, why should they
not know the fact, and be asked to avail themselves, at a
small cost, of the advantage? Are worldly men necessarily
fools or children? Must they be tickled, and coaxed, and
flattered, and gulled? Charles, it cannot be that worldly
men think any the better of Christianity by these indirections
in the accomplishment of religious purposes: although many
may like sufficiently well the opportunity of a church fair,
for buying one sort of kisses and stealing others.
Come, dominie, try a charity-mart, and leave out the
girls!—and write me, if you scraped together enough to pay
for your pulpit trimmings and new organ. Even oysters
done in three different styles, with the aid of chicken-salad,
charlotte-ruse, and all the other ruses, will not always open
Charity's knotted purses, unless all the luxuries and dainties
are administered by a rounded arm and jewelled fingers.
Bah!—good easy man!—the beaux care precious little for
your crimson and scarlet cushions, and grand choral organs
—they come, you green-horn, to see the girls! Why I can
cushion every pulpit in the nation, and furnish organs, and
bass-viols for every choir, if you will place at my order all
the interesting young ladies of the country! Perhaps your
politic reverence may design to promote matrimony in your
congregation—well, that is legitimate; but then, why do you
not honestly say so?
Where an object for donations is not a moral or religious
one, but simply patriotic, for instance, I am comparatively
indifferent whether the money be raised by a tax direct or
indirect. Other things may be had in view besides the ostensible
design; and gatherings at a fair for that purpose,
may be no more sinful or evil, than any other mere worldly
assembly. I cannot see, indeed, what praise is due to men
for patriotism or public spirit, who aid in erecting monuments
and the like, by what is left after their appetites and tastes
are gratified. It is admitted that here may mingle good and
bad motives and feelings, and that often men must have attention
fixed to a noble purpose conceived by noble minds.
This speaks little, however, for a patriotism so dormant, and
a generosity so sluggish as to need the awakening expedient.
Could the names of the unselfish women who really build
certain monuments, be indestructibly wreathed around the
pinuacles, that would be right!—but never, the names of men
who gave a penny and devoured a dollar!
Classic Greece and Imperial Rome would have scorned
our pitiful expedients. Men, in those days, asked not women
to build temples and triumphal arches, by the avails of embroidery
and confectionery—by the needle and the patty-pan!
That sublime invention belongs to Alleghania, and
shall immortalize the patriotism of Yankeedoonia for ever!
“Yankee-doodle keep it up!—Yankee-doodle-dandy!”
I anticipate a Caudling from your reverence's wife, for
this scurrilous epistle; but I shall imitate the first Mrs. Caudle's
husband, and snore in spite of it.
