 | Chapter XXIII.
Walter's Book. The tenant-house, or,, Embers from poverty's hearthstone |  |
23. Chapter XXIII.
Walter's Book.
“WHAT is a man?—what is a soul?—what is a
state? The first is I—the second is you—the
third is both of us. If I exist in solitude, and without
you, I am barren of a SOUL, because the higher faculties
of my being, which are friendship, love and sympathy,
come not into use; but only the lower instincts, provident
of my subsistence and security, shall be necessary to me.
If you be with me, the divinity which is in you draws out
the divinity that lies dormant in my nature, and the
drawing out is education, whereby you and I know each
other, as men and as souls, and become a union of vital
interests, which is the proper society, or state. Thus, two
men, endowed with souls, mutually educated, enlightened,
and understanding one another, constitute a state—which
one man cannot be, of himself, and which two apes, or
other brute natures, without souls, cannot be.
“What is the object of a state? i. e., of two immortal
natures, mutually intelligent concerning one another? It
is, of a surety, happiness, because each of the two individuals
desires happiness, and the two have a community
of interests. If an object attained, a work achieved,
insure happiness to the state, or multitude of men,
one man being considered in this view as a duplicate of
another man. If it be conceded, therefore, that individual
morality, political liberty, physical comfort, and religious
feeling, are the bases of true happiness in the man, then it
shall follow that a multitude, or people, or state, must
ground its happiness on the same foundation.
“But every man of the multitude—every individual
of the people, or state—does not possess the four elements
of happiness enumerated above; that is, individual
morality, political liberty, physical comfort and religious
feeling. He may be wanting in the first, through neglected
education—in the second, through bad government—in
the third, through poverty—in the last, because
of evil association or habitude; ergo, he, as an isolated
man, cannot be happy. If this be the case, then the
people, or community, in which the man dwells, must
likewise suffer, and the sympathy or harmony of the state
be more or less injuriously affected. The balance or equilibrium
of happiness is destroyed, because one of the
individual immortal natures in the state is himself unhappy,
for two reasons—first, because he cannot enjoy
good; and, second, because he does not sympathize with
his neighbor's possession of good. If two men should be
suddenly placed upon a desolate island together—the one
having been educated in the knowledge and love of good,
the other's nature neglected, so that he remained wild and
savage—no true harmony could exist between the two;
because the savage, obeying his instincts, would be rude
with the other; while the educated man could have no
sympathy with the brutal appetites and animal propensities
of his fellow inhabitant of the island. In this position
of affairs, the educated man would be in danger of harm
or death from the wild man, or he must enslave or kill
him, or he must destroy his brute instincts and malice.
The educated man would resolve upon the latter course,
and compass his object in one way only; i. e., by winning
the confidence of the wild man, becoming kind and useful
to him, and by degrees making him like himself—that is
to say, educated. He would do this, not only from the
dictates of humanity prompting benevolent action, but he
would do it in self-protection, bestowing his own knowledge
and attributes upon the savage, in order to render
the latter's disposition humane and harmless.
“We apply this principle of self-protective education
to society at large, and inquire: Are not all ignorant,
destitute, brutal natures in the position of savages, as
regards their relations to the community?—dangerous
to the well-being of the state, destructive to its sense of
security, its equilibrium, its harmony, and its happiness?
What, then, is left, but for the community, society, or the
state, to enslave, kill, or educate its savage constituents?
It will not enslave or kill; therefore, it must instruct,
refine, and elevate. The desolate island savage could not
be instructed without the direct agency of a teacher; so,
neither can the masses of uneducated society be properly
influenced till educated society shall assume the teacher's
task. Here, then, as a personal necessity, the state must
local education, as fundamental safeguards of social symmetry
and security. For, `If men are not lovers of virtue,'
says the statesman, Lacroix, `punishments will not
be sufficient to keep them in their duty: they will gratify
their passions whenever they think they can do it with
impunity. The best way, therefore, nay, the only way, to
make them obey the laws, is to give them morals; that
is, to inspire them with a love of virtue.' Good education,
indeed, is that palladium in the possession of which
Minerva taught that a state should be prosperous and
secure. Men whose infancy was neglected, or whose
youth was badly instructed, will not hesitate to violate
the clearest and most positive laws; whereas they who
have received a proper education shall cheerfully and
readily submit to proper regulations, finding more happiness
in so doing than an immoral man will experience in
the indulgence of broadest license. Well said Isocrates,
the Grecian—`Those who would govern a state properly
must not think of filling porticos with laws written upon
tablets of stone, but must take care that citizens have
the maxims of justice engraven on their hearts.”'
Walter here paused, to arrange the scattered leaves,
glancing, as he did so, at his Irish listener, who sat half
upright in his chair, with mouth distended, and eyes fixed
upon the reader, though no very impressive marks of
intelligence or sympathy were noticeable in his countenance.
Hubert had left his seat, near the door, and withdrawn,
with Alice, into another room, adjoining the main
one, and seeming to be furnished with somewhat more
latter served for eating and sitting-room. The house itself,
a small wooden cottage of uncertain age, contained only
four rooms, upon the street level, though a basement that
was used as kitchen added to the capacity of the building.
The room into which Hubert had stepped, with Alice, was
carpeted, and contained a curtained bed, bureau, rocking-chair,
and a few other articles of domestic comfort, and
its walls were hung with a mirror and several pictures.
The father sat down, with his little child, whose hands
were clasped in his, and leaning his head against a table,
on which he had deposited the candle, appeared to sink
into sombre meditation.
“Father, will mother come home to-night?”
“I cannot tell, my child,” said the man, with a deep
sigh.
“Mother don't love us any more,” continued the girl,
looking up to her father's face.
“Alas! I fear not,” cried Hubert. “Tell me, Alice,
what did she say this morning, before she went out?”
“I'd rather not, dear father—you will be angry.”
“I shall not be angry, my child.”
“She said that uncle Walter and you were both crazy,
and would be sent to the poor-house,” —
“Ah, ah!” exclaimed Hubert. “What else?”
“Oh, father! I'd rather not tell you.”
“Do not fear, Alice.”
“She wished you were both dead.”
“Oh!” groaned the man, covering his face with his
hands, to hide the tears that gushed to his eyes.
Alice climbed upon his knees, winding her arms about
his neck, laying her cheek against his, and trying, with
silent caressing, to soothe the pain that she feared had
been inflicted by her words. The father asked no other
question of his child, but he clasped her convulsively in
his arms, and rocked to and fro. The candle began to
flare in its socket, till presently its uncertain flickers died
away; but still, in the darkness, Hubert pressed his child's
form to his breast, feeling the beating of her little heart
with his own, whilst, from the outer room, sounded the
monotonous voice of his brother Walter, reading to his
silent auditor the wandering fancies of a strange mind.
Thus passed an hour away, before the father, rousing his
faculties, discovered that Alice had fallen to quiet slumber
in his arms. “Thank God!” he said, “her young spirit
can find forgetfulness so soon!” Then, kissing her again,
he lifted her slight form tenderly, and laid her upon the
bed, after which, noiselessly opening the door, he passed
to the sitting-room, and, glancing hastily at the still
sleeping man upon the settee, quietly resumed his seat at
Walter's door, without attracting attention from either
reader or listener.
Walter had, as it appeared, succeeded in magnetizing
the Hibernian's senses completely; for the latter, though
still maintaining his erect position, with head firmly braced
against the back of his chair, had evidently long since
yielded to the influence of drowsiness, and was enjoying
a peaceful nap, while the rounded sentences rolled measuredly
from his instructor's lips. Hubert noticed this, at
once, but made no remark, knowing his brother would be
rather, to assume himself the quality of auditor, though,
truth to say, the matter was to him “an oft told tale.”
As he seated himself, however, the Milesian awoke, and,
with great gravity, fixed his grey eyes upon Walter, in
apparently earnest interest.
“What is liberty?—what is equality?—what is fraternity?”
went on the voice of Walter, reading from his voluminous
pages. “Liberty is justice; equality is order;
fraternity is duty. There exists no liberty in wrong—no
equality in misrule—no fraternity in mischief. A man
hath not liberty to be ignorant, nor to be dishonest, nor
to be reckless; he may not outlaw himself in life, or die
by his own hand, and yet commit no sin; and if he be a
true freeman, he will not desire so to do. A man may
not equalize his neighbor's proportions or stature with his
own, by lopping off a limb from that neighbor, or cutting
an inch from his height. Neither may he circumscribe his
neighbor's enjoyments, possessions, desires, by the limit of
his own; for this would be disorder, and not equality—
since the equality of each man with another is as to the
sphere which he fills, and the relation that he bears to it.
The pigmy in a cottage hath the same measure of room
wherein to move as doth the giant in a palace; for the
relations which they hold to limits are the measures of
their equality. If the pigmy shall grow larger, he may
require the palace-area, but, as a pigmy, the cot is fittingly
his house. Neither may a man fraternize with repulsiveness;
for brotherhood is not in the body, but in the soul,
of a fellow-creature. If, therefore, I would show fraternity,
aspiring—not to the despairing, nor to the cowardly, nor
to the grovelling man; since his soul is not brotherly
with mine, nor the qualities thereof sympathetic with my
nature. Here, then, lies liberty—in the freedom of a man
to be generous, and truthful, and pure of heart; and
equality—in his acting fairly his own part, in the midst of
his own surroundings, and recognizing the while all other
parts, in all other surroundings; and fraternity—in making
harmony only with pure interests, beholding kindred only
in loftier attributes. Liberty aspires—equality seeth and
filleth properly the measure of aspiration—fraternity
linketh liberty with equality as a bond of virtuous ambition
between all classes of men. Do you seek for Liberty?
go not to the great cities of our republic; for in their
midst you will find thousands of human beings left to
become thieves and to uprear their children thieves—to
sink into pauperism, and make of their offspring paupers.
Would you discover Equality? go not to the cities,
wherein wallow men and women in ignorance, and filth,
and depravity, corrupting their souls, and the souls of
their little ones, day by day, and losing the equality of
their humanity, in the disorder of brutish instincts. Go
not thither to preach Fraternity; for the wretched ones
will fancy that demons are brothers, and cling to them
rather than to angels.
“Nevertheless, go there, whosoever you are that would
preach liberty, equality, and fraternity! go into the abodes
of wretchedness that disfigure the cities, marring their
beauty with sores and leprosy. Behold the debased slaves
at Humanity's foot. Mark the forlorn wrecks of dissolute
men and women, the indolent, the diseased, the enervated,
the brutal—all victims, in a greater or less degree, to a
moral scurvy engendered by ignorance, licentiousness, and
poverty. Reflect that these degraded creatures have liberty
to be the custodians of sinless souls in the bodies of
little children—reflect that they will, sooner or later,
equalize those sinless souls into one horrible level of precocious
knowledge, one undistinguishable generality of
infantile beggary, squalor, and disease. Reflect that they
will make of their innocent offspring, born in filth and
nursed amid malaria, a fraternity of tainted childhood, to
grow up like themselves into corrupt maturity. Reflect
that, at this moment, thousands and tens of thousands of
such infant souls are narrowed and cramped by miserable
sordid bodies—souls of little children imprisoned and
debased by the liberty which their parents possess of
ruining their divine natures—souls, bright from their
Maker's hand a few years since, but now dim and lustreless—still
immortal, still capable of redemption, indeed,
but doomed—doomed to perdition, if not rescued from
their vile surroundings. Reflect on those things, O philanthropist!
and let your voice be heard as one crying in
the great wilderness of city life—`Save, O God! these
infants—these immortal souls!'
“Or, go not there! pass by, like Priest and Levite,
on the other side! Let liberty riot in squalor, equality
confound virtue and vice, fraternity make kindred of civilization's
outcasts, to undermine the fabric of society. Let
of men and women and children, without the comforts
or accommodations vouchsafed to the horse in his
stall or the dog in his kennel. Let these crowded receptacles
of poverty be made pest-houses by the foulness of their
surroundings, till the air of heaven is tainted in their
neighborhood, the waters made bitter, the sunlight clouded
with the smoke of their torture arising unceasingly. Let
the gambler cast out his lines, to entrap the hopes and
longings of want; let the vender of poison sit at the
gates of penury, selling his drugs for their priceless souls.
Let the law-officers lurk in their pathways, to punish them
for crimes; but let no gentle hand interpose to deter them
from its commission. Let sin entice, and virtue repel
them; and, when all is over, let the statistician chronicle
the ratios of their misery and crime—the moralist sigh
over the statistician's revelations, and the political economist
shake his head, and mutter `there is no remedy.'
Go not thither, into the city's enormities, then, O flippant
political economist! but, oh! go thither Christian men
and women, and rebuke by your ministrations the apathy
of Priest and Levite—the heartlessness of those who take
no note of the woes and the shames around them. And
fear not to rebuke them, just men and women! for, in the
sight of Heaven and of Humanity, of what account are
such beings? By what right do they breathe the free air,
eat of the earth's fruits, walk in the light of day, and
yet bear no share in the great work for which man was
created? Of what weight in the scale of human progress
is the man-vulture, preying on all that can gratify his
blaze of fashion—or the man-sloth, hanging listlessly on
the great life-tree which, in its growth, sustains his parasitic
existence? How regard they unblushingly the busy
insect and the toiling worm? how escape they the curse
that smote the barren fig-tree—`cut it down! why cumbereth
it the earth?'
“Can we fathom the limitless ether, or trace the rays of
planets back to the great fountain of their light? How,
then, can we circumscribe the growth of that mind whose
Present reveals no glimpse of its future? How dare we,
in neglecting or spurning the work of our Present, annihilate
so much of the means set apart from the Beginning
towards our own moral growth, and thus lose our linked
place in the infinite chain of existence? Rather, on the
other hand, let each human being develop the resources
of his own soul, by aiding in the development of other
souls; thus forever educating himself for the great cycles
of Eternity's progression. It is blasphemy to scoff at the
improvement of even the meanest human mind, when we
behold blank idiots educated into reflection, and see the
dark and silent prison-houses of the blind, the deaf, and
the dumb, made luminous by the reflex of outer light,
and melodious with the inflowing harmonies of a loving
teacher's care—till the mental desert becomes fragrant
with culture, and not only a clue to the world is afforded,
but a glimpse of heaven beyond. History, Science, Revelation
itself, impart to us but conjectural ideas of the
extent to which mind may be cultivated through contact
with kindred mind. The speculations of to-day may be
of thought may furnish the guide-line through a labyrinth
of metaphysics. Who, then, shall predict the destiny of
the child born yesterday, or venture to bound the knowledge
he may be capable of compassing? Though its
cradle be the vile and reeking hillock that fronts the
wretched hovel of a rag-picker—though the first educative
forces brought to bear upon its senses and soul be squalor,
strife, and misery—yet, O Christian Samaritan! pluck
him from but the influences of these—cleanse his infant
body, and purify his childish mind—place him, weed
though he seem, under the cultivation allowed to fairer
human growths—exalt him in the image of God, with his
face upturned to the light of Heaven—and then leave it
to the infidel alone to dare, in word or thought, to circumscribe
the power of the Almighty in developing that
child's intellect and soul!”
Walter paused, and Hubert started abruptly, as a
knock sounded, this instant, at the street door. The
Irishman, however, manifested neither satisfaction at what
had been read, nor surprise at the alarm that interrupted
so philosophic a disquisition. Poor fellow! he had long
since relapsed into sleep, and was, it is very likely, dreaming
of a hedge school-house or mountain whisky-still.
Walter laid down his manuscript, with an indignant gesture,
and exclaimed—
“'Tis the way of the world to take no heed of its counsellors.
This Milesian is no worse than the rest. God
bless us! my head aches with reading, brother Hubert.
But—it was a knock—she comes, perhaps!”
“I fear so, Walter!”
An impatient rattle of the closed shutter followed this
remark, whereat Hubert hastily lit a candle, and going to
the entry, opened the door. The next moment, he reentered,
supporting a female figure, which bore heavily
against him, as he advanced into the room, and, ere he
could prevent it, swayed to one side from his hold, and fell
heavily to the floor.
“She is intoxicated, brother,” said Walter, stepping
from his room, and peering with his clear eyes from under
the mass of white hair that covered his forehead.
“Heaven help me! yes!” answered Hubert. “Alas!
I expected it! But I must get her to bed, if possible,
without waking those poor men.” He stooped, as he
spoke, and raised the woman's face, which had fallen
prone upon the floor.
It was the face of one who might be forty years of age,
though, in the situation she then was, it appeared much
older. Her hair hung in disordered masses over her
cheeks, and straggled about her neck. Her blood-shot
eyes were without expression, and her head swayed, as
Hubert lifted it, helplessly to and fro. She opened her
lips, on which froth was gathered, essaying, apparently,
to speak, but only an indistinct murmur came from them.
“Maria!” said her unhappy husband, in a plaintive
tone. “Maria! do you know me?”
A gurgling sound in the woman's throat was her only
audible response; but she threw her arm up, and let it
fall against Hubert, who took her hand.
“Maria, will you go to bed?”
The wretched wife's eyes rolled, and a noise like a laugh
was emitted from her lips. Hubert glanced nervously
towards the immigrant in his chair, and the wounded man
stretched upon the settee, and seemed relieved in noticing
that they had not been disturbed.
“Walter,” said he, “open the bed-room door, while I
try to lift her in. She was never so far gone before!”
He passed his arm under her relaxed figure, as he spoke,
and raising her from the floor, supported her to the chamber.
Walter, meantime, hastened to do as his brother had
requested, but was anticipated; for there, on the threshold,
stood the young daughter, Alice, her small hands clasped
together, and her eyes, full of anguish, fixed upon the face
of her drunken mother.
When the husband had laid his insensible partner upon
the bed, Alice assisted in removing her parent's bedraggled
clothes, all torn and blotched by frequent falling
upon the muddy streets through which she had wandered
homeward. Fast and thickly fell her tears the while, till
at length the shameful spectacle of brutish intoxication
was hidden beneath the covering of the curtained bed;
then the child stole to her father, who had seated himself
once more, in unspeakable grief, and, climbing upon his
knees, kissed his face again and again, in mute sympathy.
Hubert embraced her in silence.
It was an affecting sight—the father and daughter
mingling their tears, without a word, while the degraded
object of their solicitude lay, like a dead thing, in her bed,
unconscious even of the hands that placed her there.
Walter looked in upon them, a moment, from the outer
own closet, with its shelves and table full of manuscripts.
Not a long time, however, elapsed before Hubert came
forth again, having kissed Alice, as the poor child crept
upon the bed beside her mother; and, after arranging the
pillow under the head of their sleeping patient, and constructing
a couch for the immigrant, with some chairs
and old garments, he replenished the fuel in the stove,
and then sat down by his brother's door, leaning his head
against the intels, wearied, exhausted, but sleepless. And
Walter—the philosopher, the theorist—trimmed his midnight
lamp, and went on with his never-ceasing task of
writing a great book on “Humanity and its Necessities.”
Perhaps it occurred to him, and to his brother Hubert,
that a great Necessity was suggested in their very midst
that solemn Sabbath night! As they looked upon the
maimed sufferer sleeping upon the settee, and upon the
homeless immigrant, and as they thought of her who lay
within the next room, a besotted victim to strong drink—
perhaps, I say, both reflected upon the Necessity that
more than theory should go forth into the world—that
practice, human and Christian PRACTICE, ought to interpose
its saving hands, to guide the erring, restrain the
unthinking, and pluck the falling from those gulfs, and
quicksands, and precipices, that lie so bewilderingly in
their path.
But, whether Walter's mind dwelt upon this theme, or
not, he still wrote on, by the dim light of his pendant
lamp, whilst his strange eyes lost none of their brightness,
and his ruddy cheek still glowed under the hoary locks
or of the lapse of time, but of his work, “Humanity and
its Necessities;” and therefore was it that his sister-in-law,
the drunken woman on the bed, had told the child Alice
that her white-haired uncle was crazed.
| Chapter XXIII.
Walter's Book. The tenant-house, or,, Embers from poverty's hearthstone | |