University of Virginia Library

II.
Man of the World.

FEW persons live through the first periods of
manhood, without strong temptations to be
counted—`men of the world.' The idea looms grandly
among those vanities, that hedge a man's approach to
maturity.

Clarence is in good training for the acceptance of
this idea. The broken hope which clouded his closing
youth, shoots over its influence upon the dawn of
manhood. Mortified pride had taught—as it always
teaches—not caution only, but doubt, distrust, indifference.
A new pride grows up on the ruins of the old,
weak, and vain pride of youth. Then, it was a pride
of learning, or of affection; now, it is a pride of indifference.
Then, the world proved bleak, and cold, as

contrasted with his shining dreams; and now, he
accepts the proof, and wins from it what he can.

The man of the world puts on the method, and
measure of the world: he studies its humors. He
gives up the boyish notion of a sincerity among men,
like that of youth: he lives, to seem. He conquers
such annoyances as the world may thrust upon him, in
the shape of grief, or losses, like a practised athlete of
the ring. He studies moral sparring.

With somewhat of this strange vanity growing on
you, you do not suffer the heart to wake into life, except
in such fanciful dreams as tempt you back to the sunny
slopes of childhood.

In this mood, you fall in with Dalton, who has just
returned from a year passed in the French Capital.
There is an easy suavity, and graceful indifference in his
manner that chimes admirably with your humor. He
is gracious, without needing to be kind. He is a friend,
without any challenge or proffer of sincerity. He is
just one of those adepts in world tactics, which match
him with all men, but which link him to none. He has
made it his art to be desired, and admired, but rarely to
be trusted. You could not have a better teacher!

Under such instruction, you become disgusted for the
time, with any effort, or pulse of affection, which does
not have immediate and practical bearing upon that
success in life, by which you measure your hopes. The

dreams of love, of romantic adventure, of placid joy,
have all gone out, with the fantastic images, to which
your passionate youth had joined them. The world is
now regarded as a tournament, where the gladiatorship
of life is to be exhibited at your best endeavor.
Its honors and joy, lie in a brilliant pennant, and a
plaudit.

Dalton is learned in those arts which make of action
—not a duty, but a conquest; and sense of duty has
expired in you, with those romantic hopes, to which
you bound it,—not as much through sympathy, as
ignorance. It is a cold, and a bitterly selfish work that
lies before you,—to be covered over with such borrowed
show of smiles, as men call affability. The heart wears
a stout, brazen screen; its inclinations grow to the
habit of your ambitious projects.

In such mood come swift dreams of wealth;—not
of mere accumulation, but of the splendor, and parade,
which in our western world are, alas, its chiefest attractions.
You grow observant of markets, and estimate
per centages. You fondle some speculation in your
thought, until it grows into a gigantic scheme of profit;
and if the venture prove successful, you follow the tide
tremulously, until some sudden reverse throws you
back upon the resources of your professional employ.

But again, as you see this and that one wearing the
blazonry which wealth wins, and which the man of the

world is sure to covet,—your weak soul glows again
with the impassioned desire; and you hunger, with
brute appetite, and bestial eye—for riches. You see
the mania around you; and it is relieved of odium, by
the community of error. You consult some gray old
veteran in the war of gold, scarred with wounds, and
crowned with honors; and watch eagerly for the words
and the ways, which have won him wealth.

Your fingers tingle with mad expectancies; your
eyes roam—lost in estimates. Your note-book shows
long lines of figures. Your reading of the news centres
in the stock list. Your brow grows cramped with the
fever of anxiety. Through whole church hours, your
dreams range over the shadowy transactions of the
week or the month to come.

Even with old religious habit clinging fast to your
soul, you dream now, only of nice conformity, comfortable
faith, high respectability; there lies very little in
you of that noble consciousness of Duty performed,—
of living up to the Life that is in you,—of grasping
boldly, and stoutly, at those chains of Love which the
Infinite Power has lowered to our reach. You do not
dream of being, but of seeming. You spill the real
essence, and clutch at the vial which has only a label
of Truth. Great and holy thoughts of the Future,—
shadowy, yet bold conceptions of the Infinite, float past
you dimly, and your hold is never strong enough to

grapple them to you. They fly, like eagles, too near
the sun; and there lies game below, for your vulture
beak to feed upon.

[Great thoughts belong, only and truly, to him
whose mind can hold them. No matter who first puts
them in words; if they come to a soul, and fill it, they
belong to it;—whether they floated on the voice of
others, or on the wings of silence, and the night.]

To be up with the fashion of the time,—to be ignorant
of plain things and people, and to be knowing in
brilliancies, is a kind of Pelhamism, that is very apt to
overtake one in the first blush of manhood. To hold
a fair place in the after-dinner table-talk, to meet distinction
as a familiarity, to wear salon honors with
aplomb, to know affection so far as to wield it into
grace of language, are all splendid achievements with a
man of the world. Instruction is caught, without asking
it; and no ignorance so shames, as ignorance of
those forms, by which natural impulse is subdued to
the tone of civilian habit. You conceal what tells of
the man; and cover it with what smacks of the roué.

Perhaps, under such training, and with a slight
memory of early mortification to point your spirit, you
affect those gallantries of heart and action, which the
world calls flirtation. You may study brilliancies of
speech, to wrap their net around those susceptible
hearts, whose habit is too naïve by nature, to wear the

leaden covering of custom. You win approaches by
artful counterfeit of earnestness; and dash away any
naïveté of confidence, with some brave sophism of the
world. A doubt or a distrust, piques your pride, and
makes attentions wear a humility that wins anew. An
indifference piques you more, and throws into your art
a counter indifference,—lit up by bold flashes of feeling,—sparkling
with careless brilliancies, and crowned
with a triumph of neglect.

It is curious how ingeniously a man's vanity will
frame apologies for such action.—It is pleasant to
give pleasure; you like to see a joyous sparkle of the
eye, whether lit up by your presence, or by some buoyant
fancy. It is a beguiling task to weave words into
some soft, melodious flow, that shall keep the ear, and
kindle the eye;—and to strew it over with half-hidden
praises, so deftly couched in double terms, that their
aroma shall only come to the heart hours afterward;
and seem to be the merest accidents of truth. It is
a happy art to make such subdued show of emotion,
as seems to struggle with pride; and to flush the eye
with a moisture, of which you seem ashamed, and yet
are proud. It is a pretty practice, to throw an earnestness
into look and gesture, that shall seem full of pleading,
and yet—ask nothing!

And yet it is hard to admire greatly the reputation
of that man, who builds his triumphs upon womanly

weakness: that distinction is not over enduring, whose
chiefest merit springs out of the delusions of a too
trustful heart. The man who wins it, wins only a
poor sort of womanly distinction. Without power to
cope with men, he triumphs over the weakness of the
other sex, only by hypocrisy. He wears none of the
armor of Romans; and he parleys with Punic faith.

—Yet, even now, — there is a lurking goodness
in you, that traces its beginnings to the old garret
home;—there is an air in the harvest heats, that whispers
of the bloom of spring.

And over your brilliant career as man of the world,—
however lit up by a morbid vanity, or galvanized by a
lascivious passion, there will come at times, the consciousness
of a better heart struggling beneath your
cankered action,—like the low Vesuvian fire, reeking
vainly under rough beds of tufa, and scoriated lava.
And as you smile in loge, or salon, with daring smiles;
or press with villain fondness, the hand of those lady
votaries of the same god you serve, there will gleam
upon you, over the waste of rolling years, a memory
that quickens again the nobler, and bolder instincts of
the heart.

Childish recollections, with their purity, and earnestness,—a
sister's love,—a mother's solicitude, will flood
your soul once more with a gushing sensibility that
yearns for enjoyment. And the consciousness of some

lingering nobility of affection, that can only grow great,
in mating itself with nobility of heart, will sweep off
your puny triumphs, your Platonic friendships, your
dashing coquetries,—like the foul smoke of a city, before
a fresh breeze of the country autumn.