Abbildungen der Seite
PDF
EPUB

THE SORT OF PEOPLE I LIKE.

THERE are some people who seem entirely made up of convictions, and who do everything on principle. I always feel uncomfortable in the society of such persons, if they have nothing else than their correct conduct to recommend them. I like people with a flavour of humanity about them, and who are somewhat amenable to impulse, and imagination, and passion.

Those who are correct and nothing more make a great mistake when they suppose that they have nothing left to sigh for. They can say that they have kept all the law from their youth up, but one reason why they have been able to do this has probably been that, from hereditary causes or otherwise, they were born with a natural tendency to the correct and proper. When they were "coined in nature's mint" the fire was left out of their blood, and the irregular dash and throb found no place in their pulses. As a consequence, they have not found much difficulty in keeping to the straight path of rectitude. Their childhood was highly proper. When they went out for a walk they always walked in the cleanest places and avoided the mud. They never climbed trees or tore their nether garments. They remembered the precepts of their fathers and mothers, and never ate toffy or sweets, because thay had been told that those dainties rotted the teeth. On Sundays they learnt hymns and read the Bible, and never wanted to run down the garden to see how that frog was getting on whose leg they had amputated the day before, or down to the river to spoon up "bullyheads;" simply because they thought of more sensible things, and frogs and "bullyheads" had no charms for them. If they had died at this age a memoir would have been written of them, and published by the Religious Tract Society.

Their youth was exemplary to a degree, and in a sober and somewhat moderate way they exemplified that axiom of copy-book ethics, which affirms that "to be good is to be happy." They gradually ripened into maturity, and underwent the usual phenomena of love and courtship in a way that "did credit to their heads," if it did not manifest, in any particular degree, the intensity of their "hearts." They never sat up late at night courting, because not only did they think such a proceeding tended to enervation and a foolish softness, but they remembered the business engagements of the following day. Still it was wonderful to see even them somewhat touched with the witchery of love. Even the potato produces a blossom in Spring time, and a very pretty blossom too; and very unpoetical things and people somehow get gilded and brightened by nature's handiwork at that period!

And now in middle life they are, as they ever were, most correct, most exemplary, most regular. Their home is a pattern in many respects. Their life is uniform, and they will live long, for of such is the company of centenarians. And when they die no epitaph will be too good for them; indeed, I think it must have been people of this kind who first gave rise to the art of epitaph-writing, without which surely many stonemasons and others must have gone poor and unemployed.

Yet these people miss very much in their lives. They are, undoubtedly, a most useful class of the community, perhaps the most useful. It is from this class generally that deacons and churchwardens are drawn, and the larger proportion of preachers, namely, the second-rate ones. It is from this class more than any other that town councils and school-boards replenish their ranks. It is by this class that most of the work of the world is kept going. It is true you do not find a majority of them in Parliament, accidents of birth and riches providing most of the seats with sitters; and that is, perhaps, one reason why Parliament does, comparatively, so little.

And yet these people, so correct, so exemplary, miss a great deal. To many regions of nature and of life they are deaf, dumb, and blind. The sentimental and poetical side of their nature is at present undeveloped and rudimentary. It is true the best of them take care to get a smattering of what may be called elementary sentimental education, and learn to admire a poem, a picture, or a sunset. But they know nothing of the rapture of feeling which surges through a poet's soul, or of

"Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears." The opposite class of people to those I have described are more interesting, but scarcely so satisfactory. I refer to those who are all sentiment and nothing else, all gush and no back-bone, all tears, and sighs, and poetic breathings, and no muscle for the hard work of life. These are like æolian harps, played upon by every wind of circumstance, and giving forth a whispering, intangible sort of music, such as no one could write down, having in it no clarion ring or battle-note of advance or victory. They are generally people "without much deepness of earth" as the parable says. A fervid sermon moves them to tears and compunctions. They go to see a comedy, and run over with immoderate merriment. Their thermometer is a sensitive one, and great demands are made upon it. Now it is summer heat with them, and anon it is nearing the freezing point. An obstacle places them in the dust, a ray of sunlight makes them carol like the lark. They luxuriate in what is beautiful and moving, or grand, and for the moment they are altogether intoxicated by it. No other thing in heaven or earth has then any manner of influence upon them. Of late it has been the freak of a certain section of what is called Society to cultivate this state of feeling, and Punch has admirably satirized some of the converts to the school. They call themselves "intense," and count their susceptibility their glory. They are not worth naming in the same day with Sterne and

Goldsmith, who may be taken as representing the sentimental-only people of an earlier day.

I think the finest natures belong to those in whom a conflict of sentiment and conviction is always going on. I do not care for people who are at rest any more than I care for that placid puddle, my neighbour's horse-pond. Conflict and unrest are the signs of life, we may not escape them if we have in us any germ of the higher nature and the diviner soul. Yes, these are the great people, full of human nature, full of sympathies, drawn upwards and dragged downwards; with great capacities to enjoy, yet with a stern worship of the right. They are poets, but they are workers too. They have the artistic instinct and insight, but they are not emasculated dreamers, who talk about "thoughtful" wall-papers, and "impulsive" cretonnes. They can feel the witchery and romance of the past, but they do not make a maudlin effort to be medieval, and to forget the nineteenth century amid revivals and restorations.

I will not go into the Gethsemanes and Tabors of such lives now, though such lives have them. I will only name one or two of the minor instances in which this conflict of sentiment with conviction goes on.

I cannot suppose such a man as I have indicated can attend mass in a grand Roman Catholic Church without being profoundly impressed. The incense, the dim, religious light, the sublime architecture, the whiterobed priests, the heavenly singing, all make their impression on his sensitive organism. Attached to all these there are the associations of the past, the historical interest of the church whose ceremonial he is attending, the ideas of peaceful rest in a communion, where, with Dr. Newman, he might say good-bye to doubt and misgiving for ever; and of a discipleship, where he might sit at the feet of holy fathers and teachably learn, and never use the weary sword of reason more But his dream is rudely interrupted by the other side of his nature rousing itself and coming in with its logic and its scepticism, and its reverence for actual daylight by which to look at past history, and its ardour for the progress of the race, and its recognition of what may be called the net value of all that splendid ceremony. Remembrances come athwart his mind of the simplicity and spirituality of Jesus of Nazareth, and questionings arise as to how all this pomp arose out of a Galilean Prophet asking his friends to that last sad supper. The keen wind of criticism blows away for him the incense-mist of tradition, and dogma, and fictitious value. He is in the daylight again, but there has been conflict between sentiment and conviction.

Or he goes to one of the mansions of England's nobility. It is a great house, dating from the Norman conquest, perhaps, some parts of it of mouldering age. It stands in an ancestral park, where there are "immemorial elms" and deer, and acres upon acres of woodlandcovers, where the birds fly up at every approaching footstep. The house is a lordly one, conducted in lordly style. The owner's rent-roll is a princely one. Horses, which cost hundreds of pounds each, neigh and fidget in the stables, and are carefully attended to by a small army

of ostlers and stable-boys. There are broad lawns, and a church inside the park, and conservative instincts and feudal traces everywhere. The owner is a dead shot, a hard rider, and a free liver. Now there is something that takes the imagination by storm in all this splendour. Pacing up that grand avenue of trees, our friend is apt to feel that there is a sort of glory about all this. What knightly deeds of daring are associated with this place, what romantic chivalry, what stirring times, over which a romantic halo seems to be thrown! And then comes the rush of altogether a different series of thoughts. It was here that poor Giles was taken up by the county constabulary (who too often serve as the lordling's gamekeepers), because he was found in the preserves; and though he had never been in gaol before he got six months' imprisonment for it, and his wife, poor thing, broke her heart over it and died. The agricultural labourer about here manages to carry on a low sort of existence on twelve shillings a week, but in the great house the servants live in waste and luxury. Every day, after lunch in the servants' hall, where game and joints in profusion have been provided, comes the kennel man, and sweeps all that is left, touched or untouched, into his baskets for the dogs; and this, while poor Hodge, the ploughman, rejoices if he can provide bacon and skim-milk for his family; and while, in Ireland, some of my lord's tenants are starving for want of food and fuel. As for my lord himself, he does not for the life of him know what to do with his time, besides giving it up to dogs, horses, and pigeon shooting; and he sometimes thinks that "some of those Radical beggars" will interfere even with these pursuits.

But it is sometimes rather hard to realise these things under the shadow of "immemorial elms," or with one's feet on my lord's velvet lawn.

In some such way as this goes constantly on the conflict between conviction and sentiment in noble minds. Sentiment clings to the old; conviction resolutely sets its face toward the new. Sentiment surrounds the past with a halo of brightness; conviction points to the real dawn of days to come, and recalls that grossness of the past, which sentiment would willingly veil. Sentiment is satisfied with illusions, but conviction demands the severest reality. The struggle goes on between the two sides of such natures as I have spoken of all their lives long. Perhaps people of this sort do not do so much good as those whose lack of sympathetic sensibility enables them to go on with a more machine-like regularity. Perhaps they are not on the whole so satisfactory, looked at from all points of view with an impartial eye, as those in whom the poetic element forms a smaller proportion. But I like them for all that.

GREENHORN.

DEFERRED.

I always knew 'twas right to sow
And think not of the reaping,
For 'tis God's way to make crops grow
While they who sowed are sleeping.

I always felt I'd like to see

The harvest days and reapers,
But still was sure 'twas best to be
As they who watch the sleepers;

For while men work the angels wait,
They know the time and season,
Whether 'twere best men reap or not,
But ne'er let fall the reason.

I've spoken words of strength and hope,
I've wept with those, whose weeping
Had raised this doubt through night to grope
If God his watch were keeping.

I ne'er have gathered as I've sown,
This trust my heart is keeping;

If tares I've reaped where wheat I'd strown "Tis not the final reaping.

Beneath the pain I've put my heart,
And shared the common sorrow;
A brother wronged-I've felt the smart,
But trusted God's to-morrow:

That long, long time in His own plan,
When sun and frost together
Shall ripen all the seed we've sown
Through every zone of weather.

R. L. C.

« ZurückWeiter »