The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857

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Far or forgot to me is near,
Shadow and sunlight are the same,
The vanished gods to me appear,
And one to me are shame and fame.

They reckon ill who leave me out;
When me they fly, I am the wings;
I am the doubter and the doubt,
And I the hymn the Brahmin sings.

The strong gods pine for my abode,
And pine in vain the sacred Seven;
But thou, meek lover of the good!
Find me, and turn thy back on heaven.

THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE.

EVERY MAN HIS OWN BOSWELL.

I was just going to say, when I was interrupted, that one of the many ways
of classifying minds is under the heads of arithmetical and algebraical
intellects. All economical and practical wisdom is an extension or
variation of the following arithmetical formula: 2 + 2 = 4. Every
philosophical proposition has the more general character of the expression
_a + b = c_. We are mere operatives, empirics, and egotists, until we learn
to think in letters instead of figures.

They all stared. There is a divinity student lately come among us to whom
I commonly address remarks like the above, allowing him to take a certain
share in the conversation, so far as assent or pertinent questions are
involved. He abused his liberty on this occasion by presuming to say that
Leibnitz had the same observation.--No, sir, I replied, he has not. But he
said a mighty good thing about mathematics, that sounds something like it,
and you found it, _not in the original_, but quoted by Dr. Thomas Reid. I
will tell the company what he did say, one of these days.

--If I belong to a Society of Mutual Admiration?--I blush to say that
I do not at this present moment. I once did, however. It was the first
association to which I ever heard the term applied; a body of scientific
young men in a great foreign city who admired their teacher, and to some
extent each other. Many of them deserved it; they have become famous
since. It amuses me to hear the talk of one of those beings described by
Thackeray--

"Letters four do form his name"--

about a social development which belongs to the very noblest stage of
civilization. All generous companies of artists, authors, philanthropists,
men of science, are, or ought to be, Societies of Mutual Admiration. A man
of genius, or any kind of superiority, is not debarred from admiring the
same quality in another, nor the other from returning his admiration. They
may even associate together and continue to think highly of each other. And
so of a dozen such men, if any one place is fortunate enough to hold so
many. The being referred to above assumes several false premises. First,
that men of talent necessarily hate each other. Secondly, that intimate
knowledge or habitual association destroys our admiration of persons
whom we esteemed highly at a distance. Thirdly, that a circle of clever
fellows, who meet together to dine and have a good time, have signed a
constitutional compact to glorify themselves and put down him and the
fraction of the human race not belonging to their number. Fourthly, that it
is an outrage that he is not asked to join them.

Here the company laughed a good deal, and the old gentleman who sits
opposite said, "That's it! that's it!"

I continued, for I was in the talking vein. As to clever people's hating
each other, I think a _little_ extra talent does sometimes make people
jealous. They become irritated by perpetual attempts and failures, and it
hurts their tempers and dispositions. Unpretending mediocrity is good, and
genius is glorious; but a weak flavor of genius in an essentially common
person is detestable. It spoils the grand neutrality of a commonplace
character, as the rinsings of an unwashed wineglass spoil a draught of
fair water. No wonder the poor fellow we spoke of, who always belongs to
this class of slightly flavored mediocrities, is puzzled and vexed by the
strange sight of a dozen men of capacity working and playing together in
harmony. He and his fellows are always fighting. With them familiarity
naturally breeds contempt. If they ever praise each other's bad drawings,
or broken-winded novels, or spavined verses, nobody ever supposed it
was from admiration; it was simply a contract between themselves and a
publisher or dealer.

If the Mutuals have really nothing among them worth admiring, that alters
the question. But if they are men with noble powers and qualities, let
me tell you, that, next to youthful love and family affections, there is
no human sentiment better than that which unites the Societies of Mutual
Admiration. And what would literature or art be without such associations?
Who can tell what we owe to the Mutual Admiration Society of which
Shakspeare, and Ben Jonson, and Beaumont and Fletcher were members? Or
to that of which Addison and Steele formed the centre, and which gave us
the Spectator? Or to that where Johnson, and Goldsmith, and Burke, and
Reynolds, and Beauclerk, and Boswell, most admiring among all admirers,
met together? Was there any great harm in the fact that the Irvings and
Paulding wrote in company? or any unpardonable cabal in the literary union
of Verplanck and Bryant and Sands, and as many more as they chose to
associate with them?

The poor creature does not know what he is talking about, when he abuses
this noblest of institutions. Let him inspect its mysteries through the
knot-hole he has secured, but not use that orifice as a medium for his
popgun. Such a society is the crown of a literary metropolis; if a town has
not material for it, and spirit and good feeling enough to organize it, it
is a mere caravansary, fit for a man of genius to lodge in, but not to live
in. Foolish people hate and dread and envy such an association of men of
varied powers and influence, because it is lofty, serene, impregnable, and,
by the necessity of the case, exclusive. Wise ones are prouder of the title
M.S.M.A. than of all their other honors put together.

All generous minds have a horror of what are commonly called "facts." They
are the brute beasts of the intellectual domain. Who does not know fellows
that always have an ill-conditioned fact or two that they lead after them
into decent company like so many bull-dogs, ready to let them slip at every
ingenious suggestion, or convenient generalization, or pleasant fancy? I
allow no "facts" at this table. What! Because bread is good and wholesome
and necessary and nourishing, shall you thrust a crumb into my windpipe
while I am talking? Do not these muscles of mine represent a hundred loaves
of bread? and is not my thought the abstract of ten thousand of these
crumbs of truth with which you would choke off my speech?

[The above remark must be conditioned and qualified for the vulgar mind.
The reader will of course understand the precise amount of seasoning which
must be added to it before he adopts it as one of the axioms of his life.
The speaker disclaims all responsibility for its abuse in incompetent
hands.]

This business of conversation is a very serious matter. There are men
that it weakens one to talk with an hour more than a day's fasting would
do. Mark this that I am going to say, for it is as good as a working
professional man's advice, and costs you nothing: It is better to lose a
pint of blood from your veins than to have a nerve tapped. Nobody measures
your nervous force as it runs away, nor bandages your brain and marrow
after the operation.

There are men of _esprit_ who are excessively exhausting to some people.
They are the talkers that have what may be called _jerky_ minds. Their
thoughts do not run in the natural order of sequence. They say bright
things on all possible subjects, but their zigzags rack you to death. After
a jolting half-hour with one of these jerky companions, talking with a dull
friend affords great relief. It is like taking the cat in your lap after
holding a squirrel.

What a comfort a dull but kindly person is, to be sure, at times! A
ground-glass shade over a gas-lamp does not bring more solace to our
dazzled eyes than such a one to our minds.

"Do not dull people bore you?" said one of the lady-boarders,--the same
that sent me her autograph-book last week with a request for a few original
stanzas, not remembering that "The Pactolian" pays me five dollars a line
for every thing I write in its columns.

"Madam," said I, (she and the century were in their teens together,) "all
men are bores, except when we want them. There never was but one man that I
would trust with my latch-key."

"Who might that favored person be?"

"Zimmermann."

The men of genius that I fancy most have erectile heads like the
cobra-di-capello. You remember what they tell of William Pinkney, the great
pleader; how in his eloquent paroxysms the veins of his neck would swell
and his face flush and his eyes glitter, until he seemed on the verge of
apoplexy. The hydraulic arrangements for supplying the brain with blood
are only second in importance to its own organization. The bulbous-headed
fellows that steam well when they are at work are the men that draw big
audiences and give us marrowy books and pictures. It is a good sign to have
one's feet grow cold when he is writing. A great writer and speaker once
told me that he often wrote with his feet in hot water; but for this, _all_
his blood would have run into his head, as the mercury sometimes withdraws
into the ball of a thermometer.

--You don't suppose that my remarks made at this table are like so many
postage-stamps, do you,--each to be only once uttered? If you do, you are
mistaken. He must be a poor creature that does not often repeat himself.
Imagine the author of the excellent piece of advice, "Know thyself,"
never alluding to that sentiment again during the course of a protracted
existence! Why, the truths a man carries about with him are his tools; and
do you think a carpenter is bound to use the same plane but once to smooth
a knotty board with, or to hang up his hammer after it has driven its first
nail? I shall never repeat a conversation, but an idea often. I shall
use the same types when I like, but not commonly the same stereotypes. A
thought is often original, though you have uttered it a hundred times.
It has come to you over a new route, by a new and express train of
associations.

Sometimes, but rarely, one may be caught making the same speech twice over,
and yet be held blameless. Thus, a certain lecturer, after performing in
an inland city, where dwells a _Litteratrice_ of note, was invited to meet
her and others over the social teacup. She pleasantly referred to his many
wanderings in his new occupation. "Yes," he replied, "I am like the Huma,
the bird that never lights, being always in the ears, as he is always on
the wing,"--Years elapsed. The lecturer visited the same place once more
for the same purpose. Another social cup after the lecture, and a second
meeting with the distinguished lady. "You are constantly going from place
to place," she said.--"Yes," he answered, "I am like the Huma,"--and
finished the sentence as before.

What horrors, when it flashed over him that he had made this fine speech,
word for word, twice over! Yet it was not true, as the lady might perhaps
have fairly inferred, that he had embellished his conversation with the
Huma daily during that whole interval of years. On the contrary, he had
never once thought of the odious fowl until the recurrence of precisely
the same circumstances brought up precisely the same idea. He ought to
have been proud of the accuracy of his mental adjustments. Given certain
factors, and a sound brain should always evolve the same fixed product with
the certainty of Babbage's calculating machine.

--What a satire, by the way, is that machine on the mere mathematician! A
Frankenstein-monster, a thing without brains and without heart, too stupid
to make a blunder; that turns out formulae like a corn-sheller, and never
grows any wiser or better, though it grind a thousand bushels of them!

I have an immense respect for a man of talents _plus_ "the mathematics."
But the calculating power alone should seem to be the least human of
qualities, and to have the smallest amount of reason in it; since a machine
can be made to do the work of three or four calculators, and better than
any one of them. Sometimes I have been troubled that I had not a deeper
intuitive apprehension of the relations of numbers. But the triumph of the
ciphering hand-organ has consoled me. I always fancy I can hear the wheels
clicking in a calculator's brain. The power of dealing with numbers is a
kind of "detached lever" arrangement, which may be put into a mighty poor
watch. I suppose it is about as common as the power of moving the ears
voluntarily, which is a moderately rare endowment.

--Little localized powers, and little narrow streaks of specialized
knowledge, are things men are very apt to be conceited about. Nature is
very wise; but for this encouraging principle how many small talents and
little accomplishments would be neglected! Talk about conceit as much as
you like, it is to human character what salt is to the ocean; it keeps it
sweet, and renders it endurable. Say rather it is like the natural unguent
of the sea-fowl's plumage, which enables him to shed the rain that falls on
him and the wave in which he dips. When one has had _all_ his conceit taken
out of him, when he has lost _all_ his illusions, his feathers will soon
soak through, and he will fly no more.

So you admire conceited people, do you? said the young lady who has come to
the city to be finished off for--the duties of life.

I am afraid you do not study logic at your school, my dear. It does not
follow that I wish to be pickled in brine because I like a saltwater plunge
at Nahant. I say that conceit is just as natural a thing to human minds as
a centre is to a circle. But little-minded people's thoughts move in such
small circles that five minutes' conversation gives you an arc long enough
to determine their whole curve. An arc in the movement of a large intellect
does not sensibly differ from a straight line. Even if it have the third
vowel as its centre, it does not soon betray it. The highest thought, that
is, is the most seemingly impersonal; it does not obviously imply any
individual centre.

Audacious self-esteem, with good ground for it, is always imposing. What
resplendent beauty that must have been which could have authorized Phryne
to "peel" in the way she did! What fine speeches are those two: "_Non omnis
moriar_" and "I have taken all knowledge to be my province"! Even in common
people, conceit has the virtue of making them cheerful; the man who thinks
his wife, his baby, his house, his horse, his dog, and himself severally
unequalled, is almost sure to be a good-humored person, though liable to be
tedious at times.

--What are the great faults of conversation? Want of ideas, want of words,
want of manners, are the principal ones, I suppose you think. I don't
doubt it, but I will tell you what I have found spoil more good talks than
anything else;--long arguments on special points between people who differ
on the fundamental principles upon which these points depend. No men can
have satisfactory relations with each other until they have agreed on
certain _ultimata_ of belief not to be disturbed in ordinary conversation,
and unless they have sense enough to trace the secondary questions
depending upon these ultimate beliefs to their source. In short, just as a
written constitution is essential to the best social order, so a code of
finalities is a necessary condition of profitable talk between two persons.
Talking is like playing on the harp; there is as much in laying the hand on
the strings to stop their vibrations as in twanging them to bring out their
music.

--Do you mean to say the pun-question is not clearly settled in your minds?
Let me lay down the law upon the subject. Life and language are alike
sacred. Homicide and _verbicide_--that is, violent treatment of a word
with fatal results to its legitimate meaning, which is its life--are alike
forbidden. Manslaughter, which is the meaning of the one, is the same as
man's laughter, which is the end of the other. A pun is _prima facie_ an
insult to the person you are talking with. It implies utter indifference
to or sublime contempt for his remarks, no matter how serious. I speak of
total depravity, and one says all that is written on the subject is deep
raving. I have committed my self-respect by talking with such a person. I
should like to commit him, but cannot, because he is a nuisance. Or I speak
of geological convulsions, and he asks me what was the cosine of Noah's
ark; also, whether the Deluge was not a deal huger than any modern
inundation.

A pun does not commonly justify a blow in return. But if a blow were given
for such cause, and death ensued, the jury would be judges both of the
facts and of the pun, and might, if the latter were of an aggravated
character, return a verdict of justifiable homicide. Thus, in a case lately
decided before Miller, J., Doe presented Roe a subscription paper, and
urged the claims of suffering humanity. Roe replied by asking, When charity
was like a top? It was in evidence that Doe preserved a dignified silence.
Roe then said, "When it begins to hum." Doe then--and not till then--struck
Roe, and his head happening to strike a bound volume of the Monthly Rag-bag
and Stolen Miscellany, intense mortification ensued, with a fatal result.
The chief laid down his notions of the law to his brother justices, who
unanimously replied, "Jest so." The chief rejoined, that no man should jest
so without being punished for it, and charged for the prisoner, who was
acquitted, and the pun ordered to be burned by the sheriff. The bound
volume was forfeited as a deodand, but not claimed.

People that make puns are like wanton boys that put coppers on the railroad
tracks. They amuse themselves and other children, but their little trick
may upset a freight train of conversation for the sake of a battered
witticism.

I will thank you, B.F., to bring down two books, of which I will mark the
places on this slip of paper. (While he is gone, I may say that this boy,
our landlady's youngest, is called BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, after the celebrated
philosopher of that name. A highly merited compliment.)

I wished to refer to two eminent authorities. Now be so good as to listen.
The great moralist says: "To trifle with the vocabulary which is the
vehicle of social intercourse is to tamper with the currency of human
intelligence. He who would violate the sanctities of his mother tongue
would invade the recesses of the paternal till without remorse, and repeat
the banquet of Saturn without an indigestion."

And, once more, listen to the historian. "The Puritans hated puns. The
Bishops were notoriously addicted to them. The Lords Temporal carried them
to the verge of license. Majesty itself must have its Royal quibble. 'Ye be
burly, my Lord of Burleigh,' said Queen Elizabeth, 'but ye shall make less
stir in our realm than my Lord of Leicester.' The gravest wisdom and the
highest breeding lent their sanction to the practice. Lord Bacon playfully
declared himself a descendant of 'Og, the King of Bashan. Sir Philip
Sidney, with his last breath, reproached the soldier who brought him water,
for wasting a casque full upon a dying man. A courtier, who saw Othello
performed at the Globe Theatre, remarked, that the blackamoor was a brute,
and not a man. 'Thou hast reason,' replied a great Lord, 'according to
Plato his saying; for this be a two-legged animal _with_ feathers.' The
fatal habit became universal. The language was corrupted. The infection
spread to the national conscience. Political double-dealings naturally grew
out of verbal double meanings. The teeth of the new dragon were sown by the
Cadmus who introduced the alphabet of equivocation. What was levity in
the time of the Tudors grew to regicide and revolution in the age of the
Stuarts."

Who was that boarder that just whispered something about the
Macaulay-flowers of literature?--There was a dead silence.--I said calmly,
I shall henceforth consider any interruption by a pun as a hint to change
my boarding-house. Do not plead my example. If _I_ have used any such, it
has been only as a Spartan father would show up a drunken helot. We have
done with them.

--If a logical mind ever found out anything with its logic?--I should say
that its most frequent work was to build a _pons asinorum_ over chasms that
shrewd people can bestride without such a structure. You can hire logic, in
the shape of a lawyer, to prove anything that you want to prove. You can
buy treatises to show that Napoleon never lived, and that no battle of
Bunker-hill was ever fought. The great minds are those with a wide span,
that couple truths related to, but far removed from, each other. Logicians
carry the surveyor's chain over the track of which these are the true
explorers. I value a man mainly for his primary relations with truth, as I
understand truth,--not for any secondary artifice in handling his ideas.
Some of the sharpest men in argument are notoriously unsound in judgment.
I should not trust the counsel of a smart debater, any more than that of a
good chess-player. Either may of course advise wisely, but not necessarily
because he wrangles or plays well.

The old gentleman who sits opposite got his hand up, as a pointer lifts
his forefoot, at the expression, "his relations with truth as I understand
truth," and when I had done, sniffed audibly, and said I talked like a
transcendentalist. For his part, common sense was good enough for him.

Precisely so, my dear sir, I replied; common sense, _as you understand it_.
We all have to assume a standard of judgment in our own minds, either of
things or persons. A man who is willing to take another's opinion has to
exercise his judgment in the choice of whom to follow, which is often as
nice a matter as to judge of things for one's self. On the whole, I had
rather judge men's minds by comparing their thoughts with my own, than
judge of thoughts by knowing who utter them. I must do one or the other. It
does not follow, of course, that I may not recognize another man's thoughts
as broader and deeper than my own; but that does not necessarily change my
opinion, otherwise this would be at the mercy of every superior mind that
held a different one. How many of our most cherished beliefs are like those
drinking-glasses of the ancient pattern, that serve us well so long as we
keep them in our hand, but spill all if we attempt to set them down! I have
sometimes compared conversation to the Italian game of _mora_, in which one
player lifts his hand with so many fingers extended, and the other matches
or misses the number, as the case may be with his own. I show my thought,
another his; if they agree, well; if they differ, we find the largest
common factor, if we can, but at any rate avoid disputing about remainders
and fractions, which is to real talk what tuning an instrument is to
playing on it.

--What if, instead of talking this morning, I should read you a copy of
verses, with critical remarks by the author? Any of the company can retire
that like.

When Eve had led her lord away,
And Cain had killed his brother,
The stars and flowers, the poets say,
Agreed with one another

To cheat the cunning tempter's art,
And teach the race its duty,
By keeping on its wicked heart
Their eyes of light and beauty.

A million sleepless lids, they say,
Will be at least a warning;
And so the flowers would watch by day,
The stars from eve to morning.

On hill and prairie, field and lawn,
Their dewy eyes upturning,
The flowers still watch from reddening dawn
Till western skies are burning.

Alas! each hour of daylight tells
A tale of shame so crushing,
That some turn white as sea-bleached shells,
And some are always blushing.

But when the patient stars look down
On all their light discovers,
The traitor's smile, the murderer's frown,
The lips of lying lovers,

They try to shut their saddening eyes,
And in the vain endeavour
We see them twinkling in the skies,
And so they wink forever.

What do _you_ think of these verses, my friends? Is that piece an
impromptu? said my landlady's daughter. (Aet. 19+. Tender-eyed blonde. Long
ringlets. Cameo pin. Gold pencil-case on a chain. Locket. Bracelet. Album.
Autograph book. Accordeon. Reads Byron, Tupper, and Sylvanus Cobb, junior,
while her mother makes the puddings. Says, "Yes?" when you tell her
anything.)--_Oui et non, ma petite_,--Yes and no, my child. Five of the
seven verses were written off-hand; the other two took a week,--that is,
were hanging round the desk in a ragged, forlorn, unrhymed condition as
long as that. All poets will tell you just such stories. _C'est le DERNIER
pas qui coute_. Don't you know how hard it is for some people to get out of
a room after their visit is really over? They want to be off, and you want
to have them off, but they don't know how to manage it. One would think
they had been built in your parlour or study, and were waiting to be
launched. I have contrived a sort of ceremonial inclined plane for such
visitors, which being lubricated with certain smooth phrases, I back them
down, metaphorically speaking, stern-foremost, into their "native element,"
the great ocean of out-doors. Well, now, there are poems as hard to get rid
of as these rural visitors. They come in glibly, use up all the serviceable
rhymes, _day_, _ray_, _beauty_, _duty_, _skies_, _eyes_, _other_,
_brother_, _mountain_, _fountain_, and the like; and so they go on until
you think it is time for the wind-up, and the wind-up won't come on any
terms. So they lie about until you get sick of the sight of them, and end
by thrusting some cold scrap of a final couplet upon them, and turning them
out of doors. I suspect a good many "impromptus" could tell just such a
story as the above.--Here turning to our landlady, I used an illustration
which pleased the company much at the time, and has since been highly
commended. "Madam," I said, "you can pour three gills and three quarters
of honey from that pint jug, if it is full, in less than one minute; but,
Madam, you could not empty that last quarter of a gill, though you were
turned into a marble Hebe, and held the vessel upside down for a thousand
years."

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