him is another. The saturation-point of each mind differs from
that of every other. But I think it is as true for the small mind
which can only take up a little as for the great one which takes up
much, that the suggested trains of thought and feeling ought always
to rise above - not the author, but the reader's
mentalversion of
the author,
whoever he may be.
I think most readers of Shakspeare sometimes find themselves thrown
into exalted
mental conditions like those produced by music. Then
they may drop the book, to pass at once into the region of thought
without words. We may happen to be very dull folks, you and I, and
probably are, unless there is some particular reason to suppose the
contrary. But we get glimpses now and then of a
sphere of
spiritual possibilities, where we, dull as we are now, may sail in
vast circles round the largest
compass of
earthlyintelligences.
- I
confess there are times when I feel like the friend I mentioned
to you some time ago, - I hate the very sight of a book. Sometimes
it becomes almost a
physical necessity to talk out what is in the
mind, before putting anything else into it. It is very bad to have
thoughts and feelings, which were meant to come out in talk, STRIKE
IN, as they say of some complaints that ought to show outwardly.
I always believed in life rather than in books. I suppose every
day of earth, with its hundred thousand deaths and something more
of births, - with its loves and hates, its triumphs and defeats,
its pangs and blisses, has more of
humanity in it than all the
books that were ever written, put together. I believe the flowers
growing at this moment send up more
fragrance to heaven than was
ever exhaled from all the essences ever distilled.
- Don't I read up various matters to talk about at this table or
elsewhere? - No, that is the last thing I would do. I will tell
you my rule. Talk about those subjects you have had long in your
mind, and listen to what others say about subjects you have
studiedbut recently. Knowledge and
timber shouldn't be much used, till
they are seasoned.
- Physiologists and metaphysicians have had their attention turned
a good deal of late to the
automatic and
involuntary actions of the
mind. Put an idea into your
intelligence and leave it there an
hour, a day, a year, without ever having occasion to refer to it.
When, at last, you return to it, you do not find it as it was when
acquired. It has domiciliated itself, so to speak, - become at
home, - entered into relations with your other thoughts, and
integrated itself with the whole
fabric of the mind. - Or take a
simple and familiar example; Dr. Carpenter has adduced it. You
forget a name, in conversation, - go on talking, without making any
effort to recall it, - and
presently the mind evolves it by its own
involuntary and
unconscious action, while you were pursuing another
train of thought, and the name rises of itself to your lips.
There are some curious observations I should like to make about the
mental machinery, but I think we are getting rather didactic.
- I should be gratified, if Benjamin Franklin would let me know
something of his progress in the French language. I rather liked
that exercise he read us the other day, though I must
confess I
should hardly dare to
translate it, for fear some people in a
remote city where I once lived might think I was
drawing their
portraits.
- Yes, Paris is a famous place for societies. I don't know whether
the piece I mentioned from the French author was intended simply as
Natural History, or whether there was not a little
malice in his
description. At any rate, when I gave my
translation to B. F. to
turn back again into French, one reason was that I thought it would
sound a little bald in English, and some people might think it was
meant to have some local
bearing or other, - which the author, of
course, didn't mean,
inasmuch as he could not be acquainted with
anything on this side of the water.
[The above remarks were addressed to the school-mistress, to whom
I handed the paper after looking it over. The divinity-student
came and read over her shoulder, - very curious,
apparently, but
his eyes wandered, I thought. Fancying that her breathing was
somewhat
hurried and high, or THORACIC, as my friend, the
Professor, calls it, I watched her a little more closely. - It is
none of my business. - After all, it is the imponderables that move
the world, - heat,
electricity, love. HABET?]
This is the piece that Benjamin Franklin made into boarding-school
French, such as you see here; don't expect too much; - the mistakes
give a
relish to it, I think.
LES SOCIETES POLYPHYSIOPHILOSOPHIQUES.
CES Societes la sont une Institution pour suppleer aux besoins
d'esprit et de coeur de ces individus qui ont survecu a leurs
emotions a l'egard du beau sexe, et qui n'ont pas la distraction de
l'habitude de boire.
Pour devenir membre d'une de ces Societes, on doit avoir le moins
de cheveux possible. S'il y en reste plusieurs qui resistent aux
depilatoires naturelles et autres, on doit avoir quelques
connaissances, n'importe dans quel genre. Des le moment qu'on
ouvre la porte de la Societe, on a un grand interet dans toutes les
choses dont on ne sait rien. Ainsi, un microscopiste demontre un
nouveau FLEXOR du TARSE d'un MELOLONTHA VULGARIS. Douze savans
improvises, portans des besicles, et qui ne connaissent rien des
insectes, si ce n'est les morsures du CULEX, se precipitent sur
l'instrument, et voient - une grande bulle d'air, dont ils
s'emerveillent avec effusion. Ce qui est un
spectacle plein
d'instruction - pour ceux qui ne sont pas de ladite Societe. Tous
les membres regardent les chimistes en particulier avec un air
d'
intelligence parfaite pendant qu'ils prouvent dans un discours
d'une demiheure que O6 N3 H5 C6 etc. font quelque chose qui n'est
bonne a rien, mais qui probablement a une odeur tres desagreable,
selon l'habitude des produits chimiques. Apres cela vient un
mathematicien qui vous bourre avec des a+b et vous rapporte enfin
un x+y, dont vous n'avex pas besoin et qui ne change nullement vos
relations avec la vie. Un naturaliste vous parle des formations
speciales des animaux excessivement inconnus, dont vous n'avez
jamais soupconne l'existence. Ainsi il vous decrit les FOLLICULES
de L'APPENDIX VERMIFORMIS d'un DZIGGUETAI. Vous ne savez pas ce
que c'est qu'un FOLLICULE. Vous ne savez pas ce que c'est qu'un
APPENDIX UERMIFORMIS. Vous n'avez jamais entendu parler du
DZIGGUETAI. Ainsi vous gagnez toutes ces connaisances a la fois,
qui s'attachent a votre esprit comme l'eau
adhere aux plumes d'un
canard. On connait toutes les langues EX OFFICIO en devenant
membre d'une de ces Societes. Ainsi quand on entend lire un Essai
sur les dialectes Tchutchiens, on comprend tout cela de suite, et
s'instruit enormement.
Il y a deux especes d'individus qu'on trouve toujours a ces
Societes: 1 (degree) Le membre a questions; 2 (degree) Le membre a
"Bylaws."
La QUESTION est une specialite. Celui qui en fait metier ne fait
jamais des reponses. La question est une maniere tres commode de
dire les choses suivantes: "Me voila! Je ne suis pas
fossil, moi,
- je respire encore! J'ai des idees, - voyez mon
intelligence!
Vous ne croyiez pas, vous autres, que je savais quelque chose de
cela! Ah, nous avons un peu de sagacite, voyez vous! Nous ne
sommes nullement la bete qu'on pense!" - LE FAISEUR DE QUESTIONS
DONNE PEU D'ATTENTION AUX REPONSES QU'ON FAIT; CE N'EST PAS LA DANS
SA SPECIALITE.
Le membre a "Bylaws" est le bouchon de toutes les emotions
mousseuses et genereuses qui se montrent dans la Societe. C'est un
empereur manque, - un tyran a la troiseme trituration. C'est un
esprit dur, borne, exact, grand dans les petitesses, petit dans les
grandeurs, selon le mot du grand Jefferson. On ne l'aime pas dans
la Societe, mais on le respecte et on le craint. Il n'y a qu'un
mot pour ce membre audessus de "Bylaws." Ce mot est pour lui ce
que l'Om est aux Hundous. C'est sa religion; il n'y a rien audela.
Ce mot la c'est la CONSTITUTION!
Lesdites Societes publient des feuilletons de tems en tems. On les
trouve abandonnes a sa porte, nus comme des enfans nouveaunes,
faute de
membrane cutanee, ou meme papyracee. Si on aime la
botanique, on y trouve une memoire sur les coquilles; si on fait
des etudes zoologiques, on square trouve un grand tas de q' [square
root of minus one], ce qui doit etre infiniment plus commode que
les encyclopedies. Ainsi il est clair comme la metaphysique qu'on
doit devenir membre d'une Societe telle que nous decrivons.
RECETTE POUR LE DEPILATOIRE PHYSIOPHILOSOPHIQUE
Chaux vive lb. ss. Eau bouillante Oj.
Depilez avec. Polissez ensuite.
I told the boy that his
translation into French was creditable to
him; and some of the company wishing to hear what there was in the
piece that made me smile, I turned it into English for them, as
well as I could, on the spot.
The landlady's daughter seemed to be much amused by the idea that a
depilatory could take the place of
literary and scientific
accomplishments; she wanted me to print the piece, so that she
might send a copy of it to her cousin in Mizzourah; she didn't
think he'd have to do anything to the outside of his head to get
into any of the societies; he had to wear a wig once, when he
played a part in a tabullo.
No, - said I, - I shouldn't think of printing that in English.
I'll tell you why. As soon as you get a few thousand people
together in a town, there is somebody that every sharp thing you
say is sure to hit. What if a thing was written in Paris or in
Pekin? - that makes no difference. Everybody in those cities, or
almost everybody, has his counterpart here, and in all large
places. - You never
studied AVERAGES as I have had occasion to.
I'll tell you how I came to know so much about averages. There was
one season when I was lecturing,
commonly, five evenings in the
week, through most of the lecturing period. I soon found, as most
speakers do, that it was pleasanter to work one lecture than to
keep several in hand.
- Don't you get sick to death of one lecture? - said the landlady's
daughter, - who had a new dress on that day, and was in spirits for
conversation.
I was going to talk about averages, - I said, - but I have no
objection to telling you about lectures, to begin with.
A new lecture always has a certain
excitement connected with its
delivery. One thinks well of it, as of most things fresh from his
mind. After a few deliveries of it, one gets tired and then
disgusted with its
repetition. Go on delivering it, and the
disgust passes off, until, after one has
repeated it a hundred or a
hundred and fifty times, he rather enjoys the hundred and first or
hundred and fifty-first time, before a new
audience. But this is
on one condition, - that he never lays the lecture down and lets it
cool. If he does, there comes on a loathing for it which is
intense, so that the sight of the old battered
manuscript is as bad
as sea-sickness.
A new lecture is just like any other new tool. We use it for a
while with pleasure. Then it blisters our hands, and we hate to
touch it. By-and-by our hands get callous, and then we have no
longer any sensitiveness about it. But if we give it up, the
calluses disappear; and if we
meddle with it again, we miss the
novelty and get the blisters. - The story is often quoted of
Whitefield, that he said a
sermon was good for nothing until it had
been preached forty times. A lecture doesn't begin to be old until
it has passed its
hundredthdelivery; and some, I think, have
doubled, if not quadrupled, that number. These old lectures are a
man's best,
commonly; they improve by age, also, - like the pipes,
fiddles, and poems I told you of the other day. One learns to make
the most of their strong points and to carry off their weak ones, -
to take out the really good things which don't tell on the
audience, and put in cheaper things that do. All this degrades
him, of course, but it improves the lecture for general
delivery.
A
thoroughly popular lecture ought to have nothing in it which five
hundred people cannot all take in a flash, just as it is uttered.
- No, indeed, - I should be very sorry to say anything
disrespectful of
audiences. I have been kindly treated by a great