Society and solitude: Twelve chapters
Now the tale will tell.
In Californian mountains
A hunter bold was he:
Keen his eye and sure his aim
As any you should see.
A little Indian boy
Followed him everywhere,
Eager to share the hunter’s joy,
The hunter’s meal to share.
And when the bird or deer
Fell by the hunter’s skill,
The boy was always near
To help with right good-will.
One day as through the cleft
Between two mountains steep,
Shut in both right and left,
Their questing way they keep,
They see two grizzly bears
With hunger fierce and fell
Rush at them unawares
Right down the narrow dell.
The boy turned round with screams,
And ran with terror wild;
One of the pair of savage beasts
Pursued the shrieking child.
The hunter raised his gun,--
He knew _one_ charge was all,--
And through the boy’s pursuing foe
He sent his only ball.
The other on George Nidiver
Came on with dreadful pace:
The hunter stood unarmed,
And met him face to face.
I say _unarmed_ he stood.
Against those frightful paws
The rifle but, or club of wood,
Could stand no more than straws.
George Nidiver stood still
And looked him in the face;
The wild beast stopped amazed,
Then came with slackening pace.
Still firm the hunter stood,
Although his heart beat high;
Again the creature stopped,
And gazed with wondering eye.
The hunter met his gaze,
Nor yet an inch gave way;
The bear turned slowly round,
And slowly moved away.
What thoughts were in his mind
It would be hard to spell:
What thoughts were in George Nidiver
I rather guess than tell.
But sure that rifle’s aim,
Swift choice of generous part,
Showed in its passing gleam
The depths of a brave heart.
SUCCESS.
SUCCESS.
Our American people cannot be taxed with slowness in performance or
in praising their performance. The earth is shaken by our engineries.
We are feeling our youth and nerve and bone. We have the power of
territory and of sea-coast, and know the use of these. We count our
census, we read our growing valuations, we survey our map, which
becomes old in a year or two. Our eyes run approvingly along the
lengthened lines of railroad and telegraph. We have gone nearest to
the Pole. We have discovered the Antarctic continent. We interfere in
Central and South America, at Canton, and in Japan; we are adding to an
already enormous territory. Our political constitution is the hope of
the world, and we value ourselves on all these feats.
’Tis the way of the world; ’tis the law of youth, and of unfolding
strength. Men are made each with some triumphant superiority, which,
through some adaptation of fingers, or ear, or eye, or ciphering, or
pugilistic or musical or literary craft, enriches the community with a
new art; and not only we, but all men of European stock value these
certificates. Giotto could draw a perfect circle; Erwin of Steinbach
could build a minster; Olaf, king of Norway, could run round his
galley on the blades of the oars of the rowers, when the ship was in
motion; Ojeda could run out swiftly on a plank projected from the top
of a tower, turn round swiftly, and come back; Evelyn writes from
Rome: “Bernini, the Florentine sculptor, architect, painter, and poet,
a little before my coming to Rome, gave a public opera, wherein he
painted the scenes, cut the statues, invented the engines, composed the
music, writ the comedy, and built the theatre.”
“There is nothing in war,” said Napoleon, “which I cannot do by my
own hands. If there is nobody to make gunpowder, I can manufacture
it. The gun-carriages I know how to construct. If it is necessary to
make cannons at the forge, I can make them. The details of working
them in battle, if it is necessary to teach, I shall teach them. In
administration, it is I alone who have arranged the finances, as you
know.”
It is recorded of Linnæus, among many proofs of his beneficent skill,
that when the timber in the shipyards of Sweden was ruined by rot,
Linnæus was desired by the government to find a remedy. He studied the
insects that infested the timber, and found that they laid their eggs
in the logs within certain days in April, and he directed that during
ten days at that season the logs should be immersed under water in the
docks; which being done the timber was found to be uninjured.
Columbus at Veragua found plenty of gold; but leaving the coast, the
ship full of one hundred and fifty skilful seamen,--some of them old
pilots, and with too much experience of their craft and treachery to
him,--the wise admiral kept his private record of his homeward path.
And when he reached Spain, he told the King and Queen, “that they may
ask all the pilots who came with him, where is Veragua. Let them answer
and say, if they know where Veragua lies. I assert that they can give
no other account than that they went to lands where there was abundance
of gold, but they do not know the way to return thither, but would be
obliged to go on a voyage of discovery as much as if they had never
been there before. There is a mode of reckoning,” he proudly adds,
“derived from astronomy, which is sure and safe to any who understands
it.”
Hippocrates in Greece knew how to stay the devouring plague which
ravaged Athens in his time, and his skill died with him. Dr. Benjamin
Rush, in Philadelphia, carried that city heroically through the yellow
fever of the year 1793. Leverrier carries the Copernican system in
his head, and knew where to look for the new planet. We have seen an
American woman write a novel of which a million copies were sold in
all languages, and which had one merit, of speaking to the universal
heart, and was read with equal interest to three audiences, namely,
in the parlor, in the kitchen, and in the nursery of every house. We
have seen women who could institute hospitals and schools in armies.
We have seen a woman who by pure song could melt the souls of whole
populations. And there is no limit to these varieties of talent.
These are arts to be thankful for,--each one as it is a new direction
of human power. We cannot choose but respect them. Our civilization
is made up of a million contributions of this kind. For success, to
be sure, we esteem it a test in other people, since we do first in
ourselves. We respect ourselves more if we have succeeded. Neither do
we grudge to each of these benefactors the praise or the profit which
accrues from his industry.
Here are already quite different degrees of moral merit in these
examples. I don’t know but we and our race elsewhere set a higher value
on wealth, victory, and coarse superiority of all kinds, than other
men,--have less tranquillity of mind, are less easily contented. The
Saxon is taught from his infancy to wish to be first. The Norseman
was a restless rider, fighter, freebooter. The ancient Norse ballads
describe him as afflicted with this inextinguishable thirst of victory.
The mother says to her son:--
“Success shall be in thy courser tall,
Success in thyself, which is best of all,
Success in thy hand, success in thy foot,
In struggle with man, in battle with brute:--
The holy God and Saint Drothin dear
Shall never shut eyes on thy career;
Look out, look out, Svend Vonved!”
These feats that we extol do not signify so much as we say. These
boasted arts are of very recent origin. They are local conveniences,
but do not really add to our stature. The greatest men of the world
have managed not to want them. Newton was a great man, without
telegraph, or gas, or steam-coach, or rubber-shoes, or lucifer-matches,
or ether for his pain; so was Shakspeare, and Alfred, and Scipio, and
Socrates. These are local conveniences, but how easy to go now to parts
of the world where not only all these arts are wanting, but where they
are despised. The Arabian sheiks, the most dignified people in the
planet, do not want them; yet have as much self-respect as the English,
and are easily able to impress the Frenchman or the American who visits
them with the respect due to a brave and sufficient man.
These feats have, to be sure, great difference of merit and some of
them involve power of a high kind. But the public values the invention
more than the inventor does. The inventor knows there is much more and
better where this came from. The public sees in it a lucrative secret.
Men see the reward which the inventor enjoys, and they think, ‘How
shall we win that?’ Cause and effect are a little tedious; how to
leap to the result by short or by false means? We are not scrupulous.
What we ask is victory, without regard to the cause; after the Rob
Roy rule, after the Napoleon rule, to be the strongest to-day,--the
way of the Talleyrands,--prudent people, whose watches go faster than
their neighbors’, and who detect the first moment of decline, and
throw themselves on the instant on the winning side. I have heard that
Nelson used to say, “Never mind the justice or the impudence, only let
me succeed.” Lord Brougham’s single duty of counsel is, “to get the
prisoner clear.” Fuller says ’tis a maxim of lawyers, “that a crown
once worn cleareth all defects of the wearer thereof.” _Rien ne réussit
mieux que le succès._ And we Americans are tainted with this insanity,
as our bankruptcies and our reckless politics may show. We are great by
exclusion, grasping, and egotism. Our success takes from all what it
gives to one. ’Tis a haggard, malignant, careworn running for luck.
Egotism is a kind of buckram that gives momentary strength and
concentration to men, and seems to be much used in nature for fabrics
in which local and spasmodic energy is required. I could point to men
in this country of indispensable importance to the carrying on of
American life, of this humor, whom we could ill spare; any one of them
would be a national loss. But it spoils conversation. They will not
try conclusions with you. They are ever thrusting this pampered self
between you and them. It is plain they have a long education to undergo
to reach simplicity and plain-dealing, which are what a wise man mainly
cares for in his companion. Nature knows how to convert evil to good;
Nature utilizes misers, fanatics, show-men, egotists, to accomplish her
ends; but we must not think better of the foible for that. The passion
for sudden success is rude and puerile, just as war, cannons, and
executions are used to clear the ground of bad, lumpish, irreclaimable
savages, but always to the damage of the conquerors.
I hate this shallow Americanism which hopes to get rich by credit,
to get knowledge by raps on midnight tables, to learn the economy of
the mind by phrenology, or skill without study, or mastery without
apprenticeship, or the sale of goods through pretending that they sell,
or power through making believe you are powerful, or through a packed
jury or caucus, bribery and “repeating” votes, or wealth by fraud.
They think they have got it, but they have got something else,--a
crime which calls for another crime, and another devil behind that;
these are steps to suicide, infamy, and the harming of mankind. We
countenance each other in this life of show, puffing, advertisement,
and manufacture of public opinion; and excellence is lost sight of in
the hunger for sudden performance and praise.
There was a wise man, an Italian artist, Michel Angelo, who writes thus
of himself: “Meanwhile the Cardinal Ippolito, in whom all my best hopes
were placed, being dead, I began to understand that the promises of
this world are, for the most part, vain phantoms, and that to confide
in one’s self, and become something of worth and value, is the best and