The Wit and Humor of America
Chapter 82 : Your friends have an intimate knowledge of you that is astonis.h.i.+ng to contemplate.

Your friends have an intimate knowledge of you that is astonis.h.i.+ng to contemplate. It is not that they know your affairs, which he who runs may read, but they know you. From a bit of bone, Cuvier could predicate a whole animal, even to the hide and hair. Such moral naturalists are your dear five hundred friends. It seems to yourself that you are immeasurably reticent. You know, of a certainty, that you project only the smallest possible fragment of yourself. You yield your universality to the bond of common brotherhood; but your individualism--what it is that makes you you--withdraws itself naturally, involuntarily, inevitably into the background,--the dim distance which their eyes can not penetrate. But, from the fraction which you do project, they construct another you, call it by your name, and pa.s.s it around for the real, the actual you. You bristle with jest and laughter and wild whims, to keep them at a distance; and they fancy this to be your every-day equipment. They think your life holds constant carnival. It is astonis.h.i.+ng what ideas spring up in the heads of sensible people. There are those who a.s.sume that a person can never have had any grief, unless somebody has died, or he has been disappointed in love,--not knowing that every avenue of joy lies open to the tramp of pain. They see the flas.h.i.+ng coronet on the queen's brow, and they infer a diamond woman, not recking of the human heart that throbs wildly out of sight. They see the foam-crest on the wave, and picture an Atlantic Ocean of froth, and not the solemn sea that stands below in eternal equipoise. You turn to them the luminous crescent of your life, and they call it the whole round globe; and so they love you with a love that is agate, not pearl, because what they love in you is something infinitely below the highest.

They love you level: they have never scaled your heights nor fathomed your depths. And when they talk of you as familiarly as if they had taken out your auricles and ventricles, and turned them inside out, and wrung them, and shaken them,--when they prate of your transparency and openness, the abandonment with which you draw aside the curtain and reveal the inmost thoughts of your heart,--you, who are to yourself a miracle and a mystery, you smile inwardly, and are content. They are on the wrong scent, and you may pursue your plans in peace. They are indiscriminate and satisfied. They do not know the relation of what appears to what is. If they chance to skirt along the coasts of your Purple Island, it will be only chance, and they will not know it. You may close your port-holes, lower your drawbridge, and make merry, for they will never come within gunshot of the "round tower of your heart."

There is no such thing as knowing a man intimately. Every soul is, for the greater part of its mortal life, isolated from every other. Whether it dwell in the Garden of Eden or the Desert of Sahara, it dwells alone.

Not only do we jostle against the street crowd unknowing and unknown, but we go out and come in, we lie down and rise up, with strangers.

Jupiter and Neptune sweep the heavens not more unfamiliar to us than the worlds that circle our own hearthstone. Day after day, and year after year a person moves by your side; he sits at the same table; he reads the same books; he kneels in the same church. You know every hair of his head, every trick of his lips, every tone of his voice; you can tell him far off by his gait. Without seeing him, you recognize his step, his knock, his laugh. "Know him? Yes, I have known him these twenty years."

No, you don't know him. You know his gait, and hair, and voice. You know what preacher he hears, what ticket he voted, and what were his last year's expenses; but you don't know him. He sits quietly in his chair, but he is in the temple. You speak to him; his soul comes out into the vestibule to answer you, and returns,--and the gates are shut; therein you can not enter. You were discussing the state of the country; but when you ceased, he opened a postern-gate, went down a bank, and launched on a sea over whose waters you have no boat to sail, no star to guide. You have loved and reverenced him. He has been your concrete of truth and n.o.bleness. Unwittingly you touch a secret spring, and a Blue-Beard chamber stands revealed. You give no sign; you meet and part as usual; but a Dead Sea rolls between you two forevermore.

It must be so. Not even to the nearest and dearest can one unveil the secret place where his soul abideth, so that there shall be no more any winding ways or hidden chambers; but to your indifferent neighbor, what blind alleys, and deep caverns, and inaccessible mountains! To him who "touches the electric chain wherewith you're darkly bound," your soul sends back an answering thrill. One little window is opened, and there is short parley. Your s.h.i.+ps speak each other now and then in welcome, though imperfect communication; but immediately you strike out again into the great, sh.o.r.eless sea, over which you must sail forever alone.

You may shrink from the far-reaching solitudes of your heart, but no other foot than yours can tread them, save those

"That, eighteen hundred years ago, were nailed, For our advantage, to the bitter cross."

Be thankful that it is so,--that only His eye sees whose hand formed. If we could look in, we should be appalled at the vision. The worlds that glide around us are mysteries too high for us. We can not attain to them. The naked soul is a sight too awful for man to look at and live.

There are individuals whose topography we would like to know a little better, and there is danger that we crash against each other while roaming around in the dark; but for all that, would we not have the const.i.tution broken up. Somebody says, "In Heaven there will be no secrets," which, it seems to me, would be intolerable. (If that were a revelation from the King of Heaven, of course I would not speak flippantly of it; but though towards Heaven we look with reverence and humble hope, I do not know that Tom, d.i.c.k and Harry's notions of it have any special claim to our respect.) Such publicity would destroy all individuality, and undermine the foundations of society.

Clairvoyance--if there be any such thing--always seemed to me a stupid impertinence. When people pay visits to me, I wish them to come to the front door, and ring the bell, and send up their names. I don't wish them to climb in at the window, or creep through the pantry, or, worst of all, float through the key-hole, and catch me in undress. So I believe that in all worlds thoughts will be the subjects of volition,--more accurately expressed when expression is desired, but just as entirely suppressed when we will suppression.

After all, perhaps the chief trouble arises from a prevalent confusion of ideas as to what const.i.tutes a man your friend. Friends.h.i.+p may stand for that peaceful complacence which you feel towards all well-behaved people who wear clean collars and use tolerable grammar. This is a very good meaning, if everybody will subscribe to it. But sundry of these well-behaved people will mistake your civility and complacence for a recognition of special affinity, and proceed at once to frame an alliance offensive and defensive while the sun and the moon shall endure. O, the barnacles that cling to your keel in such waters! The inevitable result is, that they win your intense rancor. You would feel a genial kindliness toward them, if they would be satisfied with that; but they lay out to be your specialty. They infer your innocent little inch to be the standard-bearer of twenty ells, and goad you to frenzy. I mean you, you desperate little horror, who nearly dethroned my reason six years ago! I always meant to have my revenge, and here I impale you before the public. For three months, you fastened yourself upon me, and I could not shake you off. What availed it me, that you were an honest and excellent man? Did I not, twenty times a day, wish you had been a villain, who had insulted me, and I a Kentucky giant, that I might have the unspeakable satisfaction of knocking you down? But you added to your crimes virtue. Villainy had no part or lot in you. You were a member of a church, in good and regular standing; you had graduated with all the honors worth mentioning; you had not a sin, a vice, or a fault that I knew of; and you were so thoroughly good and repulsive that you were a great grief to me. Do you think, you dear, disinterested wretch, that I have forgotten how you were continually putting yourself to horrible inconveniences on my account? Do you think I am not now filled with remorse for the aversion that rooted itself ineradicably in my soul, and which now gloats over you, as you stand in the pillory where my own hands have fastened you? But can nature be crushed forever? Did I not ruin my nerves, and seriously injure my temper, by the overpowering pressure I laid upon them to keep them quiet when you were by? Could I not, by the sense of coming ill through all my quivering frame, presage your advent as exactly as the barometer heralds the approaching storm?

Those three months of agony are little atoned for by this late vengeance; but go in peace!

Mysterious are the ways of friends.h.i.+p. It is not a matter of reason or of choice, but of magnetisms. You can not always give the premises nor the argument, but the conclusion is a palpable and stubborn fact. Abana and Pharpar may be broad, and deep, and blue, and grand; but only in Jordan shall your soul wash and be clean. A thousand brooks are born of the suns.h.i.+ne and the mountains: very, very few are they whose flow can mingle with yours, and not disturb, but only deepen and broaden the current.

Your friend! Who shall describe him, or worthily paint what he is to you? No merchant, nor lawyer, nor farmer, nor statesman claims your suffrage, but a kingly soul. He comes to you from G.o.d,--a prophet, a seer, a revealer. He has a clear vision. His love is reverence. He goes into the _penetralia_ of your life,--not presumptuously, but with uncovered head, unsandaled feet, and pours libations at the innermost shrine. His incense is grateful. For him the sunlight brightens, the skies grow rosy, and all the days are Junes. Wrapped in his love, you float in a delicious rest, rocked in the bosom of purple, scented waves.

Nameless melodies sing themselves through your heart. A golden glow suffices your atmosphere. A vague, fine ecstasy thrills to the sources of life, and earth lays hold on Heaven. Such friends.h.i.+p is wors.h.i.+p. It elevates the most trifling services into rites. The humblest offices are sanctified. All things are baptized into a new name. Duty is lost in joy. Care veils itself in caresses. Drudgery becomes delight. There is no longer anything menial, small, or servile. All is transformed

"Into something rich and strange."

The homely household-ways lead through beds of spices and orchards of pomegranates. The daily toil among your parsnips and carrots is plucking May violets with the dew upon them to meet the eyes you love upon their first awaking. In the burden and heat of the day you hear the rustling of summer showers and the whispering of summer winds. Everything is lifted up from the plane of labor to the plane of love, and a glory spans your life. With your friend, speech and silence are one; for a communion mysterious and intangible reaches across from heart to heart.

The many dig and delve in your nature with fruitless toil to find the spring of living water: he only raises his wand, and, obedient to the hidden power, it bends at once to your secret. Your friends.h.i.+p, though independent of language, gives to it life and light. The mystic spirit stirs even in commonplaces, and the merest question is an endearment.

You are quiet because your heart is over-full. You talk because it is pleasant, not because you have anything to say. You weary of terms that are already love-laden, and you go out into the highways and hedges, and gather up the rough, wild, wilful words, heavy with the hatreds of men, and fill them to the brim with honey-dew. All things great and small, grand or humble, you press into your service, force them to do soldier's duty, and your banner over them is love.

With such a friends.h.i.+p, presence alone is happiness; nor is absence wholly void,--for memories, and hopes, and pleasing fancies, sparkle through the hours, and you know the suns.h.i.+ne will come back.

For such friends.h.i.+p one is grateful. No matter that it comes unsought, and comes not for the seeking. You do not discuss the reasonableness of your grat.i.tude. You only know that your whole being bows with humility and utter thankfulness to him who thus crowns you monarch of all realms.

And the kingdom is everlasting. A weak love dies weakly with the occasion that gave it birth; but such friends.h.i.+p is born of the G.o.ds, and immortal. Clouds and darkness may sweep around it, but within the cloud the glory lives undimmed. Death has no power over it.

Time can not diminish, nor even dishonor annul it. Its direction may have been earthly, but itself is divine. You go back into your solitudes: all is silent as aforetime, but you can not forget that a Voice once resounded there. A Presence filled the valleys and gilded the mountain-tops,--breathed upon the plains, and they sprang up in lilies and roses,--flashed upon the waters, and they flowed to spheral melody,--swept through the forests, and they, too, trembled into song.

And though now the warmth has faded out, though the ruddy tints and amber clearness have paled to ashen hues, though the murmuring melodies are dead, and forest, vale, and hill look hard and angular in the sharp air, you know that it is not death. The fire is unquenched beneath. You go your way not disconsolate. There needs but the Victorious Voice. At the touch of the prince's lips, life shall rise again and be perfected forevermore.

PONCHUS PILUT

BY JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY

Ponchus Pilut _used_ to be 1st a _Slave_, an' now he's _free_.

Slaves wuz on'y ist before The War wuz--an' _ain't_ no more.

He works on our place fer us,-- An' comes here--_sometimes_ he does.

He shocks corn an' shucks it.--An'

He makes hominy "by han'!"--

Wunst he bringed us some, one trip, Tied up in a piller-slip: Pa says, when Ma cooked it, "MY!

This-here's gooder'n you _buy_!"

Ponchus _pats_ fer me an' sings; An' he says most _funny_ things!

Ponchus calls a dish a "_deesh_"-- Yes, an' _he_ calls fishes "_feesh_"!

When Ma want him eat wiv us He says, "'Skuse me--'deed you mus'!-- Ponchus know good manners, Miss.-- He aint eat wher' White-folks is!"

'Lindy takes _his_ dinner out Wher' he's workin'--roun' about.-- Wunst he et his dinner, spread In our ole wheel-borry-bed.

_Ponchus Pilut_ says "_'at's_ not His _right_ name,--an' done fergot What his _sho'-nuff_ name is now-- An' don' matter none _no_how!"

Yes, an' Ponchus he'ps Pa, too, When our _butcherin's_ to do, An' scalds hogs--an' says "Take care 'Bout it, er you'll _set the hair_!"

Yes, an' out in our back-yard He he'ps 'Lindy rendur lard; An', wite in the fire there, he Roast' a pig-tail wunst fer me.--

An' ist nen th'ole tavurn-bell Rung, down town, an' he says "Well!-- Hear dat! _Lan' o' Canaan_, Son, Aint dat bell say '_Pig-tail done!_'

--'_Pig-tail done!

Go call Son!-- Tell dat Chile dat Pig-tail done!_'"

THE WOLF AT SUSAN'S DOOR

BY ANNE WARNER

"Well, Lucy has got Hiram!"

There was such a strong inflection of triumphant joy in Miss Clegg's voice as she called the momentous news to her friend that it would have been at once--and most truthfully--surmised that the getting of Hiram had been a more than slight labor.

Mrs. Lathrop was waiting by the fence, impatience written with a wandering reflection all over the serenity of her every-day expression.

Susan only waited to lay aside her bonnet and mitts and then hastened to the fence herself.

"Mrs. Lathrop, you never saw nor heard the like of this weddin' day in all your own days to be or to come, and I don't suppose there ever will be anything like it again, for Lucy Dill didn't cut no figger in her own weddin' a-_tall_,--the whole thing was Gran'ma Mullins first, last and forever hereafter. I tell you it looked once or twice as if it wouldn't be a earthly possibility to marry Hiram away from his mother, and now that it's all over people can't do anything but say as after all Lucy ought to consider herself very lucky as things turned out, for if things hadn't turned out as they did turn out I don't believe anything on earth could have unhooked that son, and I'm willin' to swear that anywhere to any one.

"Do you know, Mrs. Lathrop, that Gran'ma Mullins was so bad off last night as they had to put a mustard plaster onto her while Hiram went to see Lucy for the last time, an' Mrs. Macy says as she never hear the beat o' her memory, for she says she'll take her Bible oath as Gran'ma Mullins told her what Hiram said and done every minute o' his life while he was gone to see Lucy Dill. And she cried, too, and took on the whole time she was talkin' an' said Heaven help her, for n.o.body else could, an' she just knowed Lucy'd get tired o' Hiram's story an' he can't be happy a whole day without he tells it, an' she's most sure Lucy won't like his singin' 'Marchin' Through Georgia' after the first month or two, an' it's the only tune as Hiram has ever really took to. Mrs. Macy says she soon found she couldn't do nothin' to stem the tide except to drink tea an' listen, so she drank an' listened till Hiram come home about eleven. Oh, my, but she says they had the time then! Gran'ma Mullins let him in herself, and just as soon as he was in she bu'st into floods of tears an' wouldn't let him loose under no consideration. She says Hiram managed to get his back to the wall for a brace 'cause Gran'ma Mullins nigh to upset him every fresh time as Lucy come over her, an' Mrs. Macy says she couldn't but wonder what the end was goin'

to be when, toward midnight, Hiram just lost patience and dodged out under her arm and run up the ladder to the roof-room an' they couldn't get him to come down again. She says when Gran'ma Mullins realized as he wouldn't come down she most went mad over the notion of her only son's spendin' the Christmas Eve to his own weddin' sleepin' on the floor o'

the attic and she wanted to poke the cot up to him but Mrs. Macy says she drew the line at cot-pokin' when the cot was all she'd have to sleep on herself, and in the end they poked quilts up, an' pillows an'

doughnuts an' cider an' blankets, an' Hiram made a bed on the floor an'

they all got to sleep about three o'clock.

"Well, Mrs. Lathrop, what do you think? What _do_ you think? They was so awful tired that none of 'em woke till Mrs. Sperrit come at eleven next day to take 'em to the weddin'! Mrs. Macy says she hopes she'll be put forward all her back-slidin's if she ever gets such a start again. She says when she peeked out between the blinds an' see Mrs. Sperrit's Sunday bonnet an' realized her own state she nearly had a fit. Mrs.

Sperrit had to come in an' be explained to, an' the worst of it was as Hiram couldn't be woke nohow. He'd pulled the ladder up after him an'